Atlanta's Image Makeover Not a Hit to All

A few months back, I posted an Ad Age opinion piece by Al Ries about Atlanta's new brand pitch. This article is from today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Atlanta's image makeover not a hit to all

By LEON STAFFORD
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/10/06

Atlanta's 4-month-old effort to brand itself is getting mixed reviews from the city's marketing community.

Many of Atlanta's top advertising and public relations executives say the campaign — which includes a new logo, city anthem, advertising and tagline — has some strengths but could use tweaking.

They give Brand Atlanta, the city's new public-private marketing arm that created the work, high marks for initiative, getting the community involved and the moxie to try to sell a song they say could never have pleased everyone.

But Atlanta loses points for a tagline they say is ambiguous, advertising that has a limited reach, and timing the campaign's release so close to the opening of the Georgia Aquarium, Atlantic Station and the expansion of the High Museum of Art. In all that buzz, some say, much of the message was lost.

Joe Hair, a marketing professor at Kennesaw State University's Coles College of Business, said Brand Atlanta's October launch was too close to the holidays and the city's new attractions.

"The ATL branding campaign message has been competing with many other products and services, and in the past two months in particular, the competition for people's attention has been distracted by the huge amounts spent on the holiday season promotions," he said. "Frankly, people have had too many other things to think about other than the new ATL campaign."

Atlanta's marketing community will learn more about Brand Atlanta's strategy today when two of its leaders, Vicki Escarra and Hala Moddelmog, stop by the American Marketing Association's monthly luncheon at Villa Christina.

'We want to be hip'

Brand Atlanta was armed with about $4.5 million in public and private funding and nearly an additional $4 million in donated services from everyone from local media companies to Hollywood stars. It launched the campaign with the unveiling of the city logo.

The group later released the anthem, "The ATL," penned by Atlanta-based super producer Dallas Austin, at a Monday Night Football game at the Georgia Dome.

That was followed by the tagline, "Every day is an opening day," and advertising with the voices of Conyers native Holly Hunter and Samuel L. Jackson, a graduate of Morehouse College.

Kathy Bremer, partner and managing director of the Atlanta office of Porter Novelli, an international public relations firm, said the campaign reflects the vibrancy of the city.

"We want to be hip, and we want a campaign that stirs things up," said Bremer, whose office was one of several in Atlanta that applied to do the public relations work for the campaign. That job eventually went to the Atlanta office of Ogilvy Public Relations WorldWide.

"I look at it as, 'Is the glass half full or half empty?' " Bremer said. "I think it's half full. There was more that hit the mark than not."

Amy Hoover, executive vice president of Atlanta-based marketing recruiter Talent Zoo, called the campaign "a decent effort to get started, but I think there is more they can do.

"Everyone I've spoken with thinks the campaign fell short of the mark," said Hoover, acknowledging that this is a very early assessment. "When you look at better work in that category, it really is subpar."

The executives say they are eager to see something that demonstrates to the outside world what really separates Atlanta from its competitors. "Every day is an opening day" only works if it indicates why this distinguishes Georgia's capital from all the daily "openings" that happen in cities across the nation.

"It's missing the emotional essence that many Atlantans can get behind," like Las Vegas' "What happens here, stays here" tagline, Hoover said. "If that campaign is a 10, then I'd call ours a four or a five."

Tony Accurso, general manager of JWT Atlanta, a public relations concern that also bid to represent Brand Atlanta, said he likes what he sees. He just wants to see more of it. Brand Atlanta needs to get its message in front of people more, whether it be by displaying the logo on more Atlanta-centric Web sites or renting billboard space beyond the center of the city.

"The campaign doesn't come to me," he said. "It seems I have to go to it."

A mix of response

Response to the campaign nationally has been wildly divergent. The New York Times focused on the confusion some felt about the tagline and the difficulty in branding a city. The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer used Atlanta's new tagline to razz the city about its traffic woes and long waits at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. And the Times Picayune of New Orleans said the city's branding challenge reflects one of its biggest problems: "Usually culture binds people together, but Atlanta has no real culture of its own."

John Padgett, media director for Atlanta-based advertising firm Hauser Group, said everyone needs to cut Brand Atlanta some slack. The group has done the near impossible for any city — brought together civic, public and private groups for a common goal. Having worked in all of those areas, he said, Atlanta should be admired for what it has accomplished.

"I understand what it takes to gain consensus, and that is the most impressive thing that I have seen so far," he said.

Padgett said he followed the development of the campaign up to the release of the anthem, when a maelstrom of negative press and reviews turned him off. The media, he said, seized on criticism of the music and made that the story instead of looking at the campaign as a whole.

Indeed, many of the local and national stories done since the campaign's launch have focused on fallout over the song.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr's comment in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial column that the song was "unintelligible moaning" was picked up by newspapers far and wide. Local Fox TV host Dick Williams also received mileage nationally when — responding to the song's refrain "get 'em up, get 'em up, get 'em up" — said, "Not a good line for a city with a high crime rate."

Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said he was not surprised that the song garnered strong reactions.

"I could understand how the song can be polarizing," he said. "But brands can be polarizing because they have to be about something and be distinct. You can't please everyone."