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Downtown Grand Rapids Branding Campaign

GR_Urbanist

By GR_Urbanist
in Grand Rapids

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Rizzo City

Rizzo

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Posted

I think its all right, not the best, but not the end of the world. To me the image depicts a center city with 'hoods surround the urban area.

Honestly they could have approached this diferently, epseically the font color on the bold background.

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thefarside Crossroads

thefarside

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I think this tagline is the worst tagline in the history of taglines. Yeah, the economic development group in the city wants to keep it a secret? Yeah, maybe then we won't attract any new people or new businesses here and that would be awesome! Maybe great little businesses like Art of the Table and the new Downtown bookstore will flourish if no one knows about them...

They think it is clever, ironic and tonge-and-cheek. It's not. Not even close.

What a waste of time and money... I am sure the agency will argue that we just don't "get it" and that even if people hate it, they are still "talking about it" The vulcan-like logic certainly ain't gonna do much for Downtown, or Hanon's book of business either.

P.S. It took Hanon McKendry 9 months to give birth to this ugly baby?!

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Rizzo City

Rizzo

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Posted

Personally I would have used a variant of The City's logo... A few times that I've met with someone not from GR they ask about our logo. I like telling the story behind it and naturally they go, "whats that orange-red thing?!" That to me sparks interest, the GR Logo. We shouldn't just be Furniture City, River City, but Calder City is a cool moniker. I would have envisioned a backdrop of skyscrapers too.

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6th Gen local Whistle-Stop

6th Gen local

Posted
Posted

Had to quick get on UP to calm me down after hearing Rick and Scott talk about downtown because of this story. "No Parking, there's no parking down here!!" Last time I checked there were more parking garages than anything....or you could maybe walk a block or two! (one of my favorite things to do in a city, anyway!) We need to replace them with UP radio. :)

About the campaign, the logo is horrible (in my opinion) is just looks so homemade, not professional at all. Can't they at least smooth the fonts?

"Keep it a secret?" I'm not sure about that at all. Was really hoping for something better, a lot better.

It's too bad, because the Alliance has really kept DT looking nice and clean and everything else going DT is very sharp and classy looking. (I really like the directional signs!)

Oh, well...at least it probably won't stop people from going down there. Except for the fact that it looks like it should say, "Downtown Marne (random city chosen, don't be offended!) .... keep it a secret." It just looks so small towny.

Scott from the Rick and Scott show is a moron. He thinks he is fountain of knowledge about all things Grand Rapids. His crap about parking is ridiculous.

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twoshort Town

twoshort

Posted
Posted

At first I thought that the image was posted as a joke.

Where's the Hanon McKendry people to explain this, because I thought it was a joke too. I don't think the tag line is terrible, but that "logo" is.. ugh, I don't know, but it ain't good. Maybe that really isn't the logo and someone is screwing w/ Wood Radio.

SOMEONE must know someone at H.M. who can decipher this for us... if not, click each one of these 5 times, someone will notice:

http://www.hanon-mckendry.com/

http://www.hanon-mckendry.com/

http://www.hanon-mckendry.com/

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numstead Hamlet

numstead

Posted
Posted

From WOOD TV...

We've Got A Secret in Grand Rapids

Posted: April 27, 2006 12:14 PM EDT

GRAND RAPIDS -- Don't tell anyone about Grand Rapids. City leaders want you to keep it a secret.

The Grand Rapids Downtown Alliance board today unveiled the new branding theme for the city's downtown area: "Keep it a secret."

"It conveys quiet confidence and uses the fresh, memorable, tongue-in-cheek phrase to entice people to learn more," said board chairman Kurt Hassberger.

Members of the Grand Rapids Downtown Alliance say they wanted something different and memorable and they think people will react positively. They think the brand will create interest and be thought-provoking.

The millions of dollars spent improving the downtown Grand Rapids area has largely been spent in bricks-and-mortar. But this involves a marketing approach for downtown, inviting residents to enjoy the improvements.

The GRDA partnered with business and community leaders to commission local advertising agency Hanon-McKendry to develop a brand that differentiates downtown Grand Rapids from other cities.

Downtown leaders say they need to go beyond the obvious. The new slogan

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MrsB918 Unincorporated Area

MrsB918

Posted
Posted

I showed the image to people in my office, many of whom don't live in Grand Rapids and don't really care about downtown GR. They thought it looked like an olive, a tire, a crazy eye - not one person said it made them think of downtown GR. One person commented that the slogan is weak and it sounds like we don't want more people coming to GR - we want to keep it all to ourselves.

I'm so disappointed - it could have been something really cool.

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numstead Hamlet

numstead

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Posted

In regards to the comment made about the jaggy edges on the font...

I guarantee that the actual graphics aren't like that. The image that is posted in this forum was taken from a second-hand source (The Rick & Scott Show website). The reason for all the jaggy edges is obviously because the woodradio webmaster scaled the image down and optimized the heck out of it for the web (its only 28k jpeg). If you look at the same website, you'll see that the R&S logo is similar...

Please give a proffesional design/marketing firm a little more credit than that.

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Rizzo City

Rizzo

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I guess profesional design dosen't mean squat if most of the people who see it could care less and aren't interested about what the design is selling.

I am intriqued why Channel 8 or channel 13 don't have this logo in their news article, you'd think that people would be interested in seeing what it looks like.

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starrfish Whistle-Stop

starrfish

Posted
Posted

The logo is all to 1970's for my taste. I'm a product of the 70's, but have grown and changed my style over the years. There is nothing stylistically satisfying from the 70's genre! This logo, not to mention the font, makes GR look silly. I can't even speak about the fact that this all comes with an $82K price tag!

They should have run it by us before launching it to the public!

P.S. to Greedo, I know Built to Spill - "Keep it Like a Secret"

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thefarside Crossroads

thefarside

Posted
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I'm sure there were focus groups and such.. we must be missing something...

I have been involved in some H-M branding projects previously and I have to say, they've lost their edge.

Their creative is usually great (design, theme, tag, etc) but man... this one's a stinker. They envision themselves to be a big NY/Chicago-esque agency (hence the outragous pricing) and always say local companies can find the 'big city' talent here... but more recently (case in point today) I have seen just "big city" prices and myopic ideas. And no, they probably didn't do focus group research b/c then it would have been a $500K budget.

I think H-M needs to return to their roots and start taking themselves less seriously. I am sure then we would see some really great stuff.

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GRGyp Whistle-Stop

GRGyp

Posted
Posted

I have been involved in some H-M branding projects previously and I have to say, they've lost their edge.

Their creative is usually great (design, theme, tag, etc) but man... this one's a stinker. They envision themselves to be a big NY/Chicago-esque agency (hence the outragous pricing) and always say local companies can find the 'big city' talent here... but more recently (case in point today) I have seen just "big city" prices and myopic ideas. And no, they probably didn't do focus group research b/c then it would have been a $500K budget.

I think H-M needs to return to their roots and start taking themselves less seriously. I am sure then we would see some really great stuff.

Considering you could probably fill a banquet hall with former H-M employees that were there when they had an edge, I think a lot of that 'big city' talent they had is working elsewhere now.

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201test Unincorporated Area

201test

Posted
Posted

More troubling than the mediocrity of the work is the fact that downtown "leaders" got fleeced for $80,000 at a time when the city can't even afford to keep the public pools or the Rosa Parks skating rink open.

Nice message about our community's priorities.

As for the ultimate take away on this debacle -- who's more to blame, the clever con man or the downtown leaders who got conned and said thank you when it was over?

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GRGyp Whistle-Stop

GRGyp

Posted
Posted

You did a good job of cleaning it up. Not that it changes my opinion, other than looking cleaner.

I'll just say I'm going against the grain in the forum here. I like the logo, but thoroughly hate the "Keep it a secret" tagline.

For the logo, I'm thinking it will ok in the downtown setting. Standing alone on this page, it's loud, it's bright, it's different, and I don't like it standing out like that on its own. If it's hanging on a banner from a lightpost in downtown, however, that's what you want. The shapes and color are going to contrast the hard edges and more drab colors of all the buildings dominating around it.

The framing of the downtown setting will swallow up the logo a bit, but it's still going stick out and catch your eye. Unfortunately the message you're going read when it does catch your eye, isn't going make any sense to most people. H-M is trying to be cute and edgy, but you can go above people's heads when you do that.

They are trying to go with a little tongue in cheek humor, but unfortunately I think it's going to come off as an inside joke only a select few are going to get. And what good is a joke, that nobody gets?

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