Although the newly unveiled city logo hasn’t inspired unanimous acclaim from citizens, nobody can fault the Halifax re-branding effort with being predictable. Even if the new design isn’t remarkably bold, this redesign does depart boldly from its predecessor.
Behind the transformation is Phil Otto, CEO and strategist for Bedford-based branding company Revolve. After the initial wave of (completely expected) negative feedback, he hopes the city will grow into the clean, modern look.
But as first reactions roll in, public sentiment seems more underwhelmed than negative. Perhaps the accompanying motto “Be bold” is responsible.
“I can understand the public’s confusion,” says Katelyn Bourgoin, a brand strategist at Red Riot marketing firm. “I think it’s important to realize that being bold doesn’t necessarily mean being loud or brash.”
Other brand design experts share a similar view. Although the logo is sparse, Form:Media managing director John deWolf says people should look at how the mark is used in concert with other elements like colour, photos and environment. “It’s unfair to judge a mark on its own,” he says. “The mark itself doesn’t have to carry the entire statement.”
Simplicity was also a solution to avoid dividing the city. Because the name was shortened from Halifax Regional Municipality—whose logo included a wave and a lighthouse as the “i” in Halifax—Otto did not want to include any visual icons that would further limit the geographic scope. “Any icons would have focused on the peninsula,” he says, “which would have been even more polarizing.”
Michael LeBlanc, chair of design at NSCAD, agrees with the decision to scrap the lighthouse featured on the old logo—especially in light of the city’s efforts to attract attention from abroad. “Icons are only important to people within a community,” he says, “but if it’s somebody from Germany or China, they might not know what that thing is. If our intention is to go global, it makes sense to go with letter forms. Not lighthouses or clock towers.”
Bourgoin seconds that opinion. “Halifax is much more than our landmarks,” she says. “And we need to start embracing that.”
Another point of contention has been the more than $200,000 price tag. Following the unveiling of the logo and its expense, some asked why the city didn’t host a contest among local design schools. LeBlanc says using students to cut costs is not only unprofessional, but would take work away from graduates.
“The perception of the public is that creating visual products is easy,” he says. “There are a lot of people who think that someone with a little bit of training and a little bit of software can do the job. That’s not correct. It’s exploitative and it belittles the craft. Would you do the same for accounting? Just because someone can add, that doesn’t mean they should be your accountant.”
Otto defends the cost of the project—only five percent was actually spent on creating the logo. The majority went to financing background research: Revolve collected feedback from 20,000 people in different areas of the municipality through activities like focus groups and community events. He also points out that in addition to the logo itself, usage guidelines were developed to dictate how the logo appears on everything from parking tickets to the side of buses.
“The part a lot of people are forgetting,” says Otto, “is that the city currently supports dozens of logos. … Those will be consolidated under this umbrella brand.”
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2014.
How many potholes would $217k have fixed?
Explain please … ?
“The part a lot of people are forgetting,” says Otto, “is that the city currently supports dozens of logos. … Those will be consolidated under this umbrella brand.”
These guys are frauds. Take a look at the ‘rebrand’ they did for Eastlink. They simply stole from the French telco Orange, and them built a story around the brand to try to pass it off as original.
Pathetic.
What an incredibly bland “brand”.
Judging from the reaction on the two IRC channels I hang out in, with people (mostly IT professionals) from Canada, the USA, England, Scotland, Finland, Australia, South Africa, and several other countries, it looks either like some random tech company or a logo of the Halifax bank over in the UK…
If the purpose of wasting this $200k+ was to bring business to the city, it’s going to be a massive failure.
https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/ABOUTMELBOURNE/MELBOURNEPROFILE/Pages/CorporateIdentity.aspx
This design lacks everything, rebranded as what? A lazy city that couldn’t have asked the people who live there to choose the logo that represents them?
Gpb1252, IT people are known worldwide for their design savvy *note sarcasm*. In fact, most developers/engineers will be the first to admit they’re usually really crappy judges of design.
For the past several months I’ve been deeply involved in this initiative to define our region’s brand, which includes a brand strategy and brand identity that was informed by over 20,000 people – the largest stakeholder engagement in our municipality’s history. This is an important undertaking – a strong Halifax brand will rally municipal staff, residents and businesses behind a common spirit. It will guide and inspire the way we act, engage, speak, market and deliver our experience. It is the story of who we are and where we’re going. It will not only make us feel great about where we live, but has the potential to attract new immigrants, new businesses, tourists and conventions. This is vital to our region – it will increase our tax base, spread the cost of municipal services over more people and more businesses (which will lower our taxes) and provide tax revenue to increase and improve the services we receive from municipal government. I wonder how appealing Halifax is as a place to settle to our city’s thousands of university students reading the firestorm of negativity, skepticism and cynicism this week. Or the young generation in our region deciding whether to stay in Halifax or move abroad. Or the tourists and convention planners and site selectors looking at Halifax as a place to visit or relocate a business. Brand is a combination of reputation and expectation. Brand is our culture. And Halifax needs a culture that can think bold to grow, prosper, thrive and be the place people want to live, work and play. Be bold. And go to http://www.HalifaxDefined.ca to read more about the Halifax brand.
Phil Otto, CEO, Revolve
BOLDLY GOING, BUT WHERE?
The first rule of marketing is to identify, understand, and ultimately engage your target audience. The consultant identified this clearly in their rationale published on halifaxdefined.ca
“The goal of this branding project was to articulate a single rallying cry that would connect our pride, help us put our best foot forward, and show the world what a great place our region is to live, work, invest and visit.”
I agree with this assessment, and believe it is exactly what the Halifax brand should do. It follows then, that if we are to “show the world”, we should also spend our considerable budget to garner our intelligence from the rest of the world – those who would seek to live, work, invest, and visit our great city (thus generating economic growth). I would therefore assume our politicians and hired experts would poll relevant audience groups in major markets outside our region who know us, poll those who don’t, and poll those who think they might.
Unfortunately, that’s not what has happened. Instead of spending taxpayers money to find out more about those we hope to reach and influence (our target audience), we’ve spent our energy, (and the lion’s share of a hefty budget) to ask ourselves what we think!
Of course we want our citizens to buy in, and support the new branding initiative, but if we stay true to the goal of effectively reaching our target audience (the rest of the world), it will follow that the locals should be happy to reap the benefits, and proudly adopt the brand.
So why on earth would our civic leaders and a well-paid consultant ignore established marketing convention to engage in this obvious navel-gazing (rather than polling their own identified target audience)?
In my opinion, there are two reasons why this process was followed:
If civic politicians only engage their constituents, they believe they’ll enjoy a better chance of gaining local approval (and votes) down the road. Why complicate things by asking the real target audience?
If things go terribly wrong, the politicians and the consultant can keep reminding critics that citizens were polled in large numbers, and the citizens are therefore to blame if things don’t succeed – you’ll hear this rationale each time the City Council or the consultants are questioned or criticized.
The only part of the process to which I do agree is that from the outside looking in (which is what really matters) we are Halifax to the world, not HRM, or a cluster of communities.
Media coverage and public opinion for this new brand solution have been overwhelmingly, and perhaps justifiably negative. If the target audience actually is limited to the citizenry of HRM, then something is amiss.
The consultant tells us that the people have shared 20,000 opinions which have been distilled to personality attributes like: Friendly, Pioneering, Capable, Resourceful, Genuine, and Cooperative to describe our city. From these qualities, they’ve determined that this is summed up by the new rallying cry: Be Bold.
Unfortunately, the HALIFAX brand solution has generated a rallying cry, but apparently not the intended one. According to the public comments seen on CBC, and the Halifax Herald, the majority describe our new brand with adjectives like “bland”, “sterile”, “generic”, corporate”, “dull” and “disappointing”. None of the intended attributes appear to have been noted in the public’s reaction, nor was the word “bold” used when describing it. Apparently they are not part of the 20,000, or they didn’t get the memo.
In my experience, a brand only succeeds when it readily communicates the attributes it seeks to impart – minus all the explanations and rhetoric (for which there is no room on a bus livery).
One commenter to CBC news put it best:
“But the point of a logo is that it shouldn’t need an essay to explain it, no matter how good or thorough the process was to come up with it.”
To those responsible for this failed branding exercise, I pose a challenge:
Send out an example of the new brand to those outside our region (WITHOUT the lengthy rationale), ask what attributes it conveys, and see if they match or even come close to the intended attributes that the brand purports to represent: Friendly, Pioneering, Capable, Resourceful, Genuine, and Cooperative.
I predict they won’t, and I’ll bet the word “bold” will not be seen.
— A Concerned Halifax Taxpayer
With all due respect Phil Otto, it is difficult for readers to accept your opinion based on the obvious here. Your firm was paid 300K for this project, so yes, I assume you would want to validate your work. Please know this is not an indictment on you or your firm. I have not reviewed the entire branding package but can only assume you are a competent consultant. The issue I have is not with the work performed but with the assumptions you make in your above piece. I would be curious to see if you can provide hard research that supports your claims that re-branding Halifax will “rally municipal staff, residents and businesses behind a common spirit. It will guide and inspire the way we act, engage, speak, market and deliver our experience. It is the story of who we are and where we’re going. It will not only make us feel great about where we live, but has the potential to attract new immigrants, new businesses, tourists and conventions. This is vital to our region – it will increase our tax base, spread the cost of municipal services over more people and more businesses (which will lower our taxes) and provide tax revenue to increase and improve the services we receive from municipal government.” Do you really believe we can achieve all these benefits from a branding strategy??? To me this is all a bunch of pie in the sky nonsense. I sure hope that it is not taken from your branding strategy. Halifax has the potential to be an amazing city. The problem is, we have no vision of what it could be and no leadership to take us there. Halifax needs to develop an internal plan to “fix” this city before we decide to promote it to the world as an amazing place to live, work and do business. A very difficult task that will take decades to accomplish. What good is a brand if we cannot deliver on the brand promise?
Soooo, Halifax doesn’t need leaders, it needs Don Draper and his merry band of ad men?
ONE BAD APPLE
One of the most unfortunate results of this branding fiasco is how it has given all the region’s marketing and branding firms a black eye in the public’s view. I would also be very curious to know how Revolve was awarded this contract. Was it actually tendered? I’d love to know that process, and how it played out.
— A Concerned Halifax Taxpayer
seadoggie:
Yes, it was tendered. http://www.novascotia.ca/tenders/tenders/t… All you need to do is look. The process is not a secret.
Say want you want about brands/branding, it’s all mumbo-jumbo, and at a ridiculously hefty price. A 10 year old could come up with the same shitty design and the same shitty buzz-wording for $20.
I won’t post the exact words here, but if you work in PR or advertising, take Bill Hicks’ advice, for the sake of humanity.
Anyone who cannot see the difference between being in the Halifax Regional Municipality and being in Halifax, has no business being in business or sitting on city council. Shameful that those who were voted to represent Halifax Regional Municipality have decided it is too “cumbersome to say, and have removed it (Regional Municipality) from “common language” effectively shunning Regional Municipality, and only using Halifax. Did anyone consider that when rebranding/renaming (not legally of course, shhh) that Halifax would become Halifax in H/LIF/X? Making it HA, H/ Nova Scotia… Guess the joke is on the Mayor now. HA, HA