Civic Image Makeovers Can Get Ugly

It seemed like a simple assignment: Create a clear and consistent identity for Ventura, an image aimed at filling residents with civic pride and selling out-of-towners on the city’s eclectic charm.

But when the so-called civic branding process yielded two proposals for new city logos, the task became as turbulent as Ventura’s rumbling surf.

At a City Council meeting last week, local artists complained that they had been left out of the process, city leaders questioned whether there had been sufficient public input and some residents wondered why traditional city symbols such as the poinsettia and the San Buenaventura Mission hadn’t made the cut.

By the end of the two-hour session, it was back to the drawing board for staff members and designers who had spent the last nine months coming up with a marketing campaign meant to capture the spirit of the seaside city and set it apart from other coastal communities.

“It is a very challenging process,” said Tom Horton, a senior associate with the San Francisco-based planning and design firm hired to help develop the new logo, set to be stamped on everything from city stationery to bus shelters. “People feel very passionately about where they live and how their city is publicly portrayed.”

California cities have long wrestled with issues of civic identity, generating new logos and slogans designed to polish their image and advertise their attributes like so many boxes of breakfast cereal. In some cases, cities have gone as far as changing their name to whip up civic pride or get out from underneath undesirable reputations.

Civic branding takes those efforts to new levels, with a growing number of cities taking a page from corporate America to market themselves to the outside world in order to attract new residents, promote economic development and draw tourist dollars.

“It really is a question of dollars and cents,” said UCLA urban planning professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, who has watched a growing number of cities join the advertising age.

“Municipal budgets are depleted and cities often are in competition with one another to attract more business,” she said. “As a result, they are doing everything they can to develop an edge in promoting themselves.”

Cities such as Charlotte, N.C., and Dallas recently adopted such marketing strategies, hiring advertising agencies to develop campaigns designed to encapsulate the look, feel and personality of those cities.

Closer to home, Santa Ana teamed with its Chamber of Commerce in 2002 to brand one of Orange County’s oldest cities with a new identity. An ad agency came up with the slogan, “Santa Ana: The Spirit of Change,” as part of a campaign to polish a city image tarnished by gangs and crime.

San Luis Obispo officials are scheduled this week to get their first look at logo proposals produced as part of a branding campaign aimed at boosting tourism and distinguishing the coastal community from others in the region.

“We hope to convey the message that San Luis Obispo should be the center of any visit to the central coast,” said Shelly Stanwyck, the city’s economic development manager.

But not every city jumps at the chance for a marketing makeover.

After the first Rodney King beating trial was held in Simi Valley, officials there considered adopting a new slogan aimed at ridding the mostly white suburban Ventura County community of a reputation of being racist.

The image problem began in 1992, when an appeals court ordered the proceeding moved out of Los Angeles, under the belief that excessive publicity and a highly charged political climate made it impossible for the four white police officers involved to get a fair trial.

The Simi Valley Courthouse was chosen as the new site, despite protests from several organizations that the community would be insensitive to blacks. After the jury returned not-guilty verdicts, the city found its image tarnished and the butt of jokes by late-night comedians, politicians and Hollywood scriptwriters.

City leaders thought of turning to Ronald Reagan for help, considering adoption of an official city slogan: “Home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.” But officials ultimately decided that Simi Valley’s reputation as a family-oriented community and its annual ranking as one of the safest cities in the nation would eventually shine through.

“I think that people maybe years ago didn’t know where we were, and I think the Rodney King [beating] trial probably put us on the map, but not in a way we wanted,” Mayor Bill Davis said. “But I think we’ve changed the city’s identity, no doubt about it. The council didn’t change that identity and no slogan changed that identity. It’s the people who live here who made that happen.”

It was a natural disaster that jolted leaders in the neighboring farm town of Fillmore to fashion a new brand image.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake leveled its historic downtown, Fillmore’s officials began using a marketing slogan created to help redevelop the central business district. “The Last, Best Small Town in Southern California,” first appeared on the downtown movie theater marquee.

Now the slogan is affixed to the city seal, emblazoned on business cards and letterhead and stamped in a prominent place in the lobby at City Hall.

“We thought it would be appropriate in our effort to promote tourism and convince people that this would be a good place to come,” City Manager Roy Payne said. “It identifies us as a community that has retained its rural charm, one that has a slower pace and small-town values.”

Civic values are exactly at issue in Ventura.

Since last spring, city staff members have teamed with the firm of M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates to craft a new brand identity, holding workshops and community forums to gather input and generate logo designs.

The campaign, which had been discussed for years by city leaders, was meant to complement a citywide effort to establish a “way finding program,” directional signs guiding people to city landmarks and other points of interest.

The aim was to develop a logo that would bring a uniform look to a city that has a hodgepodge of symbols, from sailboats on directional signs to the city seal stamped on government papers and police cruisers.

Through months of meetings and discussions, the consensus was to develop a look that would add modern flavor to the city’s historic roots.

There was plenty of talk at last week’s City Council meeting about whether that goal had been accomplished.

Participants discussed ways to better involve the arts community in the process and the possibility of holding a citywide contest to come up with a new logo design. Some questioned whether the city should go by its formal name, San Buenaventura, or stick with its current one, a choice several council members said they want to discuss in the near future.

City staff members are scheduled to return to the council Jan. 26 with a plan for the next step.

“We’re talking about things that mean so much to people, so it’s not surprising that they have such passionate opinions,” Mayor Brian Brennan said. “I think that’s a good thing. It shows that people care enough about how their city is identified and how that is portrayed to others.”