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Couldn't we just keep using the old city logo?

After City Council adopted a new municipal logo this week, many Saultites expressed a wish to bring back the old Naturally Gifted icon. Is that really a good idea?

Three days after Sault Ste. Marie City Council voted to adopt a new municipal logo, there are grassroots calls to return to the quarter-century-old icon developed for the city's Naturally Gifted tourism promotion.

Is that a good idea?

Or would it just get in the way of the city's plan to attract more young people to live and work here?

Listening to the enthusiastic crowd of logo-chested, branded-t-shirt-wearing supporters at Tuesday night's council meeting, you'd think our new city icon was an artistic triumph comparable to da Vinci's Mona Lisa or The Last Supper.

The overwhelming popular consensus recorded on social media, however, was something closer to Edvard Munch's The Scream.

If the purpose of a municipal logo is to represent a community, something was seriously amiss.

The design approved by councillors this week might be adored by out-of-town experts and stakeholders who participated in its creation, but the vast majority of local online commentators say it didn't even come close to representing them.

Some thought the circular icon looked like it was drawn on an old Spirograph toy or shaken from the glass shards of a kaleidoscope.

Others compared it to a hacky-sack footbag.

An ongoing unscientific SooToday poll accumulated over the past week as part of our initial coverage of the logo found that 2,424 of 2,775 respondents (87.4 per cent) rated the design at five or below on a scale ranging from one (cringeworthy) to 10 (awesome).

Just 351 readers (12.7 per cent) scored it from six to 10.

Significantly, 1,669 (60.1 per cent) respondents gave it the lowest possible rating: one.

After City Council voted 6-3 to adopt the new logo and an associated identity/branding campaign, many online posters expressed a desire to bring back the Sault's quarter-century-old icon, developed in 1993 by Brooks Marketing Resources as part of the Naturally Gifted tourism promotion.

But is ripping the new municipal logo from its broader marketing context really a good idea?

"I don't see how you could take the icon out and use the rest of it, because the icon is right through it," says Mayor Christian Provenzano.

The problem is that a large portion of the $100,000 paid to out-of-town consultants working on the city's re-branding went to identity and strategic work that was almost universally lauded.

Even opponents of the new logo loved the focus on attracting youth to the community and the three positioning taglines:

  • Work. Life. Balance
  • Biindigen (Ojibway for 'welcome')
  • Where you belong

The new logo was designed to work seamlessly within these broader strategies and positioning statements.

Can we really get away with yanking the visual identity elements from an otherwise excellent campaign, replacing them with an out-of-context, quarter-century-old icon?

Tom Vair, the city's deputy chief administrative officer for community development and enterprise services, thinks not.

"It's difficult to separate," says Vair. "I think this whole brand was put together as a package. These elements are meant to flow together. You would be starting back, almost at ground zero."

"I feel very safe in saying that you're not going to come up with a logo that 100 per cent of the people love. People all have a different opinion. They like different colours. They like different elements. We saw that when we were doing our consultation. By changing the logo, I feel you're going to be in the same spot in six months to a year or however long the process takes. You're going to get a group of people who love it and a group of people who don't like it, passionately perhaps. And then you'll have a big chunk of people in the middle who are indifferent."

"I really feel strongly that the work the team did here, the consultation process they went through, the feedback they got to come up with this product, puts the best foot forward for Sault Ste. Marie," Vair told this week's City Council meeting.

"Pulling it apart is probably not the best thing," said Tony Bitonti, Sault College's senior planner for marketing and creative services,

"This type of work is not like a buffet line where you can just pick and choose things," Bitonti said. "I think the package is quite impressive.... Pulling elements out would just get you back to square one."

Ward 2 Coun. Luke Dufour cited the half-century-old Nike 'swoosh" icon to emphasize the proper role of logos.

"The Nike logo doesn't tell the brand story. When you look at it, it's not even a real thing. It's an exaggerated check mark. It says nothing about athletics, nothing about shoes. The reason we all know it means Nike is because it's unique."

"Logos aren't necessary to tell a standalone story. But they are meant to to stand out, to be a unique identifier, and then they're meant to be backfilled with the rest of the brand narrative."

Coun. Dufour failed to mention that the Nike swoosh was developed in 1971 for a total cost of $35. That trademark alone is now worth an estimated $26 billion.

Ward 3 Coun. Donna Hilsinger erroneously attributed a quote to Albert Einstein about the the definition of insanity being doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.

"This is taking a big risk," Hilsinger said. "This is putting ourselves out there. This is being proud of and telling our story, because it's storytelling that sells in today's marketplace."

"It's not logos. It's telling our unique story out there in the world. It's telling people that work, life and balance is what makes us different. It's putting on our city signage: welcome, biindigen and bienvenue. Three languages that we should be so proud of."

"We have to do things differently. We are not growing," Hilsinger said.

"We've got to get our people, our residents in the community and the people that work in our organization here, to get out and sell our story to bring new business to Sault Ste. Marie, to help businesses who are here now expand, and to bring new residents to grow our population to 90,000 or 100,000."


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David Helwig

About the Author: David Helwig

David Helwig's journalism career spans seven decades beginning in the 1960s. His work has been recognized with national and international awards.
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