Georgia Out of My Mind: Destination Branding Malpractice
The state of Georgia in the United States is another destination attempting to get its branding act together. According to the Atlanta Business Journal, the state recently settled upon a new brand strategy, logo, and tagline, with settled being the operative word.
The new Georgia tagline, Put Your Dreams In Motion, replaces the two-decade-old Georgia On My Mind, and sounds suspiciously similar to a campaign launched for the state of Oregon in 2004, which uses the tagline We Love Dreamers.
As for the new Georgia logo, we’ll leave it for you to decide whether it evokes an iconic Georgia peach or gives rise to some other evocative symbol.
Maybe Georgia is even more on your mind now.
The Georgia Department of Economic Development, which is referred to locally by the much friendlier nickname “GDECD”, led this peachy rebranding effort. The GDECD selected a public relations firm AND an advertising agency to drive the rebrand. The selection of an ad agency or PR firm to create brand strategy is like having your dentist perform open-heart surgery, creating the same predictable results. We Love Dentists.
If the decision makers of Georgia believe their new brand will drive increased tourism or business investment without a huge bump in their $9.1 million 2005 advertising budget, we offer two words of advice: dream on.
The reason is simple. The new Georgia effort will quickly become more white noise in a culture already overcrowded with competing advertising messages, as it does not stake out an authentic and compelling point of competitive difference that audiences will remember for years, let alone days, to come. Georgia On My Mind resonated because of the iconic Ray Charles song, which automatically differentiated it from every other state. Nya nya na nya nya, Ray Charles sung about our state, nor yours. Ha! Now what kind of emotional memory hook does the state have to play off of? They love dreamers, but they’ve failed to demonstrate that by dreaming big themselves.
Surely an advertising agency or PR firm would not create a brand that requires a huge increase in advertising and PR expenditures. Well, they can dream, can’t they?
