Branding is stuff of legend

By KEVIN RAMSHAW*

I grew up thinking of Christchurch as "the Garden City" and Wellington as "the Windy City".

I had no idea whether either of these images were the work of advertising, marketing or public relations experts. But what I did know was that Christchurch was dotted with trees and parks, and the wind blew almost constantly in Wellington.

As a resident now of the absolutely, positively windy city, and a practitioner of ulterior design, otherwise known as public relations, I'm intrigued at the opinion of image experts that Auckland needs a makeover.

I accept that a successful brand can be a tremendous asset - New York's "Big Apple" branding adds a colour, vitality and focus to the city that it might otherwise lack.

But I urge the brand experts and the marketeers measuring up Auckland to tread carefully, and look more closely at the New York exercise.

The lesson to be learned is that the image many believe a city needs should not be synonymous with a new coat of paint a home-owner feels the need to apply, lest he or she be associated with the taste, or lack of it, of the previous occupier.

I can understand why Wellington was anxious to dispense with "Windy City", despite its being appropriate. But City of Sails has always appealed to me as a wonderful way to describe a city that is both surrounded by, and culturally attached to, the sea.

Yet the slogan is, according to critics, threadbare, elitist and unrepresentative. These same critics and experts then go on to apologise for not having a substitute on tap.

New York's identification with apples raises a few eyebrows, as the Society for New York City History observes.

It is tempting to go back no further than a branding exercise carried out by the New York state Apple Marketing Board almost a century ago. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" apparently dates to this campaign.

The society's story goes back much further, to the arrival in New York of French aristocrats fleeing the French Revolution.

One of them, the vivacious and witty Evelyn Claudine de Saint-Evremond, became a society favourite and established a salon - or more accurately, an elegantly furnished bordello.

The establishment became extremely popular. Its staff, often new arrivals from Paris or London, were noted for their beauty and bearing. They were referred to by Mlle de Saint-Evremond as "my irresistible apples".

The popularity of the apples grew and the rest, as they say, is marketing.

Presidential aspirant William Jennings Bryan, not the first to denounce New York as a sink of iniquity, provided that all-important, third-party endorsement.

In an 1892 campaign speech, he branded New York "the foulest, rotten apple on the tree of decadent federalism".

Just as well he did not win or the image may have withered.

We can conclude from this story that had New York adopted the "time for a new identity" approach now being proposed for Auckland, the Big Apple would have disappeared decades ago and along with it all the wonderful merchandising opportunities that go with it.

On the criteria used by the Business Herald's panel of experts, the Big Apple says nothing about New York's size, vitality and iconic status among cities. Its past association with prostitution is, arguably, image-diminishing.

So what lessons does New York offer the branding experts?

The first is that the search for an image that captures Auckland's diversity is doomed to failure. It is highly unlikely that a single image can represent the city's ethnic diversity, physical characteristics and cultural endeavour.

Nor should the city slide by default into one of those well-meaning phrases that give rise to at best, misinterpretation, and at worst, derision. Hutt City's "We've got the lot" invites a "Sorry to hear that" response from the visitor.

The second is even more important. A city's identity is an amalgam of its past, present and foreseeable future.

The past is the domain of legends and myths, breathing life and colour into the present.

Legends don't just happen along every day and identity cannot be redefined every 10 years in the way that a house can be repainted.

Which brings us back to that elitist, unrepresentative and out-of-touch identity, City of Sails.

Auckland is a melting pot of people and cultures who settled after a journey often by sea. Those journeys are the stuff of legend.

Far from being elitist and dated, City of Sails does them proud.

* Kevin Ramshaw is a director of Wellington public relations firm Busby Ramshaw Grice. The firm is not involved in any branding exercise by a New Zealand city.