Branding Abilene--at what price?
This article appeared in the Abilene Reporter News during the last week in July:
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By Sidney Levesque
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A Nashville, Tenn., branding firm may be developing a new logo and motto to market Abilene -- if city leaders come up with the money to pay for it.
The Abilene Branding Partnership, which includes the city and the Abilene Chamber of Commerce, wants to hire North Star Destination Strategies to develop a marketing campaign to replace the present "Friendly Frontier" label. The two have negotiated a fee in the "low six figure" range, said George Nichols, partnership chairman.
He declined to name the exact figure because a contract has not yet been signed. He said the money to pay for North Star's services needs to be lined up first.
All five entities -- all supported at least in part by tax dollars -- that are part of the partnership have pledged money. Nichols hopes to have the funding resolved in the next three weeks.
"It looks very promising," he said.
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The Abilene City Council continues to tell Abilene citizens that it needs to raise our taxes. On this blog, I continue to tell my readers that our city coffers have PLENTY of money flowing into them, even surpluses at times; we are just mis-spending what we're raising. And we cannot continue to spend money in foolish ways.
A few months ago, our city manager--whose salary approaches 200K--hired an outside consulting firm (at around 50K) to come mitigate the argument between the fire chief and his squad, who were bickering and losing focus. What a waste. Surely acting as a liason between city employees can fall into the city manager's job decription--can't it? Why did we spend that money, which could have gone toward real needs, for this reason?
And now, despite all the creativity in our city, our council seeks to hire an outside agency--at great expense, in my opinion--to come to town, stay awhile, interview people, and leave us with a marketable slogan.
Please investigate--find out which council members voted for this expenditure--then vote out these liberal, money-pilfering people when elections come around.
--------------------------------
By Sidney Levesque
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A Nashville, Tenn., branding firm may be developing a new logo and motto to market Abilene -- if city leaders come up with the money to pay for it.
The Abilene Branding Partnership, which includes the city and the Abilene Chamber of Commerce, wants to hire North Star Destination Strategies to develop a marketing campaign to replace the present "Friendly Frontier" label. The two have negotiated a fee in the "low six figure" range, said George Nichols, partnership chairman.
He declined to name the exact figure because a contract has not yet been signed. He said the money to pay for North Star's services needs to be lined up first.
All five entities -- all supported at least in part by tax dollars -- that are part of the partnership have pledged money. Nichols hopes to have the funding resolved in the next three weeks.
"It looks very promising," he said.
--------------------------------end of excerpt---------
The Abilene City Council continues to tell Abilene citizens that it needs to raise our taxes. On this blog, I continue to tell my readers that our city coffers have PLENTY of money flowing into them, even surpluses at times; we are just mis-spending what we're raising. And we cannot continue to spend money in foolish ways.
A few months ago, our city manager--whose salary approaches 200K--hired an outside consulting firm (at around 50K) to come mitigate the argument between the fire chief and his squad, who were bickering and losing focus. What a waste. Surely acting as a liason between city employees can fall into the city manager's job decription--can't it? Why did we spend that money, which could have gone toward real needs, for this reason?
And now, despite all the creativity in our city, our council seeks to hire an outside agency--at great expense, in my opinion--to come to town, stay awhile, interview people, and leave us with a marketable slogan.
Please investigate--find out which council members voted for this expenditure--then vote out these liberal, money-pilfering people when elections come around.
posted by Cole @ 6:56 AM
1 Comments:
At 11:39 AM,
laura g said…
besides all that, the Friendly Frontier brand isn't even that old. is the Frontier Texas museum closing or something? and who travels to a city based on the city logo anyway?
how about, "Abilene, where you stop at the Cracker Barrel to potty on your way from Dallas to Midland."
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