Opinion: Invercargill. Will The New Brand Work Or Sort Of Work?

The new brand for our city – Invercargill.

What do you think of it? Where will it take us, will you embrace it?

We’ve had many discussions (one or two heated!) over this and most of initial response on our facebook page was not encouraging. But then again, folk don’t like change.

And they don’t like it when they see our governing body, the city council spending on a lavish brand launch after the Christmas lights and coffee fiascoes.

To us mayor Tim said plenty with what he didn’t say when speaking to local media after the launch. Tim said of previous attempts to market our city,”they sort of half-worked, and I guess they’ve helped to provoke people to think about who we are and what we stand for, but they’ve just never caught on really.”

To us that reads that a stake was put in the ground but sweet little was done afterwards.

He went on to say that the new brand had a good chance of resonating with the community, unlike some of the previous attempts to brand the city.

Third time lucky after the previous lacklustre attempts by Invercargill City Council with branding who remembers these?

We scratched our heads and struggled to come up with some enduring brands of major cities around the world. Admittedly New York is The Big Apple, Auckland had “City of Sails” which sort of half worked but has been thrown overboard.

Wellington had “Absolutely Positively Wellington” which was a cracker , and worked. That’s because there was buy-in and oomph put in behind it.

But what’s the brand for London, what’s the brand for Sydney, for Melbourne or Los Angeles?

Closer to home, what’s the brand for Palmerston North, Blenheim, Napier?

Back to our brand, “Invercargill”, we’ve had the glittering launch but happens in time to come will be critical if this has any show of success.

In our view, success can not be judged not on a glittery launch with a fancy video, but in 6, 11, 24, 36, 48 months down the track.

Someone will have to take charge of this, steer it, drive it and drive it hard and take us on the journey. That person must be assured there will be continued input of resources and money(!!) so that this is not just another brand that sort of half works.

Like it or hate it this is the cities brand and new identity so let’s get on board and put INVERCARGILL on the map!

Mal and Mike.