Branding fundamentals

The Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau believes that Chapel Hill will do better in the national tourism market if we can be packaged and branded in a way that's attractive, authentic, and easily recognizable. This past Wednesday they came to the Council to try out their proposed new motto:

"The feeling never leaves you."

What? some of us responded. Don't we have a good slogan already? What's wrong with "The southern part of heaven?"

Glad you asked, said Laurie Paolicelli, the Bureau's director. We tried that one on, but our research suggested it was not a good match for how we see ourselves.

So that's interesting. But aside from the religious confusion, my complaint was that this slogan touches so much on "intangibles" that it doesn't touch the ground at any point.

Laurie said they'd consider our comments.

UPDATE, via my mother, who comments below about another city's interesting identity discussion. There's whole blog on branding.