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CONFUSION: Gov’s Brand Guy Steps into Buzz Saw at State Tourism Meeting

Oct 10, 2013

Governor Hickenlooper’s administration raised a lot of eyebrows this summer when after burning through nearly $1 million, Aaron Kennedy, the Noodles & Co. founder turned governor’s marketing guru, unveiled a completely blah logo.  At the time of the widely-panned unveiling, Kennedy paid a lot of lip service to the massive collaboration that went into the design and selection of the new logo.  In fact, his own website called this effort “the most inclusive, collaborative, and ambitious branding effort ever taken on by a state.”

Except that based on what Kennedy stepped into during a meeting on Wednesday with some of the top tourism experts in the state, it is obvious that his collaboration was lacking.  Apparently, there is already a marketing campaign that the state has been using, complete with the (gasp) C-logo from the state flag, that works for regional tourism executives in the state called “Come to Life”.  In fact, they were under the impression that Kennedy’s new logo was somehow going to crowd out the “Come to Life” marketing campaign.

In what was described as a “contentious” session until these top state tourism executives had assurance that “Come to Life” would not be diminished by the new marketing campaign, Kennedy was forced to defend his plan and lay out his vision for attendees of the Colorado Association of Destination Marketing members.  This rocky start to the Governor’s Tourism Conference in Telluride was simply brushed off as a “miscommunication.”

But not so fast.  If Kennedy was creating an overarching brand identification program, how could senior executives in the tourism industry, the second largest industry in the state, be left in the dark? Is this what Hickenlooper’s marketing guru means by the “the most inclusive, collaborative, and ambitious branding effort ever taken on by a state”?

And, if we already have what the state claims is a very successful print and marketing campaign in the form of “Come to Life”, wouldn’t it have been much more efficient to simply leverage some of the resources from that campaign to create the new logo, which we still assert is a solution looking for a problem?

This is simply another data point that demonstrates the Hickenlooper administration’s poor stewardship of our resources.  His request for another $1 billion per year to do who knows what with is a dangerous proposition.

6 Comments

  1. Leigh Carter
    Leigh Carter on October 29, 2013 at 12:49 am

    If people outside of Colorado do not recognize the letter 'C' from our state flag, the why has the Dept. of Tourism's 'Colorado: Come to Life' campaign been so successful when it features the C? Isn't that campaign specifically for out-of-state tourists? Why won't they change it if Brand Colorado's extensive research has shown it is fundamentally flawed? Because it's not true.

    Shouldn't the "By Colorado" program mainly be focused on people in-state? I mean, would you be more inclined to buy a product that said "By Arizona?" No, you wouldn't because it is not your state.

    HIckenlooper wants to run for President in 2016 and wants to stimulate our economy while distancing himself from the marijuana industry (which is not allowed to carry the logo, but can use the state flag since that cannot be trademarked). Because nobody came up with anything good, the program is backfiring because Colorado residents can't understand why we are not using the C in the first place.

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  2. Leigh Carter
    Leigh Carter on October 28, 2013 at 10:57 pm

    They manipulated the research to justify eliminating use of the flag as part of the logo. This, because Governor Hickenlooper may run for President and wants to distance himself from the marijuana industry. The flag is public property and cannot be trademarked. The green triangle can and is trademarked, and will not be available to this "federally-illegal" industry. They don't really care that people from Colorado can't stand the new logo because the real audience is people outside of Colorado that they want to move here and stimulate the economy. This could have had tremendous value in terms of a buy-local campaign. Shouldn't that have been the point? Now it has seriously upset residents and the Denver Post who feel excluding the flag ignores our heritage. The Governor (a non-native) has made a bad move with this decision. Now the whole thing will probably die instead of be corrected as that will only highlight how much money he has wasted under false pretenses. That's the real story.

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  3. Chris Wiggins
    Chris Wiggins on October 11, 2013 at 3:59 am

    Come to Colorado, it's almost as bad as Chicago.

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  4. Alan Stump
    Alan Stump on October 10, 2013 at 7:15 pm

    Nearly as transparent and inclusive as the Obama administration…

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  5. Jeff Schottler
    Jeff Schottler on October 10, 2013 at 6:26 pm

    I find Noodles uninspiring so why am I not surprised he can't come up with an inspiring logo?

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  6. Tim Ziegler
    Tim Ziegler on October 10, 2013 at 4:13 pm

    "Is this what Hickenlooper’s marketing guru means by the “the most inclusive, collaborative, and ambitious branding effort ever taken on by a state”?" Yup. That's what they mean.

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