Brand Avenue

A Place of Mind

As a native of one college town and a resident of another, I've always felt that the strategic advantages of living in such a city are hard to beat. While not all college towns capitalize on themselves as well as they could, many could benefit by taking a page from the marketing playbook of the University of British Columbia (UBC).

 

Using the University's current marketing tagline, an ad made last year (above) presents the seductive case that where is the most important of the "Five Ws," echoing Richard Florida's argument about the world's "spikiness"--that is, that talent and capital necessary to power the knowledge economy are increasingly concentrated in a handful of global megaregions. This resonates for anyone who's interested in the power of place or regional identity.

In the context of the ad, UBC is part of a spike. The institution is a world-class research university in one of the world's favorite cities, drawing from standalone intellectual, geographical, and cultural advantages. Even the buildings and open spaces of the University appear to possess the magic qualities that inspire the pursuit of knowledge, the flourishing of culture, and the powering of the economy. Vancouver and the university's namesake province are cast as extensions of the University's dynamism. (And it doesn't hurt that they are beautiful, safe, cosmopolitan, forward-looking, and prosperous.)

Cities as Text

From Axis Maps (via), a new series of city maps that merge type with geography.

The company has produced color and black and white maps of Boston and Chicago thus far:

"These unique maps of Chicago and Boston accurately depict the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing but type. Only by manually weaving together thousands upon thousands of carefully placed words does the full picture of the city emerge."

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XO in TO

Torontoist presents a contest to provide its namesake city with a new slogan:

How do you sum a city up in a phrase? Harder still, how do you sell it in one?

Many, hoping to lure tourists here, have tried. There was that ad with the woman holding her breasts and asking her partner, "Do you think I need a breast reduction?" There was "Toronto: As Gay as it Gets." Years before those, there was Tony Bennett urging Toronto to "discover the feeling," which came just after "Toronto...Affectionately Yours" and just before "Couldn't you use a little Toronto?"...

Longtime readers of this site may know that Toronto's search for identity has a long historical arc. It's also one of my favorite cities, in part because of this. So it stands to reason that a city branding campaign focusing on Toronto would catch my attention. I love this kind of thing.

A few of the entries:

 

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To Market, To Market

A highly entertaining three-part video from the 1940s promotes outdoor advertising as a crucial way of harnessing the unparalleled "consumer power" of the American public.

The narrator explains how the study of everyday movement of people through the cityscape (in the videos' case, greater Chicago) can isolate valuable opportunities to better "inform" the public through advertising. The "scientific planning" of outdoor advertising optimizes sales potential through the study of various traffic flows; the secret is that urban form and economic engine are one.

Fast-forwarding 70 years, the footage of yesteryear Chicago finds its present-day echo in the unsettling world of the short film Logorama. Logorama takes the concept of a city optimized for advertising and runs with it, envisioning the resulting brandscape of the city (specifically, Los Angeles) at its most perverse.

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Magic Ingredients

A great little article from last April's issue of This Magazine lists 16 critical elements necessary for the creation of a sustainable neighborhood (above). Notably absent: cars.

The list grows out of the work of J.H. Crawford, author of Carfree Cities and the Carfree Design Manual, urban planner, and head of carfree.com, the "web's largest database of car-free information."

In his work, Crawford argues for a move toward "medieval forms" of city-building, understandably a challenge given the car-centric development patterns of virtually all North American cities.

“Medieval urban forms are superior to everything that came before or has come since,” writes Crawford in the introduction to [the Carfree Design Manual]. “Once the needs of automobiles can be neglected, a remarkable degree of design freedom arises.”

Zooming out from the issue of cars as a determinant of urban form, one can't help but read the elements illustrated in the diagram as a basic checklist for desirability, informed by sustainability and convenience.

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