City slogans range from stale to striking

Cities have been plugging themselves for ages as the world capitals of this and the homes of that.

Slogan bearing postings at city limit markers, on water towers and elsewhere gush how visitors are entering places their own hometowns couldn’t possibly compare to.

“Everything’s Better in Metter,” one such declaration reads in the Candler County town along Interstate 16. (Word has it that in the 1970s, someone scrawled a hand-lettered postscript on one sign along U.S. 80: “Naw it ain’t.”)

Metter is still employing its rhyming ditty and, like many municipalities, has taken its look-at-us campaign to the Internet, plastering the blurb atop its official Web site.

But not all city slogans are created equally. Most are barely created at all. They’re often about as memorable as mile markers, duller than pavement.

Some rather unsnappy local offerings, which could be slapped on signs in any town or, for that matter, any real estate development, include: “A Great Place to Grow a Family and a Great Place to Grow a Business” (Washington County); “Close to Everything ... Next to Perfect” (Eatonton); “A Nice Place to Visit, A Great Place to Live” (Taylor County); “Committed, Dynamic, Historic” (Butts County); “We’re Waiting for You” (Macon County); “Great Future ... Rich Past” (Montezuma).

The city of Perry refers to itself on its Web site as “A Southern Experience,” but Wilkinson County is where you can “Experience the ‘Everyday South.’’’ Travel a little farther south, to Vienna, for “The Ultimate Southern Experience.”

Eric Swartz, a San Francisco-based wordsmith, works with towns, companies and organizations to fashion slogans that fit.

“Branding destinations is just as legitimate as branding a company or a politician or anything else that wants to have an image and identity,” Swartz said recently by phone. “It’s more than just a calling card. I think it’s an invitation.”

He once compiled more than 1,400 city slogans and pared the list to 300. Swartz, who dubs himself a “verbal branding professional,” mailed the list to 200 or so marketing and advertising pros in 38 states to come up with a list of the best.

The only Georgia city among the tops? Atlanta, “The City Too Busy to Hate.”

Among the leading one-liners: “It’s Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See It From Here” (Bushnell, S.D.); “Where the Name Just Says It All” (Devine, Texas); “The Town Without a Frown” (Happy, Texas); “Rare. Well Done.” (Omaha, Neb.); “The Sweetest Place on Earth” (Hershey, Pa.).

Las Vegas’ hip, catchy “What Happens Here, Stays Here” is widely regarded as the gold standard of city slogans. Swartz, whose company is called Tagline Guru, said the Sin City creed works, in part, because, well, it’s soooo Vegas. And it is pitch perfect. Even if you’ve never been there, you are immediately afforded a sense of the place and its possibilities. Plus, it beats the old slogan, “Las Vegas Loves Visitors.”

Said Swartz: “If you have a towering budget, an endless supply of neon lights and hordes of tourists who are admitted adrenaline junkies, well, how can you lose?”

Most midstate city slogans are so run-of-the-mill that they sound as if they were coined by town-council subcommittees.

“Mediocre and nondescript, that’s the vast majority. ... Cliche, trite, not very creative or original,” Swartz said. “I don’t think they put a lot of time into it.”

He says real zingers connect on an emotional level, and they are good ambassadors. And it helps if they’re memorable.

In the South, Swartz has worked with Emory University and the Alabama Housing Finance Authority, the latter of which placed several Hurricane Katrina refugees in homes and wanted to rebrand itself. (Swartz came up with “Come on home, Alabama.”)

For cities, he said, the job of the slogan is to paint a picture.

“It creates value. It also communicates something that’s authentic and original and different about that location and suggests that your experience of it is going to be so unique that it can’t be duplicated anywhere else,” Swartz said.

Dublin and Laurens County boast one of the smartest, locally pertinent slogans in Middle Georgia. In three words, it speaks of the area’s St. Patrick’s Day tradition and its come-see-us prospects: “Green and Growing.”

“You’ve got to be known for something,” Swartz said. “Usually, the small towns have it a little easier because they’re known for one thing. But you can still be creative in trying to talk about that one thing in a way that’s going to be exciting and surprising and compelling for people who read it.”

In other words, something breezy, something maybe a bit more pleasing to the ear than, say, the line on Jones County’s Web site, which stakes Jones’ claim as the place “where nature and history live harmoniously with growth and development.”

Warner Robins, on its Web site, notes “the diversity of (its) community,” how it captures “both the small town and big city life” and how it has officially called itself “Georgia’s International City” since 1968. But declarations like it are more monikers than catchphrases.

So are Macon’s labels such as “Flag City” or the “Cherry Blossom Capital of the World.” Neither of those tags, however, appear anywhere on the home page of the city of Macon’s Web site.

Nor does the gently syrupy “Song & Soul of the South” expression adopted by the Macon-Bibb County Convention & Visitors Bureau a decade ago, which, despite its charms as perhaps the most adroitly crafted city slogan in the midstate, doesn’t necessarily spring to mind immediately, even for longtime locals. By the way, it replaced the imminently forgettable “Music, Mansions, Museums and More.”

Milledgeville’s alliterative “Capitols, Columns & Culture” is at least a slogan. As is Thomaston’s blurb, “A Real Peach of a Place,” which, cliche as it may sound, is, according to an Internet search, rarely used.

“You don’t want to push it to the point where you’re trying too hard and it looks contrived, but if it works and it just kind of rolls off the tongue and everybody gets it right away, then that’s good,” Swartz said.

“Look at the style and tone and personality of your town to figure out what your town is all about. Is it more traditional or is it more innovative? Are we colorful or are kind of understated? Are we Main Street or more Wall Street? Do we want to be playful or do we want to be serious? That all deals with your values, what kind of culture you’ve got. You have to take into consideration the residents, too.

“I mean, if they don’t like the slogan, if they say, ‘This isn’t us, this is somebody else,’ then you’re not doing your town any justice. You’re just gonna have a lot of disgruntled citizens who’ll never buy into the slogan.”

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.