Thoughts on NY's ❤ from a recent transplant
I’m a newly minted New Yorker. 36 days in, to be precise. Still enough of a tourist to be intoxicated by this city has to offer. Almost enough of a local to begin grasping the realities of living in it.
And it’s real, let me tell you. In my short tenure I’ve encountered norovirus, toxic black mold, and ‘mouse sweat’ (don’t ask). Reckless taxi drivers, apocalyptic Home Depot parking lots, and two-hour IKEA waits. Attempted identity theft, subway rage, and $9 cartons of milk – the latter of which induced genuine, white-knuckle fear.
Despite this all, my jaw still dropped when news broke recently that the city had up and changed Milton Glaser’s famous logo for a new campaign, ‘We ❤️ NYC’. And that, barely a week later, New York City’s official destination marketing arm, NYC & Company, rebranded as New York City Tourism + Conventions.
One city. Two identities. Multiple opinions. And, like most people living at the intersection of branding and the five boroughs, I have thoughts.
Intended to inspire optimism and civic action in New Yorkers, the ‘We ❤️ NYC’ campaign seems to have instead invited the very pessimism and disillusion it was meant to combat. Non-meme related responses primarily focused on the sacrilege of touching a much beloved cultural icon, a design so flawless it’s joined the mythic ranks of the Coca-Cola bottle and Nike Swoosh.
In contrast, New York City Tourism + Conventions’ rebrand received much less attention, and with it less derision, but it’s role in reviving the world’s greatest city post-pandemic is just as vital a discussion point as the former. That’s because the conversation is so much bigger than debates about fonts and back-of-napkin sketches, as valid as they are. It’s also about the fundamental purpose of place branding – to drive growth, standout, and fandom – and why it’s so difficult to get right.
Growth
The biggest challenge of place branding is that it’s both commerce and culture. Or, more specifically, the commercialization of culture. Its ultimate job is to drive economic growth for a location through commercial investment, business development, or tourism, all while galvanizing (or at least not alienating) its current residents. It therefore needs to drive both desire and pride; no easy task.
That’s exactly why the original ‘I ❤️ NY’ resonated. Developed in the 1970s for the New York State Department of Commerce, ‘I ❤️ NY’ was an attempt to boost morale and reputation in the midst of a failing economy. A love letter to an unlovable city, the campaign brilliantly acted as both a personal declaration and a shared mindset. A celebration of both New York's creativity and America’s rugged individualism. A means of binding an island full of strangers together through a mutual affinity of place and possibility, gritty as it was.
‘We ❤️ NYC's' mistake, therefore, is largely one of strategy. Like the New York of half-a-century ago, life in the city today is challenging, as I can attest. But the context has shifted. People are weary from the pandemic. Crime, while not at the peak seen in the 90s, is rising. The cost of living is sky high. These are societal issues that require more than a copy + paste campaign encouraging locals to volunteer. They require institutional action.
New York City Tourism + Conventions’ rebrand fares somewhat better. Its move on from the name ‘NYC & Company’ is both a strategic and semiotic shift towards a more human experience of the city. One that brings clarity to its purpose. And, somewhat strangely, it feels more honest than ‘We ❤️ NYC’, thanks to the ‘does what it says on the tin’ naming.
A great example of place branding that drives both pride and desire is Palau. A small archipelago in the Pacific, tourism is vital for Palau’s economy. But it also impacts the flora, fauna, and culture of the island. To drive sustainable economic growth, the Palau Legacy Project launched Ol’au Palau, a campaign and app awarding tourists that respect the islands’ culture and environment. Travelers that behave respectfully and responsibly earn points they can use to unlock experiences that were previously only accessible to Palauans, like meeting local elders, swimming in hidden caves, and visiting villages for lunch with the community. Proof tourism and the local community can be brought together for mutual benefit.
Standout
One of the most difficult aspects of place branding is the challenge of encapsulating a location, its people and its promise in an identity, a tagline, or a jingle. Ideally, one that drives standout while remaining authentic, accessible and, most of all, inspiring for both residents and visitors alike. Success requires finding the right balance of timeless and timely design. And this means more than reimagining an existing identity in the style of current aesthetic trends.
Take ‘I ❤️ NY More Than Ever’, a poster almost as iconic as the original logo. In response to the September 11 attacks, Glaser modified his original design to include a black bruise symbolizing the World Trade Center and added the words ‘more than ever’ below in the same American Typewriter font. It worked because it built upon ‘I ❤️ NY’s’ distinctive assets, re-articulating their meaning for a new context. It channelled the pride and perseverance implicit in the former to communicate a collective feeling of hope and resilience for a heartbroken city.
‘We ❤️ NYC’s’ reinterpretation erases almost all reference to the original campaign logo. The cheerful emojis and social media stickers may capture the zeitgeist of today’s preferred medium, but it abandons New York’s timeless appeal and belies the seriousness of the challenges the city faces.
While the identity for New York City Tourism + Conventions may never be emblazoned on mugs, totes, and hats, it does capture timeless aspects of the city. The irregular shapes and intersections of the wordmark play homage to the city's street grid as well as famous designers like Saul Bass. And the color palette is immediately recognizable: subway green, taxi yellow, lox pink, and coffee cup blue. What it loses, however, is the flexibility of the old system, and with it, the diversity of New York's people it once showcased.
Done well, design can play a significant role in inspiring place-based change. Take the 'Amsterdame' campaign, launched last month on International Women’s Day to draw attention to increasing gender gap in the Netherlands. The campaign cleverly used Saint Andrew’s crosses as a base for the female symbol to represent Amsterdam’s women seizing control of the city, and intensified the city council's colors – red, white and blue – for the palette. In keeping with the theme, stickers were placed over signs of the city’s most famous streets, shifting their names from the masculine form to the feminine. Building on the iconic symbols of the city gave them new meaning and explicitly linked them to the action campaigners demanded.
Fandom
The final challenge of place branding is inspiring fandom for a locale, in both residents and the wider world. Achieved through a combination of identity and community, fandom fosters feelings of affinity and appreciation for a place. And while many forms grow organically, there are tricks to encouraging it. Namely shared language, icons, myths, and rituals.
The original ‘I ❤️ NY’ campaign was launched in combination advertisements and with Steve Karem's ‘I Love New York’, a theme song so ubiquitous it became as much a part of New York culture in the 70s as hot dogs and Central Park. It acted as the city's official anthem, providing a sense of pride and belonging for all those who felt they had right to sing along.
This feeling of ownership is lost in ‘We ❤️ NYC’. No doubt an attempt at inclusivity, the shift from ‘I’ to 'we' inadvertently erases the individual experience and sense of agency. Without it, messages like ‘We ❤️ sliding down to the end seat’, come off as directive, mandates from an authoritative 'we' rather than the unspoken rituals of a collective ‘we’.
In contrast, New York City Tourism + Conventions may have chosen to focus on the city itself in its new identity, but it still makes residents central to the brand experience. A new social campaign, launching in May, will harness the ‘opinion power’ 8.5 million New Yorkers, who'll be invited to share . Asking residents to share what they love about where they live gives them a role, and a voice.
While we’re on the topic of voices, one of the best examples of a community involvement in place branding was 'The Swedish Number'. To celebrate the country’s 250-year anniversary of abolishing censorship, the Swedish tourism authority invited anyone, anywhere to phone a random Swedish person and have a conversation about anything. Nearly 200,000 calls were placed, and people around the world connected with Swedes to discuss topics like love, hiking, feminism, snow, gay rights, parental leave, suicide rates, the Nobel Prize, technology, fashion, and more. The initiative was a brilliant example of using individual experiences and perspectives to build broader awareness and appreciation for a locale.
As for my own fandom, the jury’s still out. I can’t lie, I’m not sure ‘I ❤️ NY’ yet. But that hasn’t stopped me from buying the t-shirt and wearing it around my dark, damp, wildly overpriced little apartment in the hopes that, one day, I too will feel proud to be a New Yorker.
