Welcome to Dunwoody, the Walmart of cities?
The city, its Chamber of Commerce and its Convention Visitors Bureau recently spent $105,000 on a branding campaign that they hoped would mimic “I Love New York” for the city of 41,000 people.
Instead, it looks an awful lot like that of Walmart to a lot of eyes. On various city blogs and outside Dunwoody shops, people have been vicious in mocking the result as a dumb move by a city trying to showcase its smarts.
“This needs to go,” said Aicha Mahonte, a dental assistant who lives in the city. “Walmart might have loved it, but not me.”
Mahonte had a little help. She reviewed the city’s logo as she left the Walmart on Ashford Dunwoody Road. She and other shoppers could look at the city’s new branding effort while quickly scanning their shopping bag for the corporate logo.
The new logo is meant to convey the city as forward-thinking and sharp. A psychiatrist who looked after her shopping trip didn’t get that.
“I have no feelings when I look at it,” Kimberly Adams said. “It’s not something that jumps out at me.”
Side by side, the resemblance between the logos is clear. Both the city and the store highlight their names in blue. After that, Dunwoody has a green asterisk, while Walmart has an orange starburst.
Underneath, there are more similarities. Dunwoody proclaims, “Smart people — Smart city.” Walmart says, “Save money. Live better.”
“We came up with a more corporate look intentionally, to reflect our community and have it be interchangeable for all of us,” said Mayor Ken Wright. “I like it.”
So do officials at the chamber, whose tagline reads “Smart people — Smart business.” As do the ones at the CVB, who have the tagline “Smart people — Smart destination.”
The city and bureau each kicked in $50,000 on the joint project. The bureau paid its share using collections from the city’s hotel tax, which must be used on promoting tourism there. The city’s share came out of its $15.6 million budget.
The chamber paid just $5,000. But the group spent another $10,000 on merchandise such as shirts that it planned to sell to raise money.
Much of that gear is useless, though. It turns out “smart people — smart place,” the original slogan for the city, is already being used by the Plano Economic Development Board in Texas.
Representatives from the Plano board, which did not trademark the slogan, declined to comment on the mix-up.
For its part, the Dunwoody chamber expects to destroy items with the earlier logo, said Chairman Bill Grant.
“It’s like a mess hall: Everyone can find a problem at first,” Grant said. “But soon enough, everyone is eating.”
Or, at least folks at the marketing firms are eating. Few people pay attention when their cities launch branding efforts in the hopes of making themselves stand out. Duluth, for instance, paid $60,000 for a firm to come up with “Capture the Spirit of Good Living.”
More controversial was Atlanta’s multimillion-dollar effort, “Every Day Is Opening Day.” The awkward slogan was quickly dropped in favor of “City Lights, Southern Nights,” though neither tagline earned much praise. Brand Atlanta, the group behind the efforts, has since disbanded for lack of funding.
Dunwoody planned its funding for branding as far back as September 2009. The city, the chamber and the CVB hired Sky Design, an Atlanta marketing firm, to come up with a unified design earlier this year. The company is now referring all comments back to the city.
City Manager Warren Hutmacher acknowledged receiving several complaints. But he added that the look and feel of the new logo were just what the city wanted to convey itself as a smart, business-friendly place.
To that end, it may work — somewhat.
“It doesn’t seem like a city. It seems like a company,” said Meredith Satalin, a preschool teacher in Dunwoody. “I guess that’s what they want. It just seems a little plain.”
Others thought the city was focused too much on trying to look corporate. After all, Dunwoody might be one of the most educated and wealthy communities in metro Atlanta. The median household income there is $90,000, and 68 percent of its residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
But the city’s leafy neighborhoods are even better known as perfectly designed for families.
“Do you want to associate it with Walmart or E-Trade or some other corporation?” asked Harold Butler, a former banker now studying to become a math teacher. “This is where you want your kids to go to school, right? So you want it to be associated with that and be more family-friendly. Even I know that.”
Staff writer Ralph Ellis contributed to this article.
Memorable city slogans
Atlanta: "The City Too Busy to Hate" (1960s)
Chamblee: "A City on the Right Track"
Snellville: “Everybody’s Somebody in Snellville”
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