Rebranding will not save you
Published by Nick Hall on 23 March 2009.We recently received an RFP from the London Downtown Business Association asking us to participate in the contest for rebranding downtown London. After much internal discussion over whether or not we should participate, we took the bait and sent off our proposal, largely because we're suckers for a challenge.
We didn't make the cut, which in hindsight is OK. We'd certainly welcome the work, but were more than a little worried over the client's expectations. Rebranding, after all, is more than just a new tagline plastered onto a banner mounted to a telephone pole. Indeed, banners (along with park benches, garbage receptacles and interlocking brick) change nothing but the scenery. And if you're like us, you likely agree that the scenery alone isn't what's wrong with the downtown, it's the experience. And it's the experience that defines the brand, not just the promise.
I wandered downtown for lunch one sunny day last week, and was asked for money 3 times within one block. All three people were as regular a downtown fixture as the interlocking brick, though not aging nearly as well. There was the friendly old guy with the beard and the cane - sporting fewer teeth, I noted - holding out a small cardboard plea, a tone-deaf individual positively raping a wind instrument, and last but not least a fellow who employed the weeping pustules on his inner calves to solicit his lunch money. All this theatre, performed with a backdrop of lousy signage, filth, traffic and the odd visual assault by Captain Ron, the serial painter who has since moved on to quietly deface some other unsuspecting suburb.
Rebranding, you say.