Slogans buried in disgrace
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A town's slogan can quickly become a burden if it is hastily thought up or sold by a consultant.
By Riikka Venäläinen
Who still remembers Lahti Business City?
If one were to ask the current leaders of the city - way, way too many people.
When the folks in charge in Lahti decided to create an attractive image for the city in the 1980s, they called an advertising agency to the rescue. Their proposal gained acceptance: after all, a market research company had estimated that Lahti was the most friendly city for corporations in Finland, and enterprises were founded at a rate of thousands per year.
Among outsiders, Lahti Business City drew quite a few grins immediately after the slogan was published: Lahti was not really a city, more of a town, and any business on a global scale was still only a dream.
The slogan became even more warped at the beginning of the 1990s, when Finland plunged into a recession; trade with the Soviet Union - which had been extremely important for Lahti - simply evaporated, and the city's unemployment rate shot up to 27 percent.
And Lahti is not the only municipality in Finland to suffer the same fate - there are dozens, if not hundreds of others out there. Without any great ado, the following slogans have also been abandoned: Joensuu - City full of life, Askola - The Monaco of Finland, and Raisio - Town of Today.
Also, Suomussalmi no longer calls itself an eco-municipality.
The history of slogans that have been buried in disgrace has not taught municipalities much. This is the claim of researcher Topi Antti Äikäs, who studies the image-building work carried out by municipalities at the Department of Geography of the University of Oulu. The principal claim of his recently published study on seeking an image is that only a few Finnish cities take image-building seriously at present.
"Municipalities have an unfortunate belief in the omnipotence of slogans. The most common reason for coming up with a slogan is that others have one too", Äikäs explains.
According to a survey commissioned by the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, over half of Finnish municipalities use a slogan in their marketing, and some ten percent are planning to introduce one. A slogan is most typically adopted by small communities: of municipalities with under 4,000 residents, 70 percent boast a slogan.
Accidentally hilarious, lame, and self-destructive municipal slogans often share two qualities: they were either thought up in a hurry, or they were bought from an outside consultant for a hefty price.
In "must find slogan" situations, it is not rare for the final version to be uttered by the husband of the town manager while having morning coffee, or for the mayor to fine-tune the winner while sitting behind the wheel heading for a meeting. There is nothing wrong with that as such, but working in haste and with a lack of consideration tends to backfire.
"Let's take Suolahti's More Life as an example. Sounds nice, but what does it mean? Are more babies than usual born there? Or do they hope that the birth rate will rise? Is the animal population more abundant than usual?" Äikäs wonders.
For some reason, Varpaisjärvi no longer advertises itself as the Finnish municipality with the most fir trees, Vimpeli has tried to get rid of its image as the municipality of pesäpallo (Finland's version of baseball) and a round church, and Ruukki no longer wishes to call itself the municipality surrounded by metropolitan centres. The Ruukki residents came up with their own, less pleasant version of the slogan, which claimed that they are miles from everything: the distance to Raahe is 32 kilometres, and Oulu is 65 kilometres away.
Research Director Seppo Rainisto from the Kymenlaakso Polytechnic, whose doctoral dissertation discussed the marketing of localities, says that in their haste, some towns have copied the contents of the slogans of others - if not the neighbours' slogans, then those from further away.
The most typical slogans repeat nature themes. Also, words such as "live", "work", and "business" have been used in various ways to the point of saturation.
For example, Lahti's neighbours were excited about the Business City concept: tiny Kausala, which nowadays forms a part of Iitti, sought a piece of Lahti's glory by calling itself the Kausala Business Village.
Although the researchers say that the image-building work of municipalities is still at an entirely amateur level, many towns get too worked up over the idea. This can be witnessed in how many "professionals", or consultants or advertising agencies, are hired to design slogans.
"There is no shortage of consultants in this field, and the true development of the region is rarely their primary goal", Äikäs says.
Those who ask are not the stupid ones, however, but those who pay.
According to the researchers, a municipality's image cannot be ordered from an outsider or built from outside. Too many municipalities have realised only afterwards that outside professionals can be good servants, but poor masters.
"For the content to be credible, it must come from the grass-roots level, from true local issues. And it cannot be created by just snapping your fingers", Rainisto says.
The greatest risk in using advertising professionals is that the promises of the slogan cannot perhaps be fulfilled. If someone makes the mistake of moving to a "dynamic and vibrant" municipality that in reality exudes a complete absence of progress, the disappointment is doubled.
"Municipalities could rely more on proper studies and hire skilled communications professionals or even a student preparing a Master's thesis to investigate the opinions that are held about the municipality, what its strengths are, and in what direction it should be developed. After that, the work must be done by the municipality itself", Äikäs maintains.
According to Äikäs, only a few cities, such as Oulu and Jyväskylä, have succeeded in linking image-building work to broader city development strategies. They have marketed what they actually have: Oulu a good environment for high-tech companies, and Jyväskylä a technology base with know-how in the humanities.
"Results cannot be achieved quickly, even though town leaders monitor population statistics in the same way that firms watch their quarterly profits", Äikäs remarks.
But why on earth should municipalities market themselves in the first place?
Could the scant resources not be better used in the health care sector, schools, and in day care centres?
Rainisto emphasises that pondering brands and image does not have any inherent value. As municipalities need to compete bitterly for new taxpayers, corporations, and investments in any case, they really must think about how to serve their residents and corporate sector better than before.
"Pondering marketing forces town leaders to think about what should really be done in the municipality's situation. It helps define strengths and weaknesses, and leads to the core of true development work. Image-building must be a part of the economic development of a municipality, not some separate hobby", Rainisto observes.
And according to Äikäs, it is not necessarily that expensive: "If image work becomes a part of a municipality's development policies, it costs no more than a civil servant would be paid anyway."
Although the researchers do not see working on an image as critical, it should be taken seriously. Mistakes are remembered for a long time: even if a town tries to bury a poor slogan quietly, it may be difficult to kill. A slogan can easily become a burden: Lahti Business City still lives a life of its own.
I wonder what the current Lahti marketing people think about the football team Business City Wankers*?
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.10.2004
*Oh yes, they do exist. The team took part, without accruing much credit to their home town (they lost all three matches and conceded 21 goals), in a Finnish FA tournament in Kuopio last year, and they have bravely registered for this year’s event, too.
RIIKKA VENÄLÄINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
riikka.venalainen@hs.fi
