Ryan Spain and the Heartland Partnership are cooking up a new idea:
The idea behind the project is to brand the Peoria region with a tag line and, perhaps, another logo.
It would be a comprehensive approach to selling the region to tourism groups and those who could come to Peoria on business, Spain said.
“I would argue we don’t have anything now,” he said. “The timing and the urgency for creating a brand for our region … if we don’t have one, we run the risk of someone doing it for us. It may or may not be what we want to be known for.”
You gotta love marketing people. Urgency? Risk? Peoria County was established in 1825; Tazewell County followed in 1827, and Woodford in 1841. From that time to the present we’ve never had a regional brand. But now, suddenly it’s urgent to brand the region, and we’re at risk if we don’t!
This kind of exaggeration reminds me of someone… a salesman I heard once. Ah yes, I can just hear Mr. Spain explaining this dire situation to the town leaders now:
“Either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the absence of regional branding in your community. Well, ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City, with a capital T that rhymes with B that stands for Brand!
“Leaders of River City! Heed the warning before it’s too late! Watch for the tell-tale signs of having no regional brand! When you talk to out-of-town clients and say you’re from Peoria, do they ask ‘Where’s that’? Do the bloggers in your community make their own sarcastic logos of the region? Does Rocco Landesman not know that there is a Civic Center in your town?
“If so, ya got trouble, my friends. Yes, ya got lots and lots of trouble — with a capital T that rhymes with B that stands for Brand!”
Perhaps he can institute The Think System, where he gets everyone to just think that “it’s better here” in Peoria and they start to believe it. Oh wait, someone’s already tried that one…..
Reminds me of this recent quote from Leonard Pitts ….
“Facts are not red and facts are not blue. Facts are facts,” the 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner told a packed auditorium at Bradley University on Monday night. “You cannot just ignore them and call yourself intellectually honest.”
You cannot spend your way to prosperity, incure more debt for our children and grandchildren, neglect basic services …. and expect our community to turn itself around. In my opinion, our leaders continue to select projects which might yet usually do not pay for themselves for people to come and ‘visit’ the Peoria area. Taxpayers need projects to be approved that will improve our area so that people are interested in ‘living’ in Peoria. Just seems like more window dressing and the challenges keep growing and spreading across the city.
I recently learned that if a general obligation bond is sold which has a projected dedicated revenue stream, then the indebtedness of that bond is not counted against the municipality’s general obligation bond indebtedness. I was left shaking my head in disbelief. In other words, if you have a mortgage and you have a job, your mortgage is not counted as part of your general indebtedness because you have a dedicated revenue stream (your job) to pay your mortage. Unless of course you lose your job and then you cannot pay your mortgage. The general obligation bonds for the hotel are ‘backed’ by the projected revenue from the hotel so these ‘hotel’ general obligation bonds are not counted as part of the city’s general obligation debt. If I have somehow misunderstood this concept of municipality bond indebtedness, please provide the documentation which corrects this understanding.
Thinking about general obligation bonds at 4:00 in the morning Mrs. Alms? Really? 🙂
Are the kids buckling their knickerbockers BELOW the knee? That’s trouble, my friend.
Spain is mediocre and mundane in his efforts. He really hasn’t any creativity as he has demonstrated in the past as well as with this proposal.
I don’t know if I want Spain defining this area. The new city logo is so much lamer than the old Indian head logo. At least the old logo was unique and displayed the area’s ancient heritage. The new logo is generic and without character. The new city logo looks like a recycling symbol you would find on a roll of toilet paper.
But god, someone thwart these idiots before we are branded as the “The Center of the Universe in Peoria County” or “The Des Moines of Central Illinois”.
I love Peoria. I love living here. I always have. Can’t stand the people who are trying to redefine it. I think they are the ones who are the most critical and negative on this area. Branding isn’t going to do whatever Spain hopes to accomplish. Lobby and get a highway or a rail running through this town. Maybe that’ll achieve what they want. I’m happy with Peoria being known as the town with Cat, Big Al’s and Bradley.
It’s a museum, my friend, don’t ya see? I can solve all the problems friend with a wave my hand this very hand. Or maybe it’s a new a hotel. Or a gambling casino. A new wing on the zoo… 6-8 lanes of medium speed traffic through the heart of the city… 12 more city blocks eaten by the local hospitals… a bicycle trail… a SOOPER Walmart…
just vote for me, pass this bond issue, increase the levy, raise the debt ceiling and awaaaaaaay we go!
Emerge: My son is sick and so when I finished helping him …. I was awake and so it goes….
Branding …. if we correct the challenges … we will have a great product to sell.
You can put as much lipstick on it as money will buy but until we stop liberally handing out free food, housing and welfare checks and expect everyone but the parents to raise their own kids Peoria will continue its decline and there will be no stopping it. You guys are all wasting your breath.
I hope that your son gets better soon.
“we stop liberally handing out free food, housing and welfare checks ”
By gum, there is no reason why anyone should feed the hungry, clothe the naked or find a home for the homeless… they should just die and decrease the surplus population.
But then, where would you find your minimum wage employees? And who could you point to as the cause for the bank failures and economic corruption in the financial industry?
Key word is “liberally” charlie.
How about randomly drug testing anyone who recieves public aid and if they test positive take their kids and stop the public assistance. Is that too harsh?
WOW… that sounded decidedly Billy Dennis like… but I totally agree with it. I do graphic design and ya know what, we don’t need a Tri-County Logo!! Yay, I’m happy to see another $25,000 of our tax dollars wasted.
How about random drug testing for anyone who runs a corporation?
They receive a hellofalot more benefits from the government than any food stamp or Medicaid recipient.
Is that too harsh?
No, you’d rather punish the children for “sins” of the parents… guaranteeing that it becomes a generational thing, as it has been for about 500 years.
Thanks Charlie for spewing the Malthusian line
“: of or relating to Malthus or to his theory that population tends to increase at a faster rate than its means of subsistence and that unless it is checked by moral restraint or disaster (as disease, famine, or war) widespread poverty and degradation inevitably result”
Hardly Thomas Malthus. Karl Marx represents those sentiments better.
Malthus postulated that population growth tends towards over population (a basic premise of Darwin’s theories of Natural Selection)and that limited resources will cause the need for wars, and epidemics and famines.
Karl Marx, on the other hand, suggested that poverty is a result of the intentional inequalities inherent to society and that the promulgation of that inequality is to the benefit of the Capitalists.
I don’t think anyone should HAVE to be on welfare in a perfect society. Obviously we don’t live in a perfect society. That Utopia doesn’t exist anywhere (except in maybe a family or small community).
Unfortunately, in our society, we have condemned an entire category of people to this way of life with little opportunity for anything other than the HOPE of escape. That category, by the way is the urban poor; regardless of race, ethnicity and/or personal qualities.
Where I do agree with Marx is that our economic system depends upon uneducated, unskilled workers to sell their labor for wages that are below subsistence standards. In other words, The Capitalists get rich off of exploiting the survival needs of the poor.
(Interestingly enough, I heard a critic of the Health Care Plan saying that Democrats were jeopardizing their “careers” by supporting the bill against the will of the people. Careers? Career politicians? Isn’t that something that is contrary to the basic, foundational constructs of this country?)
Public aid is what causes generational poverty, charlie – it’s a very cruel and heartless public policy.
Back on topic, regional branding isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Of course, like most things political in this area, I believe that our elected officials have their hearts in the right place but the plans end up being poorly executed and insanely overbudget (coughMuseumMarriottcough).
Locally sometimes it seems like we have an us vs. them mentality against those idiots on the other side of the river (regardless of what side of the river you’re making that argument about). If we want to make this area more economically viable, we need to work harder to think regionally and not just about who lives in what county.
A good case study for this would be the Quad Cities, which, despite being split between two different states, still manages to build a regional awareness and unity while still maintaining their individual characteristics.
“regional branding isn’t necessarily a bad idea” if what? You want to create a tourist attraction?
You want to create a market for our proprietary goods? What would they be?
Why does anyone need to know anything about Peoria that can be communicated in logo or slogan?
Lorrie’s post was most interesting. She is also correct. Peoria [as it is] has enough to build on…develop. The problem is the people who are given [or possess] the power to do so are _______________ [fill in the blank].
Let CAT build their Visitor’s Center, Bradley is expanding – enrollment is up, and Big Al’s….. is C.J.’s favorite hangout. What’s not to love? Stop trying to make Peoria something it is not… like a major tourist destination, etc.
Peoria REGIONAL Museum? Isn’t THAT name even a little misleading [unless the ‘REGION’ in mention is represented by the city elites of Peoria]?
I’m sure regular readers know what a kidder New Voice is, but just for the record, I have never been nor will I ever go to Big Al’s.
And I thought the U. S. Census Bureau had already come up with regional branding called MSA’s.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/metroareas/metroarea.html
I retract my earlier statement. As far as I know…C.J. has never visited Big Al’s. You might ask me how I know this….maybe you all think I frequent the place!
Not so.
Precinct Committeeman told me HE has NEVER seen C.J. there…not once…never….really…..
Before anyone gets angry with me, let it be known that Precinct has never been to Big Al’s either. He just happens to pass by the place on the way to his weekly “Lets Grow A Better Museum” pep rally/bake sale.
Thank you.
NV: Liar Liar pants on fire! I have it on good sources that the last pep rally/bake sale was held over a year ago and I did not attend that event.
I have never seen Chris Summers anywhere except at an occasional Blogger Bash.
Point of information: the Tazewell County residents association is holding a get together to discuss how to place on the November ballot a public question that says “We never wanted a museum, nor will we in the future look for museum opportunities, we just want to be left alone ( take in as much gambling revenue as possible) and seek an opportunity to sell the Dragon Dome to a willing patsy”
@charlie: Regional branding is a good idea across the board. It encourages more businesses to locate in our area and increases awareness of the Peoria area regionally. There are people from the Chicago area who have absolutely no idea where Peoria is, other than “downstate”. While regional branding isn’t going to be the magic bullet that turns everything around, it’s a good start. Whether that’s “putting your best foot forward” or “putting lipstick on a pig” is a matter of semantics, but at least they’re doing SOMETHING proactive to try to encourage new growth down here.
While I don’t agree with the methods that local governments are using (Museum, Mariott, EP Downtown2010, etc.) and that mistakes have already been made, it strikes me that there are some commenters out there who apparently think that the Peoria area as a whole is just a giant money pit that we should just cut our losses on and turn tail.
According to Precinct;
“Tazewell County residents association is holding a get together to discuss how to place on the November ballot a public question that says “We never wanted a museum, nor will we in the future look for museum opportunities, we just want to be left alone ( take in as much gambling revenue as possible) and SEEK AN OPPORTUNITY TO SELL THE DRAGON DOME TO A WILLING PATSY…”
BREAKING NEWS: The Tazewell County Residents Assoc. has just found its “willing patsy…”, the Peoria City Council / Peoria County Board! Now…if they can only get ANOTHER sales tax referendum on the ticket………
Enjoy trading barbs with you….
@Sterling: “There are people from the Chicago area who have absolutely no idea where Peoria is”
And a logo or ad campaign is gonna bring them down here? I completely agree… if you give them free land, low interest start up loans, tax exemptions and extortion exemptions for City Hall and the County Board.
I hope somebody runs against my board member (Tom Oneill) and soundly thrashes him in November.
Gee, I wonder where T. Bibo got the idea for today’s PJStar article on Firefly (we’ve got trouble!). Very clever, indeed.