Fresh Loaf

Reporters get suspicious when we’re denied access to meetings where extremely powerful and wealthy people get together with elected officials to discuss issues of great public importance.

That’s what will happen this Monday morning when the Atlanta Committee for Progress (PDF) and Mayor Shirley Franklin go behind closed doors to talk about … well, who knows what. The APC is composed of the city’s pre-eminent CEOs – we’re talking the top dogs here, no VPs or community-relations folks allowed.

The group’s chairman is Neville Isdell of Coke – see what we mean? – and other members include Richard Anderson of Delta, Mike Garrett of Georgia Power, developer Herman Russell, Tom Bell of Cousins, James Kennedy of Cox, Phil Kent of Turner, and the list goes on and on.

The APC was created in 2003 as the lynchpin of Franklin’s efforts to win the business community’s support for City Hall initiatives after eight disastrous years in which Bill Campbell had bitten the hands of and otherwise alienated the city’s corporate honchos.

We’re not criticizing the formation of such a group – it’s a great achievement from both a civic and a political viewpoint. But we would like to know what these ridiculously influential people talk about with our mayor.

Are they advising her on what the Beltline should look like? Are they cutting secret land deals? Are they asking her to fix their kids’ parking tickets? There’s no way to know.

John Ahmann, a consultant to the mayor who acts as executive director of the group, says Monday’s agenda has Franklin briefing the Star Chamber about the Beltline, the city budget, this fall’s statewide TAD referendum and the city’s upcoming legislative wish list.

Sounds harmless enough. But remember: These are the guys who talked the mayor into launching Brand Atlanta.

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As we’d reported in early August and the AJC repeated Sunday, City Hall has launched something of a crackdown on downtown panhandling. Last month, the city fired the first shot across the bow when police arrested almost 50 aggressive beggars, the first serious enforcement of the downtown “no panhandling zone” in three years.

And this Wednesday, Mayor Shirley Franklin will officially unveil the city’s new anti-panhandling strategy, of which increased police enforcement is only one aspect. Basically, the city – with support from Central Atlanta Progress, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau and the downtown business community – will launch a marketing campaign aimed at persuading people not to give money to beggars, but rather to social-service agencies that work with the homeless.

The ultimate goal, says Debi Starnes, a former Councilwoman and Franklin’s adviser on homeless issues, is to nudge those who are actually homeless into seeking treatment and help, while discouraging professional panhandlers.

If you’re interested, the mayor’s announcement will be in the City Hall atrium from 10:30-11:30 a.m. Let’s hope this marketing campaign works better than Brand Atlanta.

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We’ve all been getting a kick this morning out of the AJC’s report about Brand Atlanta (”Every Day is an Opening Day!”) running out of funding. There are so many jokes to what has become a kind of running punchline source, we don’t know where to start. One poster on ArtNews recommended the alternate motto “Everyday is Closing Day,” while another offered “Let the Power Fall.” My own suggestion: “Excuse Our Mess While We Regress.”

What’s yours?

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Posters announcing “Atlanta is so gay” are reportedly on display throughout London’s subway system — their appearance timed to coincide with the city’s Pride festivities last week.

The posters are the work of Amro Worldwide, a travel agency specializing in gay-friendly tourism.

The agency has similar posters touting the gay-friendliness of Boston, New Orleans, D.C., Las Vegas and South Carolina.

MSNBC reports a South Carolina state employee quit after South Carolina Republican State Senator David Thomas complained the ads, funded in part by state tourism funds, offended the straightness of many South Carolinians:

“South Carolinians will be irate when they learn their hard earned tax dollars are being spent to advertise our state as ‘so gay,’” Thomas said in a statement.

I’m still trying to figure out if any local taxpayer dollars went to fund the Atlanta ads.

I hope my tax dollars helped pay for this.

The graphic design is a bit PowerPointy, but “Atlanta is so gay” is much better than “City Lights, Southern Nights,” the awful tourism slogan that cost city taxpayers $4 million for last year.

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A news-style parody of Brand Atlanta’s municipal marketing campaign was posted on the ARTNEWS listserv on Saturday. With the author’s permission, I’ve posted it below.

I like the line about the aquarium and the description of CL writers as “self important douche bags” — which probably just makes me seem like even more of a self-important douche bag. Oh well.

By Eggtooth:

They asked Don Henley. They asked Isaac Hayes. And then Burt Bacharach.

But it was Dolly Parton that answered the call.

This past Thursday, Dolly Parton showed up to Mayor Franklin’s office unannounced, toting a didgeredoo and quote,” some German guy” with a Moog synthesizer. After handing the mayor a bundle of daffodils, she started into her song.

It was a gift to the city of Atlanta. (more…)

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Instead, how about “The City Too Busy to Cut a Deadweight Marketing Initiative from its Budget”?

— Rusty the Radical Georgia Moderate on “City lights, Southern nights,” the slogan reportedly replacing “Every day is an opening day” as Atlanta’s new municipal marketing theme

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Atlanta abandons slogan, resurrects Glen Campbell’s career

— When ATLMalcontent heard the slogan, he thought of a Glen Campbell song. When I heard it, I thought of a porn store.

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The Dumbest Thing Ever Said

— memberg at Peach Pundit on Brand Atlanta Executive Director Melinda Ennis-Roughton’s description of Atlanta as “New York with Southern manners and charm”

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New York with Southern manners and charm? I grew up here. This is not New York, Southern manners are getting rarer and rarer and all the charm is being bulldozed and replaced by McMansions. Which, of course, have lawns we can’t water.

— Danny G at AdPulp on the Atlanta/New York comparison.

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This is not a joke.

Brand Atlanta, the municipal marketers who spent millions embarrassing the city with that idiotic “Every day is an opening day” marketing campaign, have unveiled a replacement.

Shockingly, they’ve managed to come up with something even worse:

“City lights, Southern nights”

Atlanta has electricity.

Atlanta has nighttime.

Come visit us.

Please.

We’re begging you.

Other than cleverly combining the names of a leftist bookstore and a porn shop, what does Brand Atlanta suppose this slogan will help accomplish?

From the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

The slogan will support a marketing campaign geared to find yuppies and boomers online, on cable networks and in magazines, or in other words, where they are most likely to be influenced to make buying (and travel) decisions, said Melinda Ennis-Roughton, executive director of Brand Atlanta.

That sound you don’t hear in the background is the sound of yuppies and boomers not flocking to Atlanta.

Why, oh, why does Brand Atlanta suck so badly?

The Atlanta Business Chronicle story offers a clue:

The new creative approach was created by Lattimer Moffitt Communications, one of the original ad agencies that worked on the Brand Atlanta campaign.

To help it come up with, among other things, an online marketing campaign, Brand Atlanta selected a firm, Lattimer Moffitt Communications, that doesn’t even have a website. They/it/he/she have apparently never had a website.

That’s good marketing.

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As my cubicular neighbor Scott Henry blogged on Friday, the city will soon scrap its failed “Every Day Is an Opening Day” and “Opportunity Optimism Openness” marketing campaign.

Writing on the My ‘Lanta blog in October 2005, Phil O’Steen and I predicted this failure.

But instead of just being nabobs of negativism, we came up with what we believe are several alternative slogans.

More of our helpful suggestions can be found at My ‘Lanta.

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If you call Atlanta City Hall and get put on hold, a recording of Andy Young will remind you over and over that “Every Day Is an Opening Day” until you want to scream, slam down the phone and move to Bainbridge, Ga.

Well, your misery is about to end. The Brand Atlanta campaign has finally realized that the city’s two-year-old motto isn’t working, according to a front-page story in today’s Atlanta Bidness Chronicle (subscription required). Local PR guru Bob Cohn is quoted hitting the nail on the head:

“This was really a joke from the beginning,” Cohn said. “It wasn’t ‘Virginia is for Lovers’ or ‘I Love New York.’ It was trying to capture everything, and that was a mistake.”

Cohn was apparently too polite to point out that the tagline also blows greasy chunks.

To be fair, the motto isn’t embarrassing so much as it is bland, meaningless and forgettable. In contrast, the Ivan Allen-era claim that Atlanta was “A City Too Busy to Hate” was visibly false, but at least it memorably articulated a shared yearning to make Atlanta a better place for everybody.

The Brand Atlanta campaign has so far cost nearly $15 million, says the ABC article, with about $8 million coming from city taxpayers and the rest from private sources. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $90 million a year that Las Vegas spends on its “What Happens Here, Stays Here” campaign. But it’s arguably money that’s been flushed down the crapper, as studies have shown that the Atlanta branding campaign has had no discernable impact on tourism.

The downside to the city’s belated realization is that Brand Atlanta isn’t going away. On the contrary, it plans to debut a new branding campaign early next year. Anyone know a good realtor in Bainbridge?

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It’s not as though the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been exactly harsh on Mayor Shirley Franklin. Better terms to describe the relationship would be “limp,” “flaccid” and “pandering.”

It’s the business of the elites protecting and rewarding each other.

Latest example: “Brand Atlanta” is the misbegotten marketing program that came up with the awful ATL logo and promotional program. The outfit this week was rewarded for its bad work by City Council, which cheerily chipped in $4 million in taxpayer dollars, the overwhelming bulk of Brand Atlanta’s alleged “public-private” funding. Put another way, every man, woman and child in the city was robbed of $8 to fund Brand Atlanta. Did you get your money’s worth?

But it gets better.

Brand Atlanta is one of the creations of the Franklin regime. And the AJC editor in charge of metro coverage is Bert Roughton. (With what AJC staffers are calling the “post-journalism AJC” restructuring, Roughton has a new title of managing editor – but he most definitely can decide what and how City Hall is covered.)

Who does Brand Atlanta hire as an executive director with a lavishly overpriced $160,000 salary? Why, none other than Roughton’s wife, Melinda Ennis-Roughton. You can find the tidbit about hubby Bert’s relationship in the AJC story on Ennis-Roughton, but it’s extremely well buried on the jump page.

Not that Franklin & Co. weren’t already safe from tough reporting by the AJC – but the mayor has a lot less to fear now. And you’re paying for it.

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