El Paso Knows You Don't Know. Hates You For It.
El Paso, Texas is about to embark on a bold new branding initiative. According to City Manager Joyce Wilson in an El Paso Times article, "the campaign is the result of market research that found people in several cities had little or no familiarity with this community, or a not-so-positive perception of the community."
My guess is that's true.
Wilson then goes on to say "If you don't define who you are, someone else will."
That's true, too. That's branding in a nutshell.
So after $285,000 for research and development, the city has chosen a campaign theme of...wait for it...wait for it...
"El Paso, Texas—You Have No Idea."
Wow.
I would assume a city wouldn't spend more than a quarter of a million dollars to insult its own citizens, so I have no choice but assume they are insulting the rest of the world. We are all uninformed and should be ashamed of our lack of El Paso knowledge.
Good lord. How in the world does this theme define who or what El Paso is? It doesn't even move one inch in that direction.
Even if the rest of the campaign proceeds to tell me all the wonderful things about El Paso (I do like Old El Paso products), this branding effort is mind boggling.
Research should be the springboard used for creative leaps. In this case, no leap was made. It's a classic case of letting research play the role of creative director.
