Brand aid

Neighborhood responds mostly negatively to new logo

In June, after about four years of research and development, the Lake Highlands Branding Committee released the first-ever Lake Highlands logo, featuring sunny colors, the words “Lake Highlands” in red-orange, and the tagline “Our Hometown in the City.”

In the days following the launch, the response via social media was largely negative; many expressed an objection to a select few developing the brand for a large, diverse neighborhood sans input from the majority of its residents.

“The brand’s development should have been communicated to the entire community with avenues for feedback along the way and some insight into the design before anything was rolled out,” notes, via the Advocate’s website, one “Concerned Resident” whose sentiments are echoed by many.

The branding committee responsible for the logo formed a few years ago at the urging of the Lake Highlands Public Improvement District’s first director, Rebecca Range. It was part of an effort to make our community more attractive to businesses, she said at the time.

“Developers think they don’t want to be in Lake Highlands because the external perception isn’t that great,” noted Range at the time. “Lake Highlands needs a better overall public relations campaign; this is critical.”

In 2011, Range organized a meeting among the heads of several neighborhood organizations to form a branding committee.

Lake Highlands volunteers Ginger Greenberg and Robin Norcross led the Lake Highlands Branding Committee, and were joined by representatives from the Lake Highlands Women’s League and Junior Women’s League, the Lake Highlands Exchange Club, the Lake Highlands Public Improvement District and Lake Highlands PTAs, among other groups.

Initially the committee was a subgroup of the nonprofit Lake Highlands Area Improvement Association. Later in the process, after the LHAIA lost its nonprofit status, the branding committee became a subcommittee of the PID. Greenberg explains that they wanted to be attached to a nonprofit for the purpose of fundraising with accountability and transparency.

Designer Ben Jenkins, whose company One Fast Buffalo was hired by the committee to create the logo, says unveiling a brand is sensitive. During the launch, someone who was involved in the process should be around to answer questions and explain the research and strategy behind the logo.

In June 2014, Norcross and Greenberg presented the logo at a PID board meeting.

In that setting, the logo seemed well received.

However, when Norcross shared the logo on the Facebook group “You know you’re from Lake Highlands if …”, some page members promptly began protesting.

Though the newly publicized design, according to the logo’s accompanying press release, is an end product of several years of work and $18,000 garnered from fundraising events and private donations, critics were quick to offer blunt disapproval and suggest changes.

Some felt the logo should reflect the high school’s colors. Others called it “ugly,” “dated” or “just awful.” Many expressed distress about exclusion from the project. A few em-

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ployed Microsoft Paint on their personal computers to create a “better” logo.

One neighbor disliked the new logo so much, she created a Facebook group to “retract the logo.”

Many lamented the $18k price tag, arguing that it is an excessive price to pay for a logo.

But branding a community and the cost of such an effort is about much more than a logo. According to a paper by the Center for Community Progress, a logo is an important component, but branding and marketing a neighborhood also is about research, defining goals, identifying target markets, aligning communication strategies and more.

Because of the large amounts of development, strategy and nuance involved in creating a brand, the committee opted to commission a respected firm to do the work, Greenberg says.

Jenkins has been in the business 15 years. He’s branded cities, communities and businesses.

The branding process is long and involved, and is similar whether for a company, a neighborhood or a municipality, Jenkins says. The branding of Lake Highlands began with research and online surveys. Jenkins says he received thousands of responses to a questionnaire about people’s perceptions, hopes and expectations as they relate to Lake Highlands.

“We pored through all that data to find common denominators of how people identify Lake Highlands. I worked with a large committee that had representatives from just about every group you can be a part of if you want to join a group in Lake Highlands.”

According to Jenkins, the core members remained consistent, but membership changed repeatedly throughout the project.

Jenkins also had a vested interest, he says, because he is a lifelong Lake Highlands resident and a graduate of the high school.

Both Greenberg, also a longtime resident and LHHS grad, and Jenkins say that the logo revealed in June is the second iteration.

Branding committee members sent back the first concept that One Fast Buffalo presented.

Jenkins says this is not unheard of, but for his company, due to the team’s painstaking research and strategizing, it is more common for clients to accept the first design submission.

While he did have to compromise based on what the client (branding committee) wanted, he would have quit before producing a design he was not proud of, he says; he stands behind his work.

A logo is art, and art is subjective. Jenkins says he knew, and he warned committee members, that “some people are going to hate this.” He says he read of a mayor in Arizona who quit over controversy surrounding the branding of a city.

What’s important, he notes, is that you have the research to back up your design and you stand behind it. Since Jenkins turned the design over to the branding committee, he no longer is involved with anything that happens with the logo.

Since the unveiling and resultant backlash, the PID board has announced a plan to “further develop the launch.”

While the branding committee has posted the logo in a variety of colors, they have not indicated a plan to change the logo.

At the time of publication, the branding committee has postponed both a brand presentation at the Lake Highlands Exchange Club and the sale of stickers featuring the logo. The PID’s new executive director Kathy Stewart says, via news release, “We believe we need to share additional information with the community including the brand story, which is based on research conducted by One Fast Buffalo, the strategy and reasoning behind the elements of the brand as well as background information on the work of the committee,” Stewart says. “All of this will be coming soon. In the meantime we appreciate the patience of the Lake Highlands community.”

Christina Hughes Babb

Stay In The Know

For the latest updates on the Lake Highlands logo and to join the conversation, visit lakehighlands.advocatemag.com.