Event City

Just a reminder: We do requests!

Oshkosh's latest attempt at rebranding itself has brought on the usual griping in the NW comment section, angst from elsewhere and some good-natured ribbing.

Companies rebrand themselves all the time and, like it or not, cities now have to market themselves in similar ways. (Hell, individuals now have to market themselves like businesses these days.) Oshkosh was long overdue for a marketing revamp and this explanation as to why is about as good as it gets:

Hielsberg said On the Water, while accurate, does not distinguish Oshkosh from any of the myriad other cities in Wisconsin that are also on the water. She described the old slogan as describing an attribute of the community, but not what can set Oshkosh apart from others.

Cities have been branding themselves for centuries now (a fact Ron Johnson recently learned with his inaccurate Greenland comments), and it's an almost essential process these days. Milwaukee recently redubbed itself the City of Festivals, a far more inviting and all-encompassing moniker than the Brew Town or Beer City nicknames of old, which made it sound like a destination for drunks and little more. There's no reason why Oshkosh shouldn't update it's profile to the rest of the world.

The name itself -- Wisconsin's Event City -- is undoubtedly the source of a lot of the consternation over the rebranding process. It's so simple that most people probably look at it and think to themselves, "Well, I could have come up with that --- where's my $40,000!" Alas, it's not that easy. In fact, the brand's simplicity is good thing and the city should be very happy the results, which are infinitely more agreeable than the disastrous rebranding effort by the state Department of Tourism last year.

The best part about any rebranding effort is that it's as much about a city's aspirations as it is about the image a city wants to project to the world -- and offering to be a hospitable destination to the rest of the state is not a bad niche to fill.