‘Live Outside the Ordinary’ it is

City branding process will move forward

After rejecting the proposed city tagline Live Outside the Ordinary, councillors changed their minds and embraced the idea on Monday.

“It’s the best logo for the best city: ‘Live Outside the Ordinary!” said Coun. Dan McWilliams.

It happened after Paul Hickey, president of the local marketing firm Brand-Health, gave a detailed presentation on Monday to explain the branding idea to council and show it applied in several different ways.

He showed a series of photos showing Peterborough landmarks such as the small, busy Peterborough Airport with ‘Not Your Ordinary Airport’ written across it, or photos of the Saturday farmers’ market bearing the words ‘Not Your Ordinary Market’.

He also showed councillors a new city logo with the wavy blue water symbol from the new city welcome signs.

Hickey said it’s OK to state that we have a better way of working and living than other places – in other words, places that may be “ordinary.”

He then showed a promotional video that defines “ordinary” as big cities with 90-minute

commutes to work and threehour drives to get to the cottage on weekends.

Peterborough is not that, he said. “Not Toronto – not the GTA – is a really powerful tension you’d be crazy not to capitalize on,” Hickey explained.

Mayor Daryl Bennett said he was happy with what he was hearing; he said Hickey put the “sizzle” into the brand idea for him.

“What you’re presenting to us is saleable,” he said.

Coun. Henry Clarke said he had been critical of the branding idea earlier, but not anymore: he now says he likes the branding idea a lot.

Coun. Dave Haacke asked why the firm BrandHealth didn’t present it to council this way in the first place.

Hickey said it’s been a learning process – it’s not easy to fit a creative process into a political one.

But it was important, he said, to take the city’s many, varied branding ideas, logos, slogans and nickname and look past them for something new. It had to be something that reflects Peterborough’s status as an attractive, modern city with appeal for people who are looking to live somewhere where they don’t have to spend 90 minutes each way in traffic to get to work, somewhere where they can go for a bike ride or a trail hike or a paddle any day of the week.

The city is paying BrandHealth $77,000 to develop a tagline, logo, colours and a guidebook explaining how to use the new branding in material related to the city.

The firm was hired to develop a new brand for Peterborough to attract people to invest in the city and to move here.

Since last summer, council has rejected two of BrandHealth's proposed taglines: the first was Where Roads and Rivers Meet and the second was Live Outside the Ordinary.

Neither tagline was met with much public enthusiasm and council rejected them both before reconsidering on Monday about Live Outside the Ordinary.

But on Monday councillors changed their minds.

“I’m in,” said Coun. Don Vassiliadis, saying he understood the idea better after the explanation.

“A job well done – thanks for explaining it to us.”