A big idea that did happen
. . . and cost $98,000
Porirua ratepayers have stumped up nearly $100,000 for new branding, crowned with a wonky smiley face.
The Taxpayers’ Union has received, under an official information request, a breakdown for the city’s brand makeover which came out with a $98,876 cost.
The new logo for the town once dubbed P-Town is what appears to be a hand-drawn smiley face.
‘‘The official new avatar for the council, which you would expect to be [emblematic] of the rebrand’s quality, is a limp and childlike smiley face,’’ says Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke.
‘‘The design was apparently chosen because it ‘connects with the city’s youthful population’. When Porirua ratepayers gaze long enough into the face, the council’s 5 per cent annual rate hikes gaze back.’’
Massey University branding expert Professor Malcolm Wright said it was not easy to determine whether the council’s new logo was good or bad but there may be some benefits if everyone was talking about it.
As to the value of a council’s brand, that was a little trickier to determine because local government bodies were a monopoly that delivered services. Branding was likely to consider political motives and attracting businesses to the area.
Commercial businesses, on the
As election season heats up, new ideas will be coming thick and fast but beware: that giant paua shell you’re voting for might never end up being built.
The Wellington region would be a very different place if a canal had been built between Petone and Wellington, a tunnel routed through the Remutaka Range, or a wakeboard park created in place of a dingy waterway – just some of the ideas that were once championed as game changers that never came through.
Many of the proposals came crashing down once the bill to ratepayers was assessed, others due to a lack of council support, and some were just bad ideas.
Several plans that had fallen by the wayside were ‘‘motivational projects’’ originally intended to create a ‘‘feel-good’’ factor for the region, said John Milford, chief executive of Wellington Chamber of Commerce.
Andy Asquith, a lecturer on local body governance at Massey University, said a greater number of these types of ideas popped up at election time because they gobbled up media column inches.
‘‘If a candidate is nominated and they want to build a highway from Wellington to Honolulu, that will get interest. It gets people’s name out there, especially if someone has a low profile.’’
That’s how some dismissed Lower Hutt mayoral candidate Phil Stratford’s suggestion in 2013 that a canal be built between Petone and Wellington.
It would have formed part of an international rowing course and Stratford said he viewed its dismissal as a ‘‘lost opportunity’’.
‘‘It would have been good for the region,’’ he added.
But the sky-high ambitions of local body politicians are grounded when their big projects land on council agenda papers and the coalition-building begins, Asquith said. ‘‘Individual politicians, especially in local body politics, can promise things but the actual power they have as an individual is virtually zero.’’