Can the Springs live with "Live it up"?

When the new Colorado Springs brand was launched a week ago, it landed with a thud, at least amongst the local marketing and design community.

On Monday, a dozen Colorado Springs designers came to a meeting called by the Colorado Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, which led the $111,000 branding effort, to discuss whether the Springs could live with its new tagline, Live it up!

“We want to have something we can be really proud of,” said Marcus Haggard of Magneti Marketing, who put up a “Rebrand the Springs” Facebook page that has received more than 600 “likes.”

Live it up! and the accompanying logo, depicting a stylized Pikes Peak, and introductory video, didn’t do that, he said.

The designers and marketers said they understood why a six-month process involving hundreds of stakeholders cost $111,000. They said they really liked the qualities of the Springs the process identified: vibrant, rugged, exceptional. They said they understood that any new brand was bound to attract snark and detractors. But, they said, Colorado Springs still deserves better than what it got.

“Colorado Springs is at a stage where we really are hungry to have some big wins,” Haggard said.

“This logo and design execution failed on many levels,” said Troy DeRose of Fixer Design. “We look at that and say, ‘That looks like something I designed in my first year of college.”

Dave Norton, founder of Stone Mantel, the Springs-based branding company that led the process, said a branding task force considered 112 different taglines and three potential logos and subjected them to independent testing. Live it up! and the mountain logo were the clear winners, Norton said.

“This logo has to work for moms and dads. It has to work for kids. It has to work in all sorts of cases and scenarios,” he said.

The Nov. 15 launch got the basic concepts out, Norton said, but the brand will succeed or fail based on its implementation. Six years ago, he said, Stone Mantel led the branding process for Anchorage, Alaska, coming up with the tagline “Big Wild Life.” That, too, Norton said, was initially met with scorn.

“The initial reaction was almost exactly the same,” he said.

“Big Wild Life” is at least original, said Tucker Wannamaker, also of Magneti. Live it up is a cliche and several other cities already use it for a tagline, he said.

Live it up! embodies what Colorado Springs is about, said Doug Price, president and CEO of the convention and visitors bureau.

“Up. It’s an attitude and an altitude,” Price said.

“That would be a good tagline!” Haggard said.

One thing no one defended was a four-minute video showing the community and introducing the brand, , which was panned for its lack of energy and dated feel. That’s all the video was supposed to do, said Amy Long, vice president of marketing at the convention and visitors bureau — introduce the brand at the unveiling. It was never meant to go viral or end up as a TV commercial. The video has been pulled down from the liveitupcs.com Website and YouTube.

With Twitter and Facebook, though, you can’t go home again, said Christopher Schell of Design Rangers.

“You only get one chance to make a first impression,” he said. “Once it’s been put out there in this age of social media, you don’t get the chance to take it back.”

Nevertheless, several people said, the city’s willingness to take another stab at the tagline and logo could themselves become a story worth Facebooking about. Price made no promises, but said the branding task force would talk about the next steps after Thanksgiving.

“We are open to making this better,” he said. “I assure you, this has not fallen on deaf ears.”

As he left the meeting, Wannamaker said he was pleased with that the branding task force was willing to listen, but cautious about the prospects for taking a fresh look at the brand.

“What I’m hoping happens is that the branding task force comes back with something that helps us actually change something,” he said. “If we can turn this around and not kick the can on it, to me it seems like an incredible opportunity.”