Back in June of 2022, the city of Rockville, MD decided to contract with a Dallas, TX-based marketing firm called “Medium Giant” to assist with “refreshing what is known as the ‘R’ logo” and to help the city “with a rebrand that has a more modern look, but more importantly, uses the City’s core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion as its brand base.”
The city’s “staff recommends that the Mayor and Council award RFP#06-22 to Medium Giant for the Rockville Community Branding Initiative for an amount not to exceed $147,925.” read the official recommendation.
Why? Was Medium Giant the lowest cost option for a silly “rebrand”? The most experienced in helping small cities with “modernizing” and logo design? The best at “brand building” (which can be highly subjective)? Nah. It was the firm’s “progressive approach” that won the day.
Then, this past July, Medium Giant finally revealed what it had been working on for over a year and at $150,000 in taxpayer funding. In a Monday mid-July meeting with the City of Rockville’s Council and Mayor, Medium Giant presented the following. This is (almost) impossible to parody! In fact, it kind of reads like something you’d see at “The Babylon Bee” or “The Onion”.
Note one of the “enemies” listed (presumably to the brand positioning?)… is “Righteousness”! So an “enemy” to “dynamic diversity” is “righteousness”? Make it make sense. Does Councilmember / Council President Evan Glass know this? Sanctimony (doesn’t) sell, according to Medium Giant consultants. Also how is “pervasive racial hate / anti-semitism” deemed “cultural fuel”?
But we digress. Anyways, the two taglines presented to the city and mayor were as follows:
Robert Dyer at his blog RockvilleNights.com says it far better then we can:
The diversity-themed tagline options are, “Everyone in All We Do,” and “Forward Together.” Option 1 requires a lot of thinking to figure out just what the heck it means. Option 2 sounds like a Plan B fished out of Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters trash can. Who knew we might one day be nostalgic for “Get Into It? [Rockville’s old tagline]
Now, with recent geopolitical events swirling the globe and reverberating back to us here in the “diverse” (fake, skin-deep diversity) Rockville / Montgomery County area, both “taglines” look even more ridiculous – and the cost of the “brand consulting” project even more wasteful. This $150K could have gone to an azalea garden at the former Redgate golf course plot and it would have been less wasteful. And probably easier on the eyes.
Just three days ago, Councilmember Andrew Friedson felt compelled to issue yet another “hate speech is unacceptable” post in response to hateful language uttered and recorded by protesters and counter-protesters in Rockville. Individuals, perhaps some who aren’t Rockville residents, decided to utter de-humanizing language about one another while arguing about a very complex geopolitical situation thousands of miles away. It is pretty clear that Rockville’s “dynamic diversity”, pressed from “on high” by (perhaps) well-meaning local government types, isn’t really working out too well.
Maybe city / local government should just focus on delivering high-quality “basics”? Great schools, clean roads and evenly surfaced roads, clean parks, trash picked up with regularity?
We’ll end this post with some good / bad news. The good news is that the city of Rockville politicians, in September 2023, decided to punt on adopting these super cringe “tagline” options and branding logos. They want the consultant to come back with something better.
The bad news? It may cost the taxpayers even more cheese! What is wrong with a simple “R”?
