City slogans

Wellington's motto is "Absolutely Positively Wellington." While sitting behind a bus one day, I got to thinking: How stupid is that? When your town motto is really just the name of the town, you have a serious identity problem. (And a grammar problem, as well.) So I looked into it and discovered it's been the town motto for *30 years*!

I found a news article that explained that, following the stock market crash of 1987, newspapers were having trouble selling advertising because the news was so gloomy. They hired Saatchi & Saatchi, the marketing company, who published feel-good stories about locals doing well using the tagline "Absolutely Positively Wellington." It was very successful, and in 1991 Wellington adopted the tagline as their motto.

Then I looked around and realised that it could be a lot worse.

Auckland hired Saatchi & Saatchi to do something similar; they came up with "Auckland A." In 2008, Auckland spent $1.8 million rebranding to "Big Little City." (I suggest they just adopt their nickname, "City of Sails.")

In 2017, Invercargill adopted the city slogan: "Dream Big". This replaced the earlier slogan, "Friendly." Before that, it was "Where Dreams Come True" and "City Of Water And Light." (What does that even mean??)

In 1988, Dunedin's motto was  "It's All Right Here," which might look fine in print but was pronounced, "It's alright here." In 2008, before an international cricket test match, the city used the slogan, "It's All White Here." If you're a cricket fan, you'd know the New Zealand team is called the "All Whites" (after the all-white uniform) but if you're not a cricket fan, you'd think Dunedin is very racist.

In 2001 they changed their slogan to the enigmatic, "I Am Dunedin" and last year they changed it to, "A Pretty Good Plan D" which I'm not even going to comment on.

A sample of other meaningless town slogans in New Zealand:

• Ashburton - "Whatever it takes"
• Canterbury - "Of course you Canterbury"
• Christchurch - Was "Fresh Every Day" before becoming the "Garden City"
• Dannevirke - named after a Viking-age fortification line in Denmark, the slogan "Take A Liking To A Viking" was clever but sounds pretty needy.
• Featherston - After trying "Wake Up Featherston," they changed it in 1999 to "Try Featherston, it will blow you away." Now the "Welcome to Featherston" sign just says: "If you lived here, you'd be home by now."
• Foxton - "The Fox Town of New Zealand"
• Gore - "A little bit wild, a little bit out there"
• Hamilton - It started with the innocuous "Where It's Happening" but in the 1990s they changed it to "More Than You Expect" and then "City of the Future."
  
• Hawke's Bay - "Everything under the Sun"
• Hutt Valley - "Right Up My Hutt Valley" was adopted in 1995 to try and draw Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt closer. It did not go down well; Lower Hutt then adopted the slogan "We've Got the Lot" in 1999 while Upper Hutt became, "A great place to live."
• Manawatu - "Young heart, easy living"
• Matamata: 'You matter in Matamata'
• Naseby - "2000ft Above Worry Level" (This was adopted as a book title in 2020.)
  
• Tauranga - "Tempt me Tauranga"
• Te Puke - "Stop and taste Te Puke" (Te Puke is known for growing kiwifruit.)
  
• Timaru - Was "Touch, taste, feel" before being changed to "Feel the heartbeat"
• Tuatapere - "New Zealand's Sausage Capital"
• Wairoa - "The Way New Zealand Used to Be"

The funniest unofficial slogan must be Porirua. In 2012, then Mayor Nick Leggett started referring to Porirua as "P-town," seemingly unaware that meth was called "P" in New Zealand. (I don't know why.)

P.S. In 2014, Lonely Planet called Wellington, "The Coolest Little Capital in the World." That seems like a much better slogan to me.