On Saturday we revealed the City of Cape Town’s dreadful new logo, which spread virally, apparently made public in the wrong colours, intended by the designers to be in the colours of the South African flag!  The new pay-off line, to replace the current slogan of ‘The City that works for you‘, is ‘Making Progress Possible. Together‘, positioning Cape Town as the Opportunity City!

Due to the criticism the City has received about the logo design itself, and also to the perceived cost and the greater benefit that the monies could have been put to (the City claims the cost is only R313720, which is what it paid ad agency King James, and of course does not reflect the implementation cost of many millions, which it estimates at exceeding R 7 million as per its statement below!), it issued an elaborate statement yesterday, and hosted a media conference. Interesting is that the City media spokesperson Priya Reddy said that no public participation process has been followed, it not being required legally!  It is thus clear that the City will steamroll the rebranding, and will not take cognisance of the public uproar about the rebranding, described as looking like a gear cog, a Rotary logo, or a police badge!

The statement is seven pages long, and comes across as very defensive and overly verbose and technical in justifying the design.  The rebranding of the City appears to have been at the core of a dispute within the City of Cape Town, its Tourism, Events, and Marketing Directorate headed by Anton Groenewald and falling under Councillor Grant Pascoe, having been subject to a forensic investigation, which included having the computers of Pascoe and Groenewald as well as other staff removed in November to check the irregular City rebranding tender allocation.  At that stage the Cape Argus reported that the multi million Rand rebranding tender was in danger of being cancelled, which would have been contrary to the City’s supply chain management policy!

The rebranding process appears to have been led by Carol Avenant, of the City’s Integrated Strategic  Communications and Branding department, who once worked for the Western Cape government, and was at the centre of a row allegedly relating to an advertising contract awarded by the province to the TBWA/Hunt Lascaris group.  She left Yellowwood, the King James agency in the same group, when she moved to the City of Cape Town, which may indicate a conflict of interest in itself!  

In the Cape Argus yesterday the City spokesperson said they would implement the logo with Continue reading →