Branding Edmonton: Signs & Slogans

For more than 20 years, Edmontonians have been discussing whether or not our entrance signs should feature a slogan and if so, which one. Whenever City Council or other local leaders have felt the need to shore up our city’s image, the entrance signs have been the go-to starting point. And whenever someone has suggested the entrance signs are dated and need to be replaced, the conversation has inevitably morphed into one about the slogan and brand for our city.

Questions were raised about “City of Champions” as soon as the signs went up in 1989. That prompted Economic Development Edmonton to do some research and a few years later they found there were at least 27 slogans being used to describe the city, like “Gateway to the North”, “Canada’s Oil Capital”, and “Official Host City for the Turn of the Century”. But only one was highly visible, and that was “City of Champions” thanks to the entrance signs.

You only see the entrance signs if you drive into Edmonton, but that hasn’t diminished their importance in the eyes of community leaders and commentators. The entrance signs and debate about them have often been considered the manifestation of our identity as a city. Gene Dub’s controversial entrance pyramid design that won a national design competition in 2008 was a good example of this. It would have done away with slogans and logos in favor of striking public art. The jury called it “a symbol of a city that is poised, confident and energetic.” But not everyone saw it that way. Former Edmonton Journal columnist Lorne Gunter compared the idea to Bedford, Nova Scotia’s giant “Clearwater” lobster statue and said Dub’s proposal would have been “an artificial symbol erected by civic leaders to try to force a recognition of their community that isn’t happening on their city’s or town’s own merits.”

It’s no surprise then that the entrance signs as they exist today are a perfect representation of this conflation of issues. The signs have been cobbled together, piece by piece, just like our city’s brand. In the absence of a strong place brand for Edmonton, we used the City of Edmonton’s corporate logo and the “City of Champions” moniker as stand-ins. When we felt that perhaps we weren’t a welcoming enough place, the words “Welcome to” were added. When we didn’t feel important enough in the province, we added “Alberta’s Capital”. Whenever our sports teams have endured slumps, we’ve suggested removing “City of Champions” from the signs (but someone has always pointed to another local success as a reason to keep them).

And now, because we’re feeling emboldened by population and economic growth, not to mention lots of capital spending, we’re again looking to the signs. They don’t feel representative of Edmonton today nor of the Edmonton we hope to become. They’re old and they look it.

Will the discussion be different this time? I think it could be. Yes, the sign and city identity issues have become so intertwined that maybe it’s not even possible to separate them now. But we should try.

Photo by Dave Cournoyer

On Tuesday, Councillor Michael Oshry is expected to make a motion requesting that the City remove “City of Champions” from Edmonton’s seven remaining entrance signs. The City says the signs are structurally sound, but that’s not why Councillor Oshry is making this proposal. Removing the slogan could finally allow us to discuss the brand issue separately from the signs, and I think that’s really his endgame.

I asked Councillor Oshry why he brought the sign debate up again at Council, and he admitted it seemed like a good starting point for a broader discussion about Edmonton’s brand. “They look dated, they’re old,” he said of the entrance signs. He isn’t fond of the “City of Champions” slogan either. “When we’re trying to attract people, the slogan means nothing,” he said. “And the slogan isn’t actually used anywhere else!”

At least, it’s not used anywhere else in Edmonton. We don’t use it for any of our internal or external marketing. But other cities use it or have used it, like Boston, San Francisco, East St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Inglewood, Tuscaloosa, Syracuse, Tampa, and Brockton, to name just a few. There’s nothing unique or particularly Edmonton about the “City of Champions” slogan.

Photo by Paul Sableman

Removing “City of Champions” is low-hanging fruit that could enable us to get started with a fresh slate, Councillor Oshry said. He doesn’t know where this will lead, but if we do end up discussing new signs, he favors simple ones. “They shouldn’t even have the corporation logo on them, it should just be ‘Welcome to Edmonton’ the place.” He also doesn’t want to spend tons of money on new signs. “They don’t have to be the greatest things the City does, but they need to be better than average,” he told me.

Ronna Bremer, Director of Image, Brand, and Marketing (or just “reputation” for short) in Corporate Communications at the City of Edmonton, agrees that the signs should be replaced with something simple but attractive. “What do those dated signs say about our city?” she asked rhetorically. “They should just say ‘Welcome to Edmonton’.”

EEDC and its predecessors have frequently been included in the discussion about entrance signs and slogans (no doubt thanks to the conflation of issues). “The decision about the welcome signs belongs firmly in the hands of the City and City Council,” EEDC CEO Brad Ferguson told me. He added that for what its worth, he thinks “the signs are dated and we need new ones” but stressed “that’s different from needing a new logo and slogan.”

It has been suggested that new signs would only come after the City makes a final decision on a new brand and logo. That would be the wrong approach to take. There are three different things wrapped up in that suggestion – the signs themselves, Edmonton’s brand and identity, and the City of Edmonton’s brand. The signs do not need to include the City of Edmonton’s corporate brand; they exist to welcome visitors to Edmonton, not to the new City of Edmonton office tower or to a recreation facility. It was probably a mistake to put the corporate logo on them in the first place.

The signs should be representative of Edmonton the place. They should reflect Edmonton’s place brand. This is the work that Make Something Edmonton has been doing. They haven’t been trying to figure out what the City’s new logo should be. They’ve been working to identify the essence of Edmonton. From their brand book:

“A place cannot be reduced to a logo and a slogan. It’s more than marketing. The Edmonton brand is about being true to who we are at our best.”

They have come up with “statements of encouragement” which are kind of like slogans, but there are many of them, and you’re supposed to take inspiration from them to create your own. “Be playful about it,” the brand book says. The statements of encouragement are conversation-starters and are “simple, memorable ways to express Edmonton-ness.” But they’re not a collection of possible slogans. It would be wrong to pick one and put it on the entrance signs.

The brand promise is the heart of the place brand:

“If you have the courage to take an idea to reality, to build, to make something, Edmonton is your city.”

That’s what any new entrance signs need to reflect.

So how do we do that? “We could tell people a story as they enter the city,” Todd Babiak told me. He has been working on Make Something Edmonton since the beginning, and he has thought a lot about this. What if instead of a single static slogan, we changed the message on our entrance signs every now and then? What if instead of one entrance sign, we had many, each featuring a different statement of encouragement or example of local makers? We talked about the “City of Champignons” sign that some pranksters plastered over the existing “City of Champions” sign a couple years ago. “You could argue that’s the most Edmonton thing anyone has ever done!” Todd said.

He’s not sure what the answer is, but he knows how we should go about finding it. “There’s a way to build things in Edmonton,” he said. “If you want it to work, invite the community in.”

It sounds difficult, but I think it can work. Right now we don’t see Edmonton’s place brand reflected in very many places. But over the next year or two, if Make Something Edmonton and EEDC are successful at getting others on board, that will change. And then our entrance signs simply need to be consistent with the branding we use elsewhere, like at the airport or at our post secondary institutions. Let’s see what people come up with before trying to design new signs. And please, let’s remember they’re just signs!

In the meantime, we should remove “City of Champions” from Edmonton’s entrance signs to bring clarity to this discussion. The signs don’t need logos or slogans and neither does Edmonton.

You can learn more about the history of Edmonton’s entrance signs here.

Welcome to Edmonton: How our entrance signs came to be

Until the late 1980s, Edmonton’s city limits were marked with simple blue and white signs that said “Welcome to the City of Edmonton”, not unlike the signs you’ll find near entrances to dozens of other towns around Alberta. The marker “City of Champions” was added following a streak of wins by the Eskimos and Oilers, though many also attribute that slogan to the way the city came together during the tornado of 1987. Not long after, City Council decided the existing signs were tacky and commissioned a study on the wording and design of new signs. That study decided that the word “welcome” was no longer necessary, but the “City of Champions” moniker was to remain.

The sign welcoming visitors entering Edmonton via the Sherwood Park Freeway

And so, Edmonton’s concrete entrance signs, made of sandblasted concrete shaped into a stylized silhouette of the city skyline, were erected from 1989 to 1991. A total of nine signs were put up, the last of which was located so close to St. Albert that aldermen there complained and threatened to redraw the southern boundary so that the sign would be on their land.

Others also disliked the signs. In April of 1989, Calgary mayor Don Hartman said Edmonton should tear the signs down. “Calgary has replaced Edmonton as the City of Champions,” he said. A cartoon in the paper next day also made fun of the signs by depicting new signs on the north edge of Calgary that read “City of Champs, 1 KM” on the southbound side and “City of Losers, 290 KM” on the northbound side.

But Edmontonians liked the signs. In late 1991, the Journal ran a reader poll about whether or not to keep the new signs. “Overall, 70 per cent of survey respondents say the signs are fine,” the paper reported. They found that residents in Sherwood Park, elsewhere in Alberta, and even outside Alberta all liked the signs.

Some locals grew to dislike aspects of the signs, however. Alderman Ron Hayter complained that the signs did not extend a welcome to visitors and were thus unfriendly. It took a while, but in the fall of 1996 the words “welcome to” were added. The total cost for adding that box to all nine signs? Just $8,837.93 ($982.00 each).

entrance sign
Photo courtesy of CBC

In late 1999, City Council began considering updated Highway 2 Corridor Design Guidelines. They also proposed spending $65,000 to “place signage of a complimentary, but smaller nature, to that of the major entrances” at thirteen other entrances to Edmonton. While discussing the report in June 2000, City Council passed the following motion:

“That the designation “Alberta’s Capital City” or other similar phrase be added to signage on Edmonton’s nine major entrance highways and included on any future entrance signage. Further that a report, including both the feasibility of this proposal and the cost involved, come back to the August 23, 2000 Executive Committee meeting.”

In the fall the report came back and said that adding the words “Alberta’s Capital” to the nine existing major entrance signs would cost an estimated $28,500. Council decided that was a bit too expensive, but a subsequent plan to spread the cost over three years was approved in December 2000. As you can see in the first photo above, the signs have fallen into disrepair and this addition isn’t even present on every sign anymore!

In December 2005, Council approved $625,000 for new entrance signs on the Stony Plain Road and Yellowhead East entrance corridors (they had already approved another $275,000 in December 2004). Manasc Isaac Architects provided an initial concept for the Stony Plain Road entrance sign:

entrance sign

The design concept for the Yellowhead East entrance came from Gibbs and Brown Landscape Consultants:

entrance sign

In March 2006, Council decided that a design competition would be held for the two new signs and that the newly formed Edmonton Design Committee would manage it. The competition drew eighteen submissions from across the country, and in May 2007 two finalists were selected: a pyramid-based design from local architect Gene Dub and a ribbon of steel design by Montreal architect Sylvie Perrault. Both received a $50,000 honoraria to take their designs to the next stage which included preliminary plans, a model, engineering assessments, and cost estimates.

entrance sign

Throughout 2007 there was a lot of debate about the new entrance signs (frequently called “entrance markers” at the time for some reason). “At some point, the old signs do need to be replaced,” said Councillor Karen Leibovici as the discussion grew more heated. Her Council colleagues seemed on board with the idea of replacing the entrance signs, but they may have been the only ones.

The most common complaint from the public was related to the cost. The City estimated the cost of the original signs to be around $400,000 each and replacing just two with new ones would cost between $600,000 and $1.4 million. But cost wasn’t the only concern. Soon after the two final designs were unveiled, citizens registered their dislike for both. Of 268 phone calls made to the City, only 2 were favorable.

Some people defended the design competition and the spending though. Then Journal columnist Todd Babiak wrote in May 2007, “the public reaction to the city’s design competition is emerging as my new least-favourite thing about Edmonton.” He argued that “to frame this project in terms of spending priorities in incoherent.” While he agreed that Edmonton was being “starved to death” by the other levels of government, he argued in favor of spending on the signs as public art:

“In 10 years, we won’t remember the potholes of 2007. But giant pyramids on each end of the city could be there, still inspiring debate.”

“If we continue to configure our priorities, as a community, around a reflexive, mean- spirited and frankly stupid hostility to cultural spending, the filled potholes will allow a lot of very smooth one-way trips out of this cold, efficient province.”

In February 2008, the jury selected Gene Dub’s proposal. A letter from the Edmonton Design Committee said the decision was unanimous and that “the winning entry is an edgy, glowing glass and steel crystal.” They called the design “surprising, even startling” and said it would “function both as a beacon and a gateway welcoming visitors with a symbol of a city that is poised, confident and energetic.”

entrance sign

But wasn’t meant to be. By the time City Council was getting ready to make a final decision, the estimated cost had ballooned from $900,000 to more than $2.5 million. Council voted 6-5 against the proposal in July 2008, bringing the debate to a close (at least temporarily). Writing about the decision in the Journal, then-columnist Scott McKeen called Council “hypocritical” and said a majority of them “caved badly under the weight of public pressure.”

There has always been some minor discussion about the signs, but in the last two years, the debate has once again become interesting. In October 2013, vandals made their mark on the signs, replacing the “City of Champions” section with their own humorous slogans like “City of Speed Traps”, “Suck it Calgary”, and “City of Champignons”.

city of champignons

Last fall, Councillor Michael Oshry officially reopened debate about the signs, saying “we need branding that demonstrates what we are about now and where we’re going and not about where we were 30 years ago.” He has since suggested an acceptable initial step would be to simply remove “City of Champions” from the signs. He is expected to make a motion to that effect at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

According to the latest City report, just seven of the major entrance signs remain (the two welcoming visitors from St. Albert and along Highway 28 no longer exist). An option to fund new signs with corporate advertising was quickly dismissed by Mayor Iveson. “Not on my watch,” he said. A new design competition could be an option though, as could a public search for a new slogan. That’s not necessary though, according to Mayor Iveson. “We’re in the post-tagline era,” he said.

For better or for worse, debate about Edmonton’s entrance signs has always been conflated with debate about our brand and image. I’ll examine that in more detail in an upcoming post.

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