Branding anew
Gangnam Station Street
City branding project underway to renovate Seoul's image
By Yun Suh-young
Anyone living in Seoul must have wondered at least once why the city's slogan is "Hi Seoul."
The slogan received criticism from both locals and foreigners alike for the lack of meaning, identity and spirit for over a decade; yet it had still remained as the main slogan for the city.
When the slogan was adopted back in 2002, it had been the first attempt by a metropolitan city here to establish a global image through city branding, a concept which was still new to the country at the time.
Pitifully, the attempt ended only as an attempt. Since then, the city added more slogans (although not official) and caused more confusion.
"Hi Seoul" was adopted in the year of the World Cup, while former President Lee Myung-bak was the city's mayor. Four years later, the phrase "Soul of Asia" was added to the slogan after Mayor Oh Se-hoon took over.
In late 2011, when Mayor Park Won-soon took office, Seoul gained another slogan, "Heemang (Hope) Seoul" which was later interchangeably used with "Hamgge (Together) Seoul" during the local election period.
As all of these slogans and their respective logos were added one after another and used interchangeably, the need for a lasting and consistent city image became desperate. Seoul had lost its identity.
The good news is Seoul is now undergoing a project to revamp its image and establish a new brand with a new logo, slogan and vision.
Gangnam Station Street
Seoul branding
Seoul Metropolitan Government is currently heading a city-wide branding project involving citizens into the process since May to create a brand based on citizen participation.
From the brainstorming stage, citizen's comments, ideas, and words that described Seoul were gathered as a data pool to extract keywords about Seoul to help branding experts build an image. Foreigners' opinions were also incorporated to compare and contrast with locals' comments.
The newly conceptualized Seoul's image will then be realized into a brand new logo and slogan which will be put to a vote on Oct. 28 (Citizen's Day) to be decided by Seoul residents.
"This is the first citizen-directed city branding project that doesn't simply end at citizens' participation. They actually get to decide the brand that they want the city to use, which is the first of its kind in this country and even globally," said Park Hang-gi, president and chief branding officer (CBO) of Metabranding, during an interview with W.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza
Metabranding is a major local branding company which is heavily involved in the project.
It was Park's idea to get citizens to vote on the slogan they liked.
"Citizens will be the original composers and experts will be the arrangers. From the preliminary stage we've extracted Seoul's current identity and with it, we're working on building a new brand. Our purpose is to make Seoulites feel proud of the city," he said.
The survey conducted on citizens showed that Seoul was dynamic, active and high-tech, but lacked a welcoming atmosphere. It showed the need to strengthen the human-friendly face of Seoul to enhance its overall image.
"According to data accumulated in March this year, Seoul was a cold city but citizens wanted it to be warm. Experts also pointed out that Seoul was diverse and dynamic but lacked warm-heartedness and friendliness," said Park.
"It wasn't an attractive city people wanted to visit. The future Seoul should evolve into a human-friendly city."
He hopes the brand will last for the next 30 years to create a consistent and firm image of Seoul.
"It takes at least 30 years for any city to establish a strong brand. New York City's brand started back in 1975 but it became an iconic tourist destination only a couple of decades ago. This is the beginning for Seoul," he said.
"Seoul's image went wrong from the beginning when it came up with the logo, 'Hi Seoul.' Foreigners hated it saying that they don't know what it meant and it sounded silly. The slogan became one of the representative examples of a badly made slogan."
Keywords extracted this time as final candidates to describe Seoul are "coexisting," "passionate," "trendy," "considerate," and "leisurely," although they are subject to change.
"Seoul scored high in terms of function but low in terms of human-friendliness. We're trying to emphasize the city's strengths to the maximum and add qualities that citizens hope the city can acquire," said Park.
He also suggested creating the city's own beer brand to effectively promote the city.
"I also think it'd be great if Seoul had its own beer brand to represent the city such as the likes of Tsingtao or Sapporo which were named after the cities in China and Japan. It could be something like 'Le Seoul,' 'Seoul Lite,' or 'Soul' - something simple that has 'Seoul' in it to make a statement. That'd be helpful in promoting Seoul to tourists."