Penny Ohlman Neiman owed the City of Dayton a winner after their last branding effort gave us the 4/color (when 4 color printing would still break the bank) stupid “City of Neighbors” mark with the name of the City all catywampus. (update- PON didn’t do the work- they are just implementing it)

Today- they (NorthStar Ideas) hit a grand slam home run, to win the World Series in game 7, in the bottom of the ninth (yeah, Forbes pretty much wrote us off as dead this morning- more on that later).

While I don’t think a second grader could do worse presentation- between the lack of a screen, a dim projector, butt fugly slides, reading the slides- and a piece of water sculpture sounding like some one peeing in the background- the logo and concept they presented made you forget that the A/C wasn’t working either.

In other words the presentation wasn’t exactly made for TV- which in this day and age- huge mistake.

But the logo- hammered the nail into the wood with one mighty stroke.

Yeah, I like it. Get Midwest should be thrown in the dumpster- ’cause this logo/tagline has some meaning.

To be used as a “Rubber Stamp” on all city correspondence, an ad campaign, and even by itself- it speaks to the heritage of innovation of the region, the number of patents per person- and that there is still an opportunity for “originals” to come to Dayton and make their own mark.

Presented to the “Dayton Create” group of catalysts- at the CADC facility in the Cannery, the mark was incredibly well received. Even the old guard- who always ask for the Wright Flyer on everything thought this worked. Better yet, when wearing the t-shirt somewhere outside the region- no one would have to ask “What does “Get Midwest” mean”?

An extension of this brand could be a mark for establishments that are Dayton Originals- like the independent restaurant owners association- could all mark their menus and ads with this version- as well as a Google maps mashup with all the Dayton Patented Originals marked.

The only thing that could have made this new brand better today- would have been passing out rubber stamps for everyone to use- so, for now, you can click on these logos 2x to get a pretty high rez version.

You can read the DDN piece here.

Relevant part:

The city paid Nashville-based, North Star Destination Strategies $95,000 in 2007 to perform the initial research and development of the branding campaign. Dayton-based Penny/Ohlmann/Neiman will handle implementation of the campaign this year at a cost of $50,000. So- to get an original- we had to go to Nashville.

Note- this whole thing cost less than twenty percent of what the Dayton Development Coalition paid Congressman Turner’s wife’s firm ($900K).