After two years' work, the council yesterday announced its Brand Dunedin campaign, which, while not short on ideas, lacked the usual visual cues.
The brand will replace the "I am Dunedin" campaign, and before that, the "Dunedin, It's all right here" campaign.
Every slogan had some sort of problem, and, instead: "Dunedin will be the brand", council chief executive Jim Harland said yesterday.
The city, as the second-oldest in New Zealand, needed the courage not to have a slogan, he said.
Mr Harland announced two agencies had been hired to work together to help promote the city - Dunedin-based BrandAid+ and Auckland-based Projector Media Ltd.
Instead of the council running the campaign itself, it would work with "brand partners": the University of Otago, the Otago Polytechnic, Tourism Dunedin, Allied Press, Dunedin Venues Management Ltd, the Otago Chamber of Commerce and the Otago Southland Employers' Association.
Those organisations yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding to use the brand for the next five years.
The plan for the brand was to provide a framework those organisations could use to promote Dunedin's "values and beliefs" in order to attract and retain the kind of people who would make a positive contribution to the economic, social and cultural wellbeing of the city.
Marketing communications agency manager Debra Simes said instead of the usual campaign, the council would ask residents to tell their stories about why they lived in the city, and why it was special to them.
Those stories would be collected on a website yet to be set up, called "Insiders' Dunedin", and in other media.
They would go to the two creative agencies, and be used as part of the campaign.
The payment the agencies would receive was commercially sensitive, but would come from the $500,000 budget.
Asked how the campaign would look with no brand or logo, BrandAid+ owner Luke Johnston said the word "Dunedin" would have a typeface that all the partners would use in their promotional material, and there would be a consistent photographic style, as well as what was taken from residents' stories.
Those would be used on a Dunedin website, which would have links to the brand partners, and on billboards and any other Dunedin promotions.
As an example, the brand would be used in the University of Otago prospectus.
Chamber of Commerce chief executive John Christie said the stories collected would result in "some classic one-liners".
For his organisation, an example of where it could be used was a document being put together with information on Dunedin's rail capability, where the "type of language used", the typeface and style would be included in the document.
Residents would be asked to begin contributing their stories later this month.
From September, a national campaign would target visitor and tertiary sectors, as well as former locals and alumni.
Council marketing team leader Jennifer Hooker said the $500,000 budget for the campaign was not new money, but the same amount, or less than, what the city had spent annually in the past.
The campaign would have specific targets, including increasing commercial visitor nights between 0.5% and 2% annually for domestic and international visitors, and increasing jobs, productivity and earnings.
As well, there were targets for market recall of the campaign.
