Thursday, March 03, 2011

Is this your company's new brand campaign slogan?

"It's all within reach."

This is the centerpiece of GCI's new branding campaign, according to readers, who say this "all within reach" slogan and other changes are to be introduced during a companywide staff meeting tomorrow. GCI sought to trademark the expression in December. The campaign includes prominent placement of the phrase, "A Gannett Company Newspaper" near the flag on many front pages, I've been told.

Related: St. Louis tourism officials chose the slogan, "St. Lou Is . . . All Within Reach." And so did Ogden, Utah:


Earlier: Is a new Gannett branding campaign in the works?

[Image: topGCI's current logo]

40 comments:

  1. You can do all the branding campaigning you want but if you haven't made the product worth something of value to its users, you've wasted a whole lot of time and money.

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  2. 'It's all about reach' would be better.

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  3. This will really make the small "local weeklies"
    happy as they have done their best to hide the fact that they are not "locally owned" anymore.
    Much less owned by the corporate giant.
    They do everything they possibly can to make
    it seem as though they are still part of the locally owned small business economies. When in fact,all the revenue produced actually leaves the state,with the exception of the small group of possible local employees salaries. I wonder
    if these community papers will suffer even more
    when they actually publish Gannett ownership on the front page.Many weekly subscribers and advertisers still do not know the facts,and still believe ownership is still as in the past, i.e. the local family who published for 25 years as an example.My site does it's very best to promote it's original name as local ,local,local.,
    and never ever, publishes info about ownership.

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  4. If you look carefully at Ogden's logo, you'll see the city claims this as a service mark. What intellectual property implications might this pose for Gannett and its trademark application?

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  5. Hey Jim. As I understand service marks they only offer limited protection against other uses. For example, Ogden's service mark might protect it from use by other municipal governments but would not exclude a company like Gannett in an entirely different business segment from using it.

    I'm not an attorney but my company does use them quite a bit and that's my understanding of the protection they offer.

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  6. Way back in the early 70s, Gannett acquired the family-owned and small chain of which my paper was a part. This was, of course, long before the word "branding" was heard anywhere except on cattle ranches. The slogan then was "A World Of Different Voices Where Freedom Speaks." We learned shortly after the acquisition that the slogan should in fact be "A World Of Different Voices Where Money Talks."

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  7. THIS is what they're rolling out tomorrow? It took how many executives meeting tirelessly to come up with it? Unless there's news of layoffs, complete USAT-USCP merger, digital only, ho-hum.

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  8. The Internet...Facebook, Groupon and other ways of advertising...all within reach.

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  9. How many consultants does it take to come up with a lame slogan?3/03/2011 10:10 PM

    "It's All Within Reach..." just like the barf bag you'll need after tomorrows meeting.
    For Craig and the other four useless executives, "It's All In Reach" means that next bonus check...
    For AOL Patch, "It's All In Reach" is the local news that Gannett papers are turning their backs on.
    And for loyal Gannett employees "It's All In Reach" should be that next resume you send out.

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  10. Not MY darn company's slogan. They laid my butt off over a month ago. Congrats to you who are still there! ha ha

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  11. TOP TEN SLOGANS THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT

    10. “Your ads in good hands with Gannett’s GPC’s.”

    9. “Your newspaper, the real quicker picker-upper.”

    8. “Got jobs? We’ve got people.”

    7. “Think different…you’re gone.”

    6. “We furlough more”

    5. “Where’s the profits?”

    4. “Gannett employees take a licking to keep profits ticking”

    3. “Just Read Us. Please”

    2. “Advertisers wanted.”

    1. “Don’t Google it, GANNOOGLE it”

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  12. You can sue for taking someone else's slogan. I hope they ran this through the lawyers because it could be very expensive to buy off these cash-strapped communities that are using this slogan. Maybe it will be Gannett's contribution to teacher pension funds.

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  13. You're kidding me. A new slogan?

    Next will be a new mission statement. And a new logo?

    Much ado about nothing.

    Can just see these corporate titans with magic markers and flip charts brainstorming furiously in a conference room on Jones Branch Dive in McLean. Imagine this: "What we really need is a new slogan to lift the spirits "in the field:, said one million-dollar executive. "Yes! Something to unify our operations, inspire the troops," said another corporate wonder Can you hear it? I can.

    Perhaps this latest pursuit is helpful in convincing corporate leaders that they're doing something productive to move the business ahead. But the real issues are left un-solved, un-resolved, un-tended. Who's tending the business of diversifying and expanding products and revenues.

    Where's the leadership?

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  14. We shouldn't be worried about whether Gannett's about to rip off somebody else's slogan, we should be worried about the fact that this is the most inane tag line a media company could use.

    A few questions ...

    1) What the hell does it mean?

    2) Why would anyone equate "it's all within reach" with a media company?

    3) If this is the best they could come up with, how many months do we have before the entire company collapses beneath the weight of management's stupidity?

    4) Haven't they seen the slogans of real media companies? Think "All the news that's fit to print" and "give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world."

    5) Where on Earth did they find these people and how has the board put up with their backward ideas this long?

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  15. Since someone years ago reached on me when I was in a darkened movie theater, I vote against this slogan.

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  16. Pointless. But I'm sure there will be some new management hires and promotionsat the CP because of this. Head of Branding,etc. etc.

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  17. This is from the US Patent & Trademark Office website.
    *** Do federal regulations govern the use of the designations "TM" or "SM" or the ® symbol?
    If you claim rights to use a mark, you may use the "TM" (trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation to alert the public to your claim of ownership of the mark, regardless of whether you have filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). However, you may only use the federal registration symbol "®" after the USPTO actually registers a mark, and not while an application is pending. ***

    Looks like this could be an issue with Ogden.

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  18. Coincidentally, the pork industry today is scrapping its quarter-century-old “Other White Meat” branding logo in favor of “Pork, Be Inspired.” The new slogan will be seen in print, broadcast and internet advertising and promotion.

    You know what? Maybe we could trade!

    Pork: It's within reach.
    Gannett: Be inspired

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  19. I agree with the first commenter. A brand is nothing without a launching "Great" product that will carry the brand.

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  20. "It's all within reach." ??????

    I hope it will be within reach of all the commodes atop the toilet tissue holder. Make sure there's a crossword puzzle section included!

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  21. I don't think it's such a bad slogan. I resent, however, the amount of money it apparently takes to come up with something like this and market it. Haven't they got better ways to spend money?
    Is this really what the company needs, over and above competitive reporting, good product value, well-designed customer ads, decent editorial content, and an Internet presence that people want to go to?
    I guess so.

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  22. I'd prefer:

    "Gannett... Solutionable Reachability"

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  23. "Disaster - it's all within reach"

    "Sheer stupidity - it's all within reach"

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  24. So, this is the best this management group can come up with? Not only is the slogan weak as hell....it's stolen from somewhere else!!

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  25. Ever get the feeling this is all a bad dream and we'll wake up to find a strong company, in a good market position, with competent, decisive management we can all believe in?

    Nah, me neither.

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  26. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  27. The slogan's OK, but Gannett needs more than that. How about a song, a jingle that could play everytime anyone calls a Gannett property anywhere. It couldn't turn people off any more than the innane recordings that management now requires.

    Seriously, I sincerely hope Dubow&Co. has some meat to go with that BS memo!

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  28. Now that's funny! You should be our new Slogan Master.

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  29. How long d'ya think until it becames "It's a Reach"?

    You'd think they would have learned their lesson when the Breaking News cafe was rechristened the Breaking Wind cafe within minutes.

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  30. This beat the slogan Dubow wanted. "Gannett: Leveraging Transformative Opportunities"

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  31. "Gannett - employees are always within reach, until we fire them"

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  32. Have we tested the slogan in foreign countries? We don't want a repeat of Chevy's famous Nova fiasco!

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  33. Message from a retiree....Years ago in Westchester the powers that be put out an edition called TODAY. For some reason the paper was printed on peach-colored paper that sometimes looked like ancient newsprint.

    The slogan was, and I kid you not: "Reach for the Peach!"

    You can imagine the variations that slogan generated.

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  34. That USA Today slogan was clearly written by someone who had never heard the punchline: "What do you mean 'we,' Keemosabe?"

    They make it waaaay too easy.

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  35. It's funny that Gannett insists on branding itself when it clearly doesn't understand branding. Advertising companies do all kinds of wacky things, but the best slogans still say something relevant about the company or the product being pitched.

    "We're all in this together" is a philosophical statement that might work for a politician, but it doesn't make a lot of sense for a newspaper. I am not involved in the mess in the Middle East or Charlie Sheen's drug crisis, but I might want to read about it.

    "It's all within reach" doesn't seem to mean anything at all, and can easily be viewed as negative. I suppose they're trying to say that the company is so wide reaching that Gannett products are covering every possible story. But you have to stretch to come up with that interpretation, and anybody who reads one of the products will immediately know it's hyperbole, making the brand something of a joke.

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  36. 12:38 In fact, my first reaction was: Gannett's news, advertising and other information is available in print, online and on mobile devices.

    My second reaction: That's what one pickpocket says to another as they enter a crowded bar.

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  37. The USA Today sloganeers probably didn't know that "we're all in this together" was adopted as a slogan by a non-Gannett daily in New York State a good 10 years earlier!

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  38. Like that one about the pickpockets, Jim!

    My interpretation was also the idea of Gannett being the master of print, online, etc. Unfortunately, a look at the product(s) doesn't justify it.

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  39. Non-Gannett slogans can be just as bad. The public library I worked for spent much time and money "branding" itself (I guess to stand out from all the other public libraries--none, of course--in the county??) and finally came up with "Dream it. Discover it. Do it."

    Now my particular small branch was located in a middle school, and I could just see the effect those suggestions would have on the hormonally overwrought teens who might just consider dreaming it, discovering it, and doing it in the far corners of the stacks.

    Fortunately, the slogan would not fit on our name badges and the library was in no hurry to update the old signage on the small branch, so I emerged unscathed.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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