Logo targets ignorance about cities

Those hilariously stupid people humiliated by Jay Leno in his man-on-the-street "Jaywalking" interviews look pretty smart compared to some Utahns who were asked about the cities they live in and the services those cities provide.

One woman, captured on video and shown to the state's mayors, city managers and city council members on Friday, thought a municipality was a bone in the ear.

That drew knowing laughs at the annual convention of the Utah League of Cities and Towns. The league has commissioned eight years of surveys that show Utahns incorrectly believe their hometowns collect a large portion of their taxes but provide few services.

"We need to do a better job of communicating what we do," said Provo Mayor Lewis Billings, the league's outgoing president.

The league took what could become a high-profile step in that direction Friday by announcing a new marketing campaign called "Making Life Better." League leaders urged all of the state's cities and towns to participate by putting the slogan and logo on police cars, fire trucks, signs and buildings.

The new brand for Utah's cities was created by Struck, the company that developed "Utah: Life Elevated," the state's national tourism campaign.

The television and magazine blitz boosted hits on Utah's tourism Web site by 900 percent and requests for state travel brochures by 400 percent, said Kyle Snarr, Struck's director of new business.

Those kinds of results would be a major boon for Utah cities. As league policy analyst Neil Abercrombie introduced the statistics from the latest survey done by Dan Jones & Associates, he said, "I'm not going to say people are clueless. Let's just say they're less than knowledgeable about who provides city services."

For example, the survey asked residents whether they had used a municipal service in the past 24 hours.

Sixty percent said yes, but only 15 percent of those said they used a city-maintained street that day, and just 11 percent said they used city-provided electricity and sewer services.

The sewer statistic drew big laughs.

"I don't know what that says about our residents," Abercrombie said. "Hopefully it only shows a huge disconnect about who they think provides a service."

The league commissioned the creation of the brand to make it affordable for all of Utah's 243 municipalities. Cash-strapped cities and towns can adopt the logo as their own or combine it with their own logo and incorporate it in newsletters or on utility bills and park signs.