Governor Andrew Cuomo is really great at getting things done (same sex marriage! budgets! teacher evaluations!), so if he wants to change the iconic "I ❤ NY" logo, then why the hell not? He has just launched a $5 million campaign to "remake the 'I Love NY' logo by submitting personal sketches depicting what they love about New York State." Cuomo explains, "This campaign reinvents one of our state's great assets - the 'I Love NY' icon - which is known the world over as one of the most successful advertising symbols ever. This campaign brings that icon to life in order to highlight all of the things people love about New York."
The effort is to boost tourism, which in turn boosts the economy. You can submit your ideas at iloveny.com or by emailing [email protected]. But do you know who is perplexed by this campaign? Milton Glaser, the designer behind the logo! Glaser told the Post, “I don’t understand it... I saw one that said, ‘I Pizza NY.’ I don’t get it." (We think Adam Kuban gets it.) Anyway, we've also asked Bobby Zarem, who says he developed the slogan "I Love New York" for comment—we're sure he'll have something to say!
Ad agency BBDO helped work on the "remaking" campaign and chairman David Lubars said that the logo, while great, had lost its effectiveness, "That icon has been co-opted by literally the rest of the world. If you go to Russia, if you go to Spain, you see I heart something and it’s lost its New York cachet." Um, how about New York just owns it—the ads haven't been around in three years.
According to the News, "Brian Sheehan, an advertising professor at Syracuse University, warned Cuomo’s logo tinkering could suffer the same fate as New Coke — Coca-Cola’s disastrous effort to introduce a new formula in the mid-1980s. 'You should mess with an icon at your own risk,' said Sheehan, a former executive at Saatchi & Saatchi."
