Maybe Jean Viljean has the answer....

Somehow I never thought Victor Hugo would become a factor in the branding of Buffalo Grove.

                But he has.

                Sort of.

                At last Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting (best known as a COW) the Board heard a presentation from the firm it hired to rebrand the village as part of its economic development effort.

                The presentation by the Decatur-based DCC Interactive Marketing Agency focus mostly on new logo ideas to replace the beloved, if albeit dated buffalo (or bison if you prefer), with something that best reflects the village.

                As Jean Valjean asked in Les Miserables, “Who am I?” The question for Buffalo Grove is “Who are we?”

                If you grab the gist from DCC, we are no longer a village (too small) – just Buffalo Grove.  We also need to flaunt our green space.

                This comes after, according to a staff memo made available in the Board packet, a meeting with the Steering Committee the week before.  One week before.

                The representatives from DCC struggled to justify the top two logo proposals (shown below) saying it reflects the character of Buffalo Grove and where it is going

 Which raises two questions.

What is the character of the village and where is it  going?  If you believe in the rhetoric from May’s election, the village, oops, sorry, Buffalo Grove needs saving and we need to save the golf course because that is the character of the former village.

                Municipal officials, who used to be called village officials, would like to see the business climate enhanced.

                Most residents are probably unaware of these initiatives because as we saw in the May election, they don’t really care.

                The unfortunate reality is that when people think of business in Buffalo Gove, they immediately refer to home of for rent signs on the west side of Lake-Cook and McHenry Roads – Town Center.

                So to make everyone happy, well try, municipal officials, who used to be village officials, are beginning the aforementioned rebranding process, which led to last Monday’s presentation.

                So how and why was DCC selected?  According to (censored) Manager Dane Bragg, “DCC Marketing was selected by a Request for Proposals process for a branding/marketing strategy.  This was completed in the context of the economic development strategic plan and we felt it was an appropriate time to look at the logo while we were developing the other items.  The steering committee for the branding/marketing consists of me, Jenny Maltas, David Weidenfeld, Nicole Woods and Chris Stilling.”

                It’s not clear if Bragg was familiar with the Decatur-based firm from his days as assistant village manager in Decatur, or what the deciding factor was in the firm’s hiring.

                In response to an email regarding the last Monday’s presentation, Board President Beverly Sussman responded that she asked Bragg to respond to me and that she would send me comments.  None have been received.

                So the question remains – what is the image of the village and what is the message it is trying to convey?

                In an effort to save the village money, I have taken the liberty to develop some logos (shown here) based on the presentation by DCC. 

I have done others, but these best reflect the typographical image along with a little more tweaking to reflect the (fill in the blank) character.

                As for the question – who are we?

                Beats me.

                Ask Jean Viljean.