Spokane Valley moves one step closer to rebranding

The city of Spokane Valley may see a refresh of its city logo and branding guide.

Spokane Valley communications manager Jill Smith on Tuesday provided an update to the city council on a yearslong effort to change the logo, which features the city’s name framed by a blue ribbon representing the Spokane River below and a green mountain peak representing Mount Spokane above. She also sought the council’s permission to continue the process of developing a plan for implementing the new logo and consistent guidelines for messaging across departments.

The process almost came to a halt when the council was tied at a 3-3 vote. But newly elected council member Al Merkel switched his vote in support of continuing the rebranding efforts, leaving council members Ben Wick and Laura Padden as the only dissenting votes. Deputy Mayor Tim Hattenburg was not present for the meeting due to a scheduled vacation.

“I’m not very interested in changing the logo, but I had a couple seconds to think about it when we tied,” Merkel said. “In those few seconds, I had the weight of knowing we had already spent the money on it.”

The city council will have to pass a resolution at a future hearing to officially adopt the new logo. Smith said she will be seeking public feedback on the new design created by Spokane’s AmpliFi Advertising, which features a smaller mountain peak and river above rounded text of the city’s name, in the coming weeks.

The city began evaluating the logo in 2016, when it hired Denver-based consulting agency Atlas Integrated to evaluate and develop a marketing strategy for the burgeoning city as it looked to attract new businesses, residents and tourists. After conducting interviews, surveys, and focus groups with local business owners and residents, the consultants recommended, among many other things, that the city develop a new logo to assist in its marketing efforts.

A new logo came in 2016 for the city’s economic development program, and it’s only used by that program for recruitment efforts like attracting a qualified workforce to the area, Smith said in an interview. Atlas was paid $152,500, according to a copy of the contract outlining the work.

The idea was revisited again in 2021 and 2022, when Klündt Hosmer, a Spokane advertising agency bought out in 2022 by Boise-based 116 & West, was hired to evaluate the city’s current brand and develop a refreshed marketing strategy following the COVID-19 pandemic. The city paid the agency a flat fee of $45,000, according to a copy of the contract .

Their 2022 survey of 500 Spokane Valley residents, 46 business owners and 63 nonresidents “interested in the city” found that about half of respondents thought the logo was not representative of the city’s image and identity. When asked how effective the logo was, 43% of residents responded below average, around 11% responded very poor and 5% answered excellent, with the rest of residents saying the logo did an above average job. Business owners were split in their opinions, with 46% responding above average and 46% responding below average.

“The consultant summary from that particular 2022 study really was completely in line with the previous two studies,” Smith told the council. “What it said was that our brand is not as polished and clean and crisp and professional as it could be.”

Many of those surveyed said they were not aware the city even had a logo, and those who were aware of it shared that it looked dated.

Mayor Pam Haley, who voted in favor of continuing the effort, said constituents have told her they support updating the logo. She said the process has been dragged out over the years due to staffing turnover in the city’s communications department and the slow pace of government affairs.

“The people I’ve heard from were in favor of the change,” Haley said. “Until the meeting, I had only heard from one other person that didn’t like it. And we have done quite a bit of public outreach over that 18-month period of time.”

Merkel raised similar concerns about the costs of the past studies and implementing the new logo across the city moving forward. Smith could not provide information on the cost of past studies at the meeting.

She explained there would be no additional cost, because any implementation would be need-based and rolled into the costs already associated with routine city maintenance. Smith said the plan is not to go around unnecessarily replacing things like signage, but to replace old uses of the logo when the need arises, like ordering letterhead with the new logo when the city runs out of letterhead with the old logo.

“I want to emphasize that this is not spending money to change anything we already have, this is moving forward,” Smith said.

Smith said a lot of the change would occur with the city’s online messaging, like its website, social media pages and in emails and press releases, which would occur quickly and without cost.

When asked by Merkel whether there was any suggestion of changing the city’s name from any of the consultants, Smith deferred to City Manager John Hohman, who served as the director of the city’s economic development department when the 2016 study was conducted.

“That has come up a number of times, and we did look at it seriously, and had consultants weigh in on it,” Hohman said. “And every time, the message that came back was, ‘Leave the name alone.’ ”

Merkel said he changed his vote due to the “sunk costs” of the work already completed, and the assurance there would not be additional costs. He also hopes the vote would free up the council to focus on other issues like public safety. He said he is still conflicted on the issue.

“Then it’ll just be done,” Merkel said. “Then we won’t have to continue to have these conversations and then have future councils go out and hire some consultants to come in and tell us that our logo is no good.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been changed from its original version.