The Finance Committee met 01/24/2022. In so far as I can recall, it was the first meeting I can recall watching in the nearly year and a half in which I have been closely following local government meetings, in which an item was killed at committee.
The item in question was the recommendation to award a brand study contract to Unlisted, LLC. During the committee meeting earlier this month, some concerns had been raised about the proposal Unlisted had provided, and the committee had decided to hold off on voting in order to give Unlisted an opportunity to give a presentation to the committee and answer questions about their proposal. Rather than do that, Unlisted opted to withdraw from consideration for the project.
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) who is the Chair of the Finance Committee started the discussion out by saying that, in light of the fact Unlisted had withdrawn from consideration for the project, he was going to make a motion to amend the item by substitution to say “The city of Appleton will revise and reissue the rebranding positioning and marketing services request for proposals to incorporate committee feedback and to include additional scoring components. The RFP draft will be shared with the Finance Committee as an information item prior to issuance, submission deadline under the new RFP is to be June 1st 2022 or sooner.”
He asked if there was a second to his motion and after a bit of a pause Alderperson Vered Melter (District 2) seconded it.
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) is not on the committee but has been a supporter of the rebranding project even back when he was a city employee, prior to becoming an alderperson. He urged the committee to support this amendment and thought that seeking a new proposal was the right thing to do. He said he had a conversation with Mayor Woodford and offered a couple of suggestions and knew of some local people who had experience with this and could potentially help the city. He was confident that going out for a new Request For Proposal would improve the process and bring a selection of really qualified firms in the end.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) who was on the committee and was also the main sponsor of Resolution 2-R-22 which called for reallocating the money currently allocated for a brand study and brand implementation, said that she had asked repeatedly both during the last Finance Committee meeting and in discussions if opening the RFP process up again would result in different options, but nobody she had spoken to believed that there were firms that were interested that didn’t apply the first time. At this point, she felt that it was not worth doing right now and could wait. They had other pressing needs that they could handle in the meeting time. If they wanted to come back to the brand study at a later day, she was okay with that, but she thought it was currently a waste of staff time to move forward with something when they weren’t going to get a different return on their effort. She planned to vote against the substitution.
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) who was not on the committee, disagreed and thought that changing the RFP process would change the pool of folks that responded to it. She said, “I believe that we—this city deserves another shot at this particular process. I think that there were failings that I think the Mayor’s Office would potentially admit, that there were things that just didn’t as they were supposed to go or as they had wished it would go.” She thought Alderperson Siebers’ proposed changes were a good path to follow. If it didn’t work a second time, then they could consider next steps.
Alderperson Doran noted that he had done a lot of work on the rebranding effort when he was a city employee. He spoke to a lot of the firms in the area and beyond and he knew people at several local firms which were some of the biggest branding and marketing firms in the area and “several of them noted that they were not aware of this RFP process.” He believed that redoing the RFP would result in new firms that didn’t apply the first time and would yield different results.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said she would like to hear from staff exactly what they believed the flaws in the system were and what could have been done better because she hadn’t heard that.
Mayor Woodford said that he had mentioned in the memo that had been sent to the committee and Council that additional scoring criteria should be incorporated into the process. He explained that for the original RFP, they had used a format similar to their architect selection RFP process. One of the things they learned after having gone through the process was that the internal review committee ended up placing significant weight not only on the content of the proposals but also the proposal design, likewise with the aesthetics of the presentations that had been delivered by the firms that had been asked to make presentations. He acknowledged that was still a subjective measure, but the review team did place a premium on it; however, it had not been reflected in the scoring of the proposals and the recommendation brought forth by the committee did not align with the scores given to the companies on paper. [That mismatch between scoring and the ultimate recommendation had led to some questions during the previous committee meeting.]
He said that would be one area where they could refine the process to make sure that they incorporated the full review process as it actually happened in practice.
He noted that the city hadn’t undertaken a branding exercise or logo design process in 30 or more years.
As for the matter of whether running the process again would yield a different result, he said that through the process and committee conversations that had happened and the interest awoken in members of the Council and the community it was certainly possible that they would see additional firms come forward.
He went on to say, “But I do think it’s worth noting as you discuss the motion to consider whether the Council’s actually ready to support a project and process like this. I think that’s an important question for this Council to think about, because we’re talking about significant resources being allocated to this project and ultimately a result that we all as community have to be behind and be supportive of. And I’m concerned about where we are in the project already where there doesn’t seem to be strong alignment among the Council around the project in general, and I think that’s a really important question for the Council to address for itself as you consider whether and how to proceed with this project.” He reminded them that the rebranding project was not a project from the Mayor’s Office but was rather an initiative from the Common Council which also allocated funds for it. “I think the Council needs to ask itself those questions before we proceed with a project like this.”
Alderperson Joe Martin (District 4) said that the current design dated back to 1987 and across all the different platforms it printed there were different shades of blue and purple so “a rebranding definitely needs to happen, and going out and reaching out for the right requests from the right players out there I think will be the right thing to do.”
Alderperson Van Zeeland thanked the mayor for his answers, but said that, based on discussions she’s had, she still firmly believed that going through the process again wasn’t going to necessarily yield different results. Her ultimate question was “What is in it for the citizens of Appleton in doing this rebrand?”
Mayor Woodford answered, “It’s challenging to quantify the return on a project like this. So, if the question is ‘What is the bottom-line impact gonna be for the taxpayers of the city of Appleton?’ I think the alderperson is as well positioned to answer that question as staff is.
“In terms of what the end result of a process and project like this can be, in addition to a new graphic identify for the city, it could also lead to a new branding or positioning statement for the city. Right now, ours is ‘Meeting community needs, enhancing quality of life’ which it has been now for many, many years. But in terms of a quantifiable outcome, um, difficult to pin that down. We don’t have survey data necessarily, we don’t even—I’m not aware of even anecdotes that would underscore the sort of ‘Well, I was thinking about moving to northeast Wisconsin and I was between Appleton and DePere, but DePere’s recently gone through a rebrand and I liked their logo better so I’m gonna move there.’ I don’t have an example like that to share.
“But in terms of graphic representation of the city I would argue that the most important aspect of it is to make sure that whatever it is it’s consistent.”
He thought that Alderperson Martin’s point about the different ways the current logo shows up underscored the importance of consistency across all of the city’s departments, but implementing that consistency had not been a high priority given the prospect of a rebranding effort coming.
He finished up by saying, “I don’t mean to say I don’t think this is a worth endeavor. I do. I think it’s important that the city have a graphic identity and positioning that represents who this community feels it is. So, I don’t mean to say that I don’t think that’s important, but I think in terms of quantifiable return I don’t know that anybody can confidently pin that down.”
Alderperson Van Zeeland said that was what she had been looking for and then stated, “I guess I feel uncomfortable putting this kind of funding behind something that we aren’t sure what we are going to get in return when we have the ability to be consistent, to put together a style guide, to—we’re in charge of the consistency here. And I’m not against something like this either, I just feel like we need to have more information before we spend this kind of money on something like this.”
[As a side note: I had reached out to the Finance Committee and Mayor Woodford in July of 2021 and asked them if there were any metrics to determine the economic impact of a city rebranding and how the city planned to track and report that to the public. You can read both Alderperson Van Zeeland’s and Mayor Woodford’s responses from that time.]
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) who is not a member of the committee, pointed out that the first action item the committee had considered was whether or not to spend a possible $35,000 to help fill the retiring Director Paula Vandehey’s position. They had spent a lot of time discussing various options for why they should or should not spend that $35,000, and that was for a situation in which there would be pretty quantifiable results. The original brand study had been a Council initiative; however, the resolution had been submitted by an alderperson who was on his way out as a sort of last act. At the time, she didn’t see the need to spend a lot of money on it, particularly given that at that time they had been in an incredibly tight budget year; however, “when we did the allocation that would have funded this study and the actions that would result from the study, I supported it because one of the things I was told that this would allow us to do was redesign the city’s website, and I, you know, I’m on that website every single day and I have trouble finding anything. And I would say a full 20% of questions I get from constituents is—are related to information that is available on the city’s website but nobody can find, so for that reason I supported this.”
But now the committee seemed to be dissatisfied with the results of the RFP that had been put out, the selected company had withdrawn from consideration, and she was not sure about the value of spending more time and resources on the project. She said that if it was voted out of committee, she would not support it at the Council.
[On the one hand, I very much agree that our city website could use some work and that things are not necessarily that easy to find even when you’re halfway competent at navigating the internet. At the same time, the sad, sad truth is that Appleton.org is actually one of the more functional and user-friendly municipal websites out there, and in some respects, we have no appreciation for how good we have it.]
Attorney Behrens wanted to clarify what the action was that was before the committee. The substitution that was moved and seconded mirrored Mayor Woodford’s memo from January 17th with the exception that the RFP would be due in June. The way Attorney Behrens interpreted that was that it would essentially function as a motion to hold the item at the committee to allow staff to do what was described in the motion for substitution at which point the staff would return to the committee in June with the information they had obtained similar to the process that was undertaken previously that lead up to this meeting. [Basically, it sounded like this item if passed as amended would not go on to the full Council for a vote but would instead result in a redo of the RFP process only with authorization from the committee and with no further vote by the Council.]
Alderperson Siebers confirmed that was the intent of the amendment.
Attorney Behrens wanted to make sure everyone understood it the same way prior to voting on it.
Alderperson Hartzheim said that, as had been mentioned, the brand study had been initiated by Council action, and, although she herself had not been a part of that Council, she thought that it behooved them to continue down the path they had set. The resolution had been passed and the resolution still stood. “I think a first misstep is not a reason to completely scrap the idea of where we are going in this regard.” She thought the next item on the agenda, the Resolution calling to reallocate the funds currently designated for the brand study and implementation, was in conflict with this current item and they were essentially pitting what they as a Council had already approved against something that the Council was now perhaps wanting to approve. It made her uncomfortable because she would like to follow through with what the Council approved in the first place before they got to the next step of what they would do as an alternative.
[I’m curious at what point it’s appropriate to change from a set course of action. Common Council is not an infallible body and it will make mistakes or simply, due to changes in members or knowledge find its preferences for something has changed. The State of Virginia recently withdrew from supporting the case against the Mississippi abortion bill due to a change in elected officials in key positions. Should Virginia have been expected to stay the course that had been set by the previous administration?]
Alderperson Siebers said he wanted to hear Alderperson Doran respond to some of the comments that had been made, given that he had invested a lot of time into the rebranding effort.
Alderperson Doran agreed with what Alderperson Hartzheim had said. The video became slightly glitchy, but it sounded to me like he harkened back to the mayor’s point, and agreed that there was no real quantifiable data they could point to demonstrate the rebranding effort’s success. He did, however, then state, “I guess what I would say is look at communities that have done it and see the excitement and the buzz and sort of the benefits that their communities have seen from it. That’s sort of an alternative way to measure the success of something like that.” He noted that Kaukauna, Oshkosh, and Grand Chute had all recently completed rebranding efforts. He said that people will tell you that branding can provide some significant community development benefits and that rebranding could actually help bring business in when a community stands for something that people are interested in. They may not necessarily come because they like what the city says about itself, but it was one of a number of factors that people might appreciate. “And branding goes beyond just the logo. So, it’s not just what you’re going to see behind you on the wall. It’s not just what the city flag is going to look like or what you might see on the water tower. It’s much more than just a logo; that’s a very small piece of it and the logo generally comes at the end of a branding project once the actual brand of the city is sort of developed and there’s a sense of what that community stands for. That helps inform what the logo ultimately will end up becoming.”
He reiterated that the process had already been approved and supported by the Common Council. If the other alderpersons wanted to change their minds on that, that was fine, but he thought the fact that they had already gone through this only to have some issues come up didn’t mean that they shouldn’t follow through on the process entirely. “A mistake the first time around doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed the next time around and have a better process.” He trusted staff to make the changes the mayor had talked about and he encouraged the committee to give staff the opportunity to study it some more and bring forward a new proposal.
Alderperson Van Zeeland said she was happy to relook at it at a different date if they could get data from other communities regarding what their rebranding had done for them. “I just don’t see anything that tells us what we’re going to get.” She didn’t think they were pitting one action item against another, and she didn’t think she was changing her mind. She felt she was in the same boat as Alderperson Fenton where she thought that redoing the website would be something that was worthwhile but that it was a package deal with the rebranding. However, after looking through everything, it seemed that they could redo the website on their own. So, she was not going to support this at this point, but if they could come back with some information showing what the City of Appleton would get from moving forward with the brand study, she would be happy to look at it again.
Alderperson Melter (District 2) said “From the beginning I felt very lukewarm about the brand study. My buy-in was really all around the website. I think that our website is a serious problem. For many years as an alderperson, I’ve been answering questions that people knew enough to try to answer for themselves but couldn’t figure out how they had failed, so then I had to help them find things that, as has been said before, they are there on our website.
“So, this brand study resolution has come forward. I’ve been trying to be as openminded as I can, give it as much of a chance as I can every step of the way, and I just—when the mayor put this new seal up behind us here [note: there was a new seal on the wall of the Common Council chambers] I felt a really moment of wow factor, and I felt really excited. But I have not felt any other wow come out of this whole process—not a single one.
“And as far as what the purpose of branding is, to establish who we are as a community, Appleton does not fail to do that. We are among the 10 other cities out there that recycle our names constantly in the top 10 lists in the New York Times and all of the other periodicals and publications. So, I think that in so far as our own brand logo might be inconsistent in color and things like that, we still do have a consistent identity as a community that we are communicating.
“So, I don’t see the timeliness. I think that with the RFP process the way it’s gone, I am completely fine with just putting this away and when Council feels—when people feel that the time is better, like, I’m not gonna say that there is something inherently wrong with rebranding, no. And like the Mayor said since 1994—so this is coming. I don’t think it needs to be in 2022, maybe not even 2023.”
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 2) asked Attorney Behrens if the conditions that the original Brand Study resolution had asked them to fulfill had been met by the process they had gone through up to this point.
Attorney Behrens responded that he thought that was really for the alderperson to determine. Staff had come back with a recommendation. There was discussion on it. The company that had been recommended had withdrawn. Now it was up to them to decide where they wanted to go from there and give staff direction accordingly.
Alderperson Firkus thanked him then said that even in the original discussions on the brand study and especially since it had come back up “I think there’s been some scrutiny of, like, what the value of this is. I think the process as it’s played out, it just makes it a little harder even to sell this to the community, that doing this as one big package is going to be the best use of our time, the best use of our resources. It feels like this was something—even when we had this discussion originally—it was something that was really carried by a few popular items.
“But beyond that, some of the stuff here, like, with the branding and image, I mean, it sounds like we’re trying to sell to the community that we want to pay someone else to tell us what we stand for, and it just feels like something we are capable of doing as a community ourselves.
“I think probably now that things have played out as they have, this is a good time to examine some other options and maybe the best way for us to go with something this size is to break it into smaller pieces, take on a few chunks at a time, and make it—we’ll get there eventually but let’s kind of focus on maybe a few items here and a few items there, and eventually build up to something like this. Let’s focus on the things that we can do that have more immediate, more public-facing tangible—things you can really see and get an actual benefit out of first, and then kind of review some of these other aspects maybe a little bit later.”
Alderperson Matt Reed (District 8 ) had a few points after listening to everyone’s feedback. “I personally don’t have any problem at all with gathering information of other communities [regarding] what benefits they’ve gleaned from doing this. I think that’s a wise avenue. I don’t think it’s an all or nothing. I don’t think it’s necessarily necessary to stop this process. I mean, I will say from my time on Council, there’s always necessary things we have to take care of. There’s never a time that’s perfect for any given project, necessarily, so to say ‘let’s put it on hold’ and then it may come up a different year—maybe, but it’s not gonna change, and in the meantime our logo and our branding and our marketing information is getting more and more dated. I mean, we talk all the time about the importance of marketing for professionals, bringing other people into the community, recruiting and so forth. I think this could be a key component of that as far as an image goes. And again, it’s not just the logo; there’s a lot more to it. The website certainly would be part of that rebranding and redesign process—because I agree the website needs a large amount of redo, needs some not just tweaking, it needs an overhaul. So, I think that would definitely come under this umbrella.”
He also thought it was a faulty assumption that because the first group of interested firms was limited that they would get that same result if they ran the RFP process again. If they tweaked the process and further specified what they were looking for he thought they could bring a more successful and widely supported product to the table.
They probably had some people on staff that had some experience in website redesign, but that’s not what the city does, so he thought it was important to bring an outside firm in to do the work and help them. That’s why the RFP process exists and why they hire firms to help with various projects, because maybe the city doesn’t have the expertise and an outside firm could bring value.
Alderperson Hartzheim didn’t like the idea of doing a few items here and there and said, “a few items here or there is how we got to where we are right now, where there’s an inconsistent logo across the city, where there’s not really a firm brand that we stand for.” Yes, they all understood what Appleton stands for and could be advocates for that, but she didn’t think they should be putting things together piecemeal without a true focus on the brand. She agreed the website was not where it should be, but if they revamped the entire website, they would have to go back and revamp it all again if the branding did get changed. “I think putting too much of a brake on now is what could cause our problems going forward.” They wanted the website changed and fixed quickly, but the way to do that was to begin by figuring out what the branding should be and then push that as the next step.
Alderperson Doran reiterated. He thought almost everyone shared a concern about the website, “But doing the website now before we do branding is not the correct order to do that in.” He thought they would be throwing money away because they would end up redoing the website with a new brand. He stressed that rebranding was a much more involved process than just changing the logo on the website. It wasn’t that simple. If they were planning on doing a rebranding any time in the next number of years, he thought the website should follow the rebranding process not go before it.
[I really wish he would have explained in more detail why rebranding couldn’t just involve switching out one logo for another on the website.]
Alderperson Siebers told the committee it was time to vote. The motion to amend failed by a 3-2 vote with Alderpersons Siebers and Reed being the two who voted aye.
Alderperson Siebers asked Attorney Behrens where that left them
Attorney Behrens responded that they were back to the original action item and needed to decide what to do with that.
Alderperson Siebers somewhat lightheartedly asked if he could help them decide what to do with that. I heard some chuckles in the room.
Although Attorney Behrens couldn’t tell them what to do, he did give them an option by saying that on this particular item at this point in time, recommending to deny it would basically end it. They could also amend it to include some kind of direction.
Alderperson Melter made a motion to deny, seconded by Alderperson Van Zeeland.
Alderperson Reed wanted to clarify what denial would do. The unamended item had Unlisted, LLC as the recommended company, but they had withdrawn. If someone were to vote against the denial would that even do anything because Unlisted was not involved in the process any longer.
Attorney Behrens agreed that was true. If someone wanted to approve the item then they would need to provide some sort of clarification through an amendment of what the next step would be since Unlisted, LLC had withdrawn.
Alderperson Van Zeeland decided she would rather table the item indefinitely at committee, so procedurally, she and Alderperson Melter removed their motion and second to deny so that Alderperson Van Zeeland could then make a motion to table indefinitely which Alderperson Meltzer then seconded.
Alderperson Doran asked, for clarification, what the process would be for bringing the item back up.
Attorney Behrens said that an indefinite hold was the equivalent of killing an item at committee. To bring it forward would be at the call of the committee chairperson. Also, holding it at the committee would not preclude a future resolution on the same topic from being brought forward.
Alderperson Doran also wanted to clarify that an item held at committee would not go on to the Council because they didn’t have a denial for the Council to take action on. All they had was a hold at the committee level.
That was correct.
Alderperson Siebers asked if, when they had a new Council in April, could a resolution come forward similar to the one they had there, and Attorney Behrens confirmed that it could.
Alderperson Siebers said they could keep that in mind. When they had a new Council, the matter could be brought before the committee or Council via another resolution.
They then voted on the motion to hold the item indefinitely. The motion passed 3-2 with alderpersons Meltzer, Firkus, and Van Zeeland voting in favor and Siebers and Reed voting against.
[Well, I’m a little surprised that this happened, but I can’t actually say I’m disappointed as I seriously question the value of rebranding a city. For example, I am in Grand Chute nearly as often as I’m in Appleton, but I had no idea they had recently completed a rebranding effort. I can guarantee that, regardless of their new logo or the fact that, apparently, they want people to “experience better”, I will always think of Grand Chute first and foremost as the birthplace of Joe McCarthy.
At the same time, I’m a little curious why, if what Alderperson Doran said was accurate, several local branding and marketing companies were unaware that Appleton had put out an RFP for a branding study.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=921479&GUID=F3E54127-9E2B-4E8F-8D2A-13B9B918D3F1
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