I.SEOUL.U:
KONGLISH GOES GLOBAL AND THE CASE FOR THIS SLOGAN
I need you. I want you. I seoul you….
Yep, this here is the new branded slogan to be used locally and also globally in Seoul’s promotional efforts – tourism promotion, investment promotion, export promotion.
Does it deliver a key message? Does it spark emotion? Does it compress data? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
I was offered the opportunity to play a (very small) part in this process and declined – having been disillusioned and frankly hugely pissed off when I was on the sidelines of the shambolic “Hi Seoul” campaign (if you can call it that) back in the MB mayoral days.
But seeing as everyone, his cousin and his dog is seizing the low hanging fruit; lambasting the new slogan for our fair cityl and suggesting their own (supposedly) brilliant alternatives, let me present a different perspective. Three points:
(1) With a touch of irony and with a nod to humour in usage, this could work: it is offbeat and funky enough. (Though yes, I know: The campaigns which actually use this slogan will be crass, trite, cutesy and crap, and no Seoul bureaucrat worth his salt would dare include those characteristics. But even so…there is potential).
(2) English is a world language, flexible enough to accommodate non-native usage. And the audience for this is not necessarily native speakers; For example, in tourism promotion, the main audience is Chinese and Japanese. Something this simple (subject-verb-object) might just speak to them when something cleverer and more sophisticated might not.
(3) Frankly: Who gives a flying fuck? Seoul has enough assets in place – a huge variety of assets, from taekwondo to high technology – to not need a silly, unprofessional and bureaucratic slogan. Organically, the city has already becoming one of the world’s great metropolises: IOW, the substance beats the branding.
For more on the latter thought, a previous column:
(Incidentally, my original title was “Damn These Korean Branders!” but the sub-ed toned it down. Also, the self-described “PR expert” Seo Kyung-duk, referenced below for his nationalist Times Squares “ads,” was on the latest Seoul branding committee….)
http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=123415