By: Leon Stafford

July 19, 2006, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When the 1996 Olympics rolled into town, Atlanta boosters hoped the city wouldn't have to worry about branding again.

Throughout the Summer Games they expected billions to gaze at the skyline, countless articles to be written about every permutation of Peachtree, and millions to make a beeline to Hartsfield Airport after partaking of good old Southern hospitality.

The officials even cooked up a theme, "Come Celebrate Our Dream."

But a decade later, the city is in the middle of a multimillion-dollar branding campaign designed to do what the Games did not --- sell Atlanta as a destination.

Since last fall, the city --- under a public-private partnership called Brand Atlanta --- has pushed a new advertising campaign, logo and tagline in an attempt to establish Atlanta as a vacation and convention paradise.

Why didn't the Olympics do the job?

Those involved in the effort to brand Atlanta during that time say the attempt fell short for two reasons: the July 27, 1996, bombing at Centennial Olympic Park and a lack of attractions to draw people back after the Games' close.

When the bomb ripped through the heart of the central gathering point for the event --- killing Alice Hawthorne of Albany --- the city's carefully crafted image was sullied.

"You can do all you can, but it is pretty hard to stop somebody from doing something crazy," said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a branding expert. "You can reduce the chances of a problem, but you can never give a 100 percent guarantee you'll avoid it."

And while the Olympics brought infrastructure improvements and notoriety to Atlanta, the city did not gain any one-of-a-kind attractions that would distinguish it from the pack. Only later would Centennial Olympic Park and Turner Field prove to be economic and tourism drivers.

"To be a destination, you have to have an attraction that people want to come to see," said Joel Babbit, who headed the city's communications department during the Games. He's now involved in the current branding campaign as chief creative officer for Grey Worldwide Atlanta.

The Olympics may not have turned Atlanta into an overnight sensation, but the Games did move the needle by giving the city an image as an international player.

"I don't think there is any question that the Olympics put Atlanta on the map as a global city," Calkins said. "Brands are formed when they get attention."

Bill Howard, who led the branding effort for the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau --- the city's main tourism and convention organ --- said the Olympics laid the groundwork for the city's current status as a tourist attraction, with places like the Georgia Aquarium.

"People wanted that to happen immediately, but it didn't," he said. "But we knew it was coming."

The red carpet

Howard said the branding game plan for the Olympics took shape in 1991 when the boosters began reaching out to any and all journalists who might be interested in hearing about the city.

From that point to the start of the event, city leaders worked with 400 to 500 broadcast and print media from all over the world, he said. More than 15,000 journalists covered the Games.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce also helped the effort to brand the city by reaching out to airlines, which added Atlanta to their list of destinations, said Bill Crane, a former chamber staffer who now works for the Atlanta office of public relations firm GCI Group. That helped make Atlanta accessible to more visitors.

The business and hospitality communities also stepped up. The ACVB, which always has worked with a small budget, received $4.1 million from the corporate community to spend on branding for 1995 and 1996.

It was a minuscule amount compared to similar cities, but it's the most money the Atlanta group ever had for such an effort, said Gregory Pierce, the tourism organization's chief financial officer.

There was a catch, though: The money was to be used in co-branding the city with its corporate powerhouses. So instead of just talking about Atlanta, the advertisements also promoted Delta Air Lines or Southern Co.

And while most of the effort to persuade journalists of Atlanta's appeal went off flawlessly, there were glitches, Howard said.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games reserved many prime hotel rooms for sponsors, leaving impressionable reporters in less-than-deluxe surroundings. An example: The housing complex at Clark Atlanta University, slated to lodge 475 journalists, was still under construction when the folks arrived. They were taken to the Atlanta Union Mission while electrical wiring was installed and Sheetrock taped and painted.

The city's ballyhooed telecommunications improvements also failed temporarily, leaving Atlanta with egg on its face.

Among the least enthused journalists were those visiting from Greece. Still smarting from losing the Games in a surprise upset to Atlanta --- many assumed the birthplace of the Olympics would easily win the event on its 100th anniversary --- the country's reporters were only marginally impressed by a trip they took to the Margaret Mitchell House, home of the author of "Gone With the Wind."

"They said, 'You give us old photographs,' " Howard said. " 'In Greece, we would have given you art.' "

Atlanta did try to be accommodating, he said, putting together a welcome center that catered to media large and small. The ACVB and city leaders held daily briefings there and on the roof of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce that Howard thinks helped put in perspective the message Atlanta was trying to send to the world.

"It wasn't about changing perceptions because they didn't have one [about Atlanta]," he said of many in the press, especially those from outside the United States. "They didn't know us."

Said Babbit: "To some degree, Atlanta was just on the verge of where we are today."

Global player

Even as recently as two years ago, Atlanta was still a city without a discernible brand.

Today, the city has a new logo, a tagline --- "Every Day is an Opening Day" --- and an anthem, "The ATL."

This time the boosters believe Atlanta has something new to promote, including an upcoming exhibit from the Louvre at the expanded High Museum of Art, food and entertainment at Atlantic Station, ongoing activity at the Aquarium, the 2007 opening of a new World of Coca-Cola and, of course, the new Centennial Olympic Games Museum at the Atlanta History Center.

Unlike campaigns of the past, there is a budget.

Mayor Shirley Franklin has said she plans to dedicate $14 million over the next two years to Brand Atlanta to promote the city. While that doesn't begin to touch the more than $65 million that Las Vegas --- the leader in city advertising --- spends annually, it's a big improvement for Atlanta, officials with the campaign said.

Those dollars will be added to any corporate funding that might be raised and donated services like free TV airtime for commercials.

And that comes without strings, Pierce said.

"Sometimes you can dilute your message," he said, recalling how the city had to share time with its sponsors in the Olympic ads. "That's what we like about the Brand Atlanta campaign. It's not diluted. It's all about Atlanta."