Mariachi music, folk dancers, indigenous groups and an uplifting promotional video were all part of this week’s splashy roll out of a new branding campaign for the metropolitan area, appropriately titled ”Guadalajara, Guadalajara,” named for the opening line of the famous song penned by José “Pepe” Guízar Morfín.
The idea is that nine metro-area municipal governments, as well as the private sector, will utilize this new identity/slogan for the city in their tourism promotion campaigns, as well as other programs.
A trust fund (fiedeicomisio) will be set up to promote the brand, to be administered by the Instituto Metropolitano de Planeación (Imeplan).
At this week’s launch at the Degollado Theater, Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval said he hoped the brand would be more than a simple slogan, but enrich the identity of the city with “sense, direction and prosperity.”
For many years Guadalajara has been referred to as the City of the Roses, although this moniker is somewhat redundant today since the number of plants in the metropolitan area has declined significantly in recent years.
Many Mexicans will connect with the “Guadalajara, Guadalajara” slogan thanks to their knowledge of the famous song. However, there is a danger that it will fail to resonate with most foreigners who are unfamiliar with the catchy tune.
The idea for the branding project and the logo came from Guadalajara city hall. Following this week’s launch, several social media sites devoted to the graphic arts criticized its simplistic design, which it said is a direct copy of one developed by the Centro Cultural Santa Mónica in Barcelona, Spain. Mayor Enrique Alfaro had boasted that the design had not cost city hall a single centavo. However, he was called out by graphic designers for employing the same colors and musical arrangements in the promotional video that he used in his election campaign under the banner of the Citizen’s Movement.