Soap Lake reveals a new branding campaign

SOAP LAKE — “Soap Lake, your cure for the ordinary.” Soap Lake residents will likely be seeing that tagline everywhere they turn in the city in the future, as the city’s new branding campaign was revealed Wednesday night and is nearing implementation.

The Soap Lake City Council previously permitted the Soap Lake Chamber of Commerce to engage with the consulting and branding agency owned by Kittitas County Chamber of Commerce Director of Tourism Amy McGuffin to start a branding effort for the city.

McGuffin obtained public input on the branding effort through roundtable discussions in the city. She gathered that information and in turn contracted with the South Carolina-based Arnett Muldrow & Associates to come up with a distinctive typeface, tagline, icons, color palette and other components that go into the successful branding of a city. The effort of several months of planning and design was revealed by McGuffin and Tripp Muldrow, of Arnett Muldrow & Associates, during Wednesday night’s council meeting.

“The purpose behind it, we really wanted to work with the chamber of commerce and its partners throughout the community to have a consistent image system, first and foremost to build community pride,” Muldrow explained. “All too often we sort of jump ahead to the tourism aspect of things, but before we jump ahead to the tourism we want to be able to say, ‘this really represents who we are. This represents the kind of community we are and what we are proud of.’”

“And then from there we are encouraging visitors to take part in this and then also use this as a tool to leverage economic development.”

The reveal of the city’s new typeface, tagline, icons, color pallet and brand statement was met by near universal acclaim by the packed crowd at city hall. The collective excitement went up another notch when Muldrow revealed the city’s new tagline, “Soap Lake, your cure for the ordinary.”

From deployment strategies on different types of merchandise and signs, to even the design of a logo for the chamber of commerce and the city’s upcoming centennial, Muldrow explained the branding process is all encompassing and can act as a catalyst for economic revitalization in the future.

“I don’t think you guys know how big this is going to be, but I predict that this branding and marketing is going to set Soap Lake on an accelerated trajectory to become one of the top tourist destinations in the state of Washington. We’ll be in top 10, you just watch,” Mayor Raymond Gravelle told the audience with a slight grin.

Later in the meeting the council passed a resolution to submit an application to trademark the city’s new tagline, the design of the new logo and the new color palette. Included in the branding process is a new website and Facebook page, which can be viewed by visiting www.yourcurefortheordinary.com and www.facebook.com/Visit-Soap-Lake-1925560434394412.

Richard Byrd can be reached via email at city@columbiabasinherald.com.