Last night at the annual meeting of the City Center Partnership in the Tapp’s Arts Center, Columbia’s just-re-elected mayor got up to speak, and urged those present to address him henceforth as Steve “Landslide” Benjamin.
Yes, it was a joke. Everybody laughed. (Although when it was mentioned at another meeting I attended today over lunch, mayoral aide Sam Johnson said yeah, he was trying to discourage “Landslide” from calling himself that. Also joking. I think.)
Over at ADCO, we were particularly pleased to see the above cover on last week’s Free Times. On account of, you know, we came up with “Famously Hot.” I really enjoy the fun that Free Times has with the brand, such as on this cover last year.
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Does anyone actually use “famously hot”? The city spent a ton of money on this, I’ve never heard anyone actually every use the phrase.
The answer to that is a huge “YES!” I’ve got a PowerPoint file that the Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports and Tourism (which was our client for the project, not the city) that has hundreds of examples. Unfortunately, the file is way too big to load onto here — 253 MB.
Occasionally, I take note of particular references to the brand on ADCO’s blog. Here’s what you get when you search for “Famously Hot” on that site. I let most references go by, and just take note of ones that particularly grab my attention in some way…
And I don’t want to pick on previous efforts or anything, but this is the ONLY such effort this community has ever made that caught on the way this has.
“Where Friendliness Flows,” anyone?
It’s happening now!
Here’s one of my favorite uses, from a Gamecocks football game a couple of years back…
Decimating 😉 a weak rival ought not give one airs or delusions of power or mandate.
Contrary to The State paper’s assertion, the fact that many of us could not bring ourselves to vote for Moe does not validate the strong mayor push, funded by outside money and run by the mayoral campaign crew.
Others of us agree that The State’s editorial was dead on. Don’t like the mayor? Vote for a different one. Let everyone have their say.
I liked the mayor fine, until he went all Godzilla on us! I was a bit uneasy as he rammed through PCW though glad it was saved, and increasingly alarmed as he steamrolled his agenda thereafter. Still, he is unquestionably more competent than his challenger, so I voted for him. Lesser of evils, perhaps. Everyone I talked to did likewise, and while it is a skewed sample of activists, it is a large and knowledgable one.
Here’s Mayor Benjamin flexing his muscles when a WIS reporter dared asked him a question about
The Village at Rivers Edge.
http://www.wistv.com/story/24034314/mayor-to-wis-reporter-jody-grow-up
Nice to see a reporter do this.
That was a rather silly piece of street theater. Think about it — is that how you get information? No, it’s about ambushing a guy and hoping to get a reaction that you can put on TV.
It reminds me of what Geraldo Rivera used to do back in the 70s — which I, as a journalist, found embarrassing.
The difference is that Geraldo seemed to enjoy the confrontation. I don’t think Jody was enjoying this. I felt for him, watching that.
And then there’s the text on the website: “A WIS investigation into a Columbia housing project has uncovered Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin’s ties to the development, which is now at the center of a federal investigation.”
And then what followed that self-dramatizing buildup was a bunch of background that I’ve read in The State in the past.
Of course, maybe I missed something. But if there was something that WIS and WIS alone has “uncovered” in that story, it didn’t jump out at me.
If the mayor is in any way culpable for anything in this deal, it will come out from new documents being discovered, or in the form of a federal indictment. It will NOT come from forcing awkward scenes in public places.
The assumption is that Mayor Benjamin would accept requests from the media to sit down formally to discuss his involvement. Do we know if Jody Barr was rejected on that request?