A Dallas-Fort Worth slogan

[Greatguy]

Hi everyone. I am new here, but this looked like and interesting forum. Increasingly, we hear about how the whole DFW area is becoming a unified urban region. No surprise there, but I am not aware of any organization outside of a few, such as the North Central Texas Council of Governments and maybe DFW International Airport, which promotes the whole region, with a possible exception of individual efforts by assorted local politicos. Is there such an organizational animal, and what exactly does it do? I also notice there is no unifying slogan for the area. This came to me recently and it is a play on the geographical location which is unique to DFW. I stayed away from anything such as Metroplex (I hate that word, it even sounds contrived). I am struck with Fort Worth's reference to the West, but Dallas doesn't have a real geographical presence. Some people may say the "South" or "Southern" but to be honest, DFW doesn't feel Southern to me (I have traveled there many times and t'ain't the same). I have always wondered why there was little reference to something hiding in plain sight, the culture of the Great Plains! So here is my first effort at this and no doubt, it might need some word-smithing, but here it is:
DFW: The West + Great Plains = Diversity, Unified! (I did say it was a first try, don't shoot the newbie.) Thanks.

[DPatel304]

So you're talking about the Dallas equivalent of "Keep Austin weird", or something to that effect? With DFW changing as much as it is, I think it's a great idea. So many people still seem to be stuck in the past and think Texas is all a bunch of racist conservatives.

Bullzerk (local clothing company) has some pretty awesome Dallas slogans:
https://www.bullzerk.com/

Honestly, my favorite one might be this one: "Keep Dallas Boring"
https://www.bullzerk.com/products/keep- ... 2126917953

Compared to Austin, Dallas has a reputation for being boring (strongly disagree with it). But I kinda think it would be funny/cool to just embrace this reputation and use it ironically.

[The_Overdog]

Honestly, I don't think there should even be a regional slogan turning 'DFW' into some indistinguishable morass, and in fact believe the opposite that the cities should be doing a lot more to differentiate themselves from one another. I think if you combine them into a 'single region', you do what's best for the region often at the expense of the city, but we pay taxes and expect services at the city level, not the regional level.

If we want to market DFW as a single entity, combine the govt, school, and taxing at the region first before we do anything else.

[I45Tex]

I think "consolidating" many of the cities' and the four core counties' administrative functions (serving 6.6 million or more than 22% of all Texans*) would be no wilder a boondoggle than what we've already got, but, short-term, would probably hasten the flight to the far exurbs just across the county line.


New member Greatguy, thanks very much for some excellent thoughts. I hope you'll put up with us! The Metroplex definitely has a "trademarked-in-1972" feel to it, which is exactly what it was. It still feels like truth in advertising to me (drive around most of Irving, Garland, Arlington, or Duncanville, and it feels fresh out of the oven of that era of artificial non-urban form) ...but I definitely see how that is not the collective image that a slogan's going for.


While Texas in the cities is quite diverse now (outside of the metro areas, it's actually losing population, as a rule) my instinct would be to zero in on friendliness. The filthy-rich country-club oil-person "brand" has affected Dallas' and Fort Worth's perception nationally, it's true: but the major part of the citizenry in our area still has a friendlier cultural attitude than what is normal in the East Coast, the Great Lakes, the South, Midwest, Northwest, or California. It is a strength of ours that a newcomer can be culturally accepted by most folks without flashing many of the pieces of flair that make you acceptable/desirable in the West or in the East. To the extent that cities like Nashville or Vegas offer islands of this in their regions, they're tremendously smaller islands than North Texas.

* https://www.dshs.texas.gov/chs/popdat/st2018.shtm

[tamtagon]

I wouldn't try anything more than DFW. A hefty attempt was made to brand the region as "North Texas" for the superbowl, but there was no follow thru so no chance that could have stuck anywhere outside the region... I'm glad for that, too. North Texas is a university, or geographic region like Southern California or South Florida, whatever.

[cowboyeagle05]

There are regional organizations who do the marketing as well. For example, the Dallas Regional Chamber promotes more than Dallas centric stuff. Business Associations usually don't have the limits since they are full of businessmen looking to market the area based on what sells and Dallas only marketing when it comes to these groups isn't enough in most cases unless you are Amazon demanding an inner-city style move.

https://www.dallaschamber.org/why-dalla ... dfw-facts/

Also, the North Texas Commission has credited itself with the Metroplex marketing side: http://ntc-dfw.org/

Keep in mind the DFW proposals for Amazon HQ2 were assembled and submitted by the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce and Fort Worth Chamber in a joint effort. The term Metroplex was in fact invented by North Texas business groups to market us as a distinctly new kind of metropolitan area. It's not a slogan but I personally like the word to describe our massively developing two poled metro area. They instead created our own vocabulary which is credited to us in books for that matter and in some ways that's better than a slogan.

The problem with marketing everything as one "Diversity, Unified!" which I like actually would be difficult since what you have are Regional Chambers, Conventioneers Bureaus, and cities with competing marketing efforts along with joint projects when something as big as Amazon HQ2 comes along. You are not going to eliminate the smaller players to consolidate. Dallas has to be the one to put its best forward and so does Plano for that matter. Plano now has Legacy and that's because they marketed themselves well along with developers they were partnering with. They all already point to each other's advantages without concern for city boundaries when marketing themselves so I am not sure what the purpose would be of another brochure and marketing department churning out more stuff that Dallas Regional Chamber and Fort Worth Chamber tend to already cover well.

Legacy West, when it was being marketed to companies like Toyota, pointed to DART, DFW, and Love Field despite Love Field being in Dallas. I am sure they also mentioned the Arts District if the occasion called for it throwing in how fast and easy it is to get to Dallas or other areas in blah blah blah mins etc.

What you could take away from all this is how does these groups market DFW in their own ways? I guarantee they all push how diverse the region is a multitude of ways not just in the types of people we have here and if anything they all participate in a regional marketing catalog anyway most likely.

[I45Tex]

I wouldn't try anything more than DFW. A hefty attempt was made to brand the region as "North Texas" for the superbowl, but there was no follow thru so no chance that could have stuck anywhere outside the region... I'm glad for that, too. North Texas is a university, or geographic region like Southern California or South Florida, whatever.

Long comment coming, but national reports in any field of news will definitely refer to us as -
1) North Texas
2) Dallas-Fort Worth
3) DFW

I agree with tamtagon that the first connotes "East Carolina" or what have you, a school more than a metro for sure. But for slogan purposes, look at Greatguy's original post: his slogan gives a familiar name - informal, a nickname - and then alongside it a motto that drives home what it offers that is relevant to someone.

The Metroplex is just not going to be used nationally, and even "the DFW Metroplex" is unlikely --shout out, though, to our clever West Texas rivals, the Petroplex!
The problem is that 2) and 3) won't actually move the ball for branding. Dallas-Fort Worth is no kind of nickname (it's a formal geography label) and just as NYC and OKC were good for branding, DFW was a nice counterpart until so many more North American cities scrambled onto that 'brandwagon' with three letters sometimes copied from their airport (PDX, PVD, Jax, the ATL, the CLE...), sometimes not (MTL, ATX, The DYT, RVA for Richmond, sometimes even EPT for El Paso).

It will be tough, for reasons just shown, to use DFW as a way of messaging anyone distinctively anymore.
Since the IATA (Int'l Air Transport Assoc.) codes are pretty much set in stone for safety reasons, though, DFW is never going to be relabeled, and we could play off of that by rebranding the region when Fort Worth's population surpasses Dallas' -- FWD will always imply Forward, and that's a good thing to imply about your metropolis. Now we'd just need a motto to drive home that nickname as something that matters, and then we'd have at least a rough draft of a slogan.


FWD: Diversity, Unified. It certainly communicates something, but just as 'groovy' is so 1967, 'diverse' may date itself and be so 2017 in the same way. Not knocking diversity or grooviness, either one, but just pointing out that they have a kind of relevance or currency that has a sell-by date. Timelessness is a better bet for us, especially as it does give room for individual cities to pitch their own features within that theme. Perhaps, 'FWD: West+East, Unified.'

What do y'all think? Ignore for a moment that Dallas boosters would kick and scream; fair is fair, so if Dallas got to go first while it was largest, then I think the usual boosters would have to pipe down eventually.

[PonyUp13]

Fort Worth is just Dallas’ is largest suburb. Brand Dallas as Dallas and let the rest of the Metroplex call themselves the “Dallas area”

[Tnexster]

Fort Worth is just Dallas’ is largest suburb. Brand Dallas as Dallas and let the rest of the Metroplex call themselves the “Dallas area”

Fort Worth's greatest fear, being labeled a suburb of Dallas.

[DPatel304]

Fort Worth is just Dallas’ is largest suburb. Brand Dallas as Dallas and let the rest of the Metroplex call themselves the “Dallas area”

I was thinking the exact opposite. Fort Worth should make even bigger strides to differentiate itself from the Dallas, as should Plano, as should Denton, as should Las Colinas, etc..

I'm not saying each and every suburb needs to do this, but as places like Plano and Las Colinas continue to grow, it'd be nice to see them distinguish themselves from other suburbs.

Growing up in DFW, one of my biggest complaints about DFW is that you have to drive for hours before getting to the next decent city, unlike places like the northeast where cities are much closer together. I know comparing us to the northeast is absurd, but, at the same time, perhaps, as DFW grows, we could re-create that feeling within DFW. Instead of feeling like one big metroplex, each suburb could try and distinguish itself and create it's own feel.

[I45Tex]

In Census 2000, Fort Worth had 45% of Dallas' 1.2MM population, sure. Now Big D is around 1.3MM and what some would like to call its suburb has already jumped from 535K to just about 900K. Panther Island really is going to blow Victory out of the water, too... I think the FWD idea with West + East keeps the umbrella message manageably simple and meaningful for people to work with, where in my experience that message to outsiders just gets confusing or garbled when huge regions like Boston, Chicago and SoCal have done the infinite local differentiation of unique feels that DPatel suggests.