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Associatd PressIdea are pouring in - some sarcastic, some sophisticated. The city will host the Super Bowl in February.
JACKSONVILLE - Forget "River City," or "The Bold New City of the South," or the capital of Florida's "First Coast."
Jacksonville is scrambling to find a new, catchier slogan in time for the city's hosting of the Super Bowl in February, and the suggestions are pouring in.
They range from the serious - "Florida's North Star," "Sun City of the South" and "Florida's Crown Jewel" - to the obviously tongue-in-cheek - "Cockroach Capital of the South," "Mayberry, Only Bigger," and "Jacksonville, It's Not that Bad."
For now, the firm that is being paid $91,000 in taxpayer dollars for the "re-branding" campaign isn't giving any hints which way it is leaning.
But the process of searching for just the right catchphrase to catapult this traditionally blue-collar burg into big-city status has been tried before.
The still-official moniker, "The Bold New City of the South," dates back to when Lyndon Johnson was president and Jacksonville was known mainly by the acrid aroma of now-defunct paper mills. It was a city where tourists had to wait for a drawbridge on Interstate 95 on their way south to Orlando and Miami.
"It's a bit dated," admitted Heather Murphy, spokeswoman for Mayor John Peyton.
"River City" is a moniker often applied to Jacksonville because its downtown is split by the St. Johns River, one of the few northern flowing rivers in the world. The "First Coast" slogan actually refers to the sprawling region stretching from the Georgia line down to St. Augustine.
Jim Dalton, president of the Dalton Agency, which has the city contract, said the idea is for the city of 773,000 to capitalize on the Super Bowl spotlight.
The Super Bowl will be played Feb. 6 in Alltel Stadium in the NFL's second- smallest market, ahead only of Green Bay, Wis. What the city lacks in hotel rooms will be made up by docking cruise ships on the St. Johns River near the stadium.
Dalton, whose firm is also the official advertising and public relations agency for the Super Bowl, said the new slogan should be ready by August or September.
Jacksonville residents aren't waiting. They've inundated City Hall, Dalton's agency and the hometown newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, with dozens of unsolicited suggestions.
Jacksonville resident Andre Ellis played on the theme of bridges, sending in 10 suggested slogans, most of them mentioning water. Among them: "America's River City," "The Bridge Over Southern Waters," and "City of Bridges."
The National Football League apparently likes the bridge idea. The Super Bowl XXXIX slogan is "Building Bridges" and the game's logo has a bridge on it.
"It reflects the literal Jacksonville landscape, with the many bridges that unite the community," NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in May while attending an NFL owners meeting in the Jacksonville area.
Dalton said it's doubtful his agency would consider any of the submitted slogan ideas, because "people don't have access to all the research we do. It's not always what you like best, but what works best."
But he said the interest sparked by the search shows "people are really passionate about this city."