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Bay comes out, sunshine goes into new city logo
By BRYAN GILMER
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- The change in the city's marketing logo is subtle: The text now reads, "Florida's Sunshine City," not "On Florida's Tampa Bay." Though it first may seem like another attempt to move St. Petersburg out of the shadow of Tampa, it's really an attempt to build the city's own reputation on sunshine, says city marketing director Anita Treiser. "The real rationale behind it was that we unveiled a new image campaign for the city," she said. "We have a new brochure and video, and we wanted to carry the theme through. Every couple of years, we kind of freshen that up." The marketing staff decided that returning to the decades-old Sunshine City moniker would summon the right image of St. Petersburg in the mind of a prospective visitor or business looking for a nice place to relocate. The term derives from Evening Independent editor Maj. Lew B. Brown's early 20th century "sunshine offer," his practice of giving the newspaper away free any day the sun didn't shine. He seldom had to, and the offer made people nationally think of the city as a sunny place. The city's new promotional video, "St. Petersburg, the Sunshine City," returns to that retro marketing pitch -- and lays it on thick. "St. Petersburg was a city that boomed while the big bands played throughout the '20s, '30s and '40s," a narrator coos. "The Sunshine City became the glamorous starlet of Florida's great land boom." Noting the recent success of commerce in the Gateway area and the renaissance of downtown, the video says that "St. Petersburg enters its second golden age glistening under the Florida sun; it feels like a city that's on a never-ending summer vacation." The image campaign's printed materials borrow themes from classic tourist picture postcards, juxtaposing retro lettering and purple and orange sunshine graphics against photos of modern St. Petersburg. As the video's narrator puts it, "With a bright eye looking toward the future and a smile at its historic past, the Sunshine City sparkles into a new golden age."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
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