Found this funny blog post about the Ohio plates and plate trends in general:
The Branding on Your Bumper
6/1/2010 | Mark Szczepanik
Driving cross country in the "way back" of my family's wood-paneled 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser station wagon, I became quite adept at recognizing each state's license plates. That was 20-some years ago, when it was easy to tell the difference. Now it seems every state offers specialty plates celebrating everything from wildlife to the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center. Has this trend gotten out of hand? Consider that at least six states have plates saluting square dancing (Alabama, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Washington and West Virginia.) Florida offers at least 115 designs.
So how did we get here? In a recent article on DelawareOnline, Tim Stentiford, a member of the American License Plate Collectors Association and editor of its magazine, explains:
For the first eight or nine decades, license plates had one sole purpose, and that was for law enforcement -- both to demonstrate that the driver had paid his or her motor vehicle registration fees as well as providing a unique identifier for law enforcement purposes," Stentiford said.
But when states began issuing specialty tags -- both as revenue generators and to mark special events -- the proliferation began.
Not everyone is in favor of all this consumer choice. Illinois State Senator Dan Rutherford is an opponent of specialty plates, citing how numerous designs make it difficult for law enforcement officers to identify the plates. I agree with the Senator's stance but for a different reason - branding.
Think about it. License plates appear on every legally registered and driven car. And depending on the commuting pattern of your residents, that plate could take your state’s brand message all over the world. But many states are willing to trade this for a few bucks.
How many opportunities is your brand selling, trading or simply giving away?
Then again, it seems that few states have the ability or the guts to produce a singular brand message. Which I'm pretty sure is a result of having elected officials in charge of marketing dollars. A politician's longevity is directly linked to keeping the majority of people happy. That doesn't work so well for branding. You can't be everything to everyone. Try and your message becomes diluted, bland and often horrifically ugly. Case in point, the new "Beautiful Ohio" license plate design. According to newspaper reports, Ohio’s first lady, Frances Strickland, was part of the design committee. Mrs. Strickland has an impressive resume - a doctorate in educational psychology, years in the public school system as an educational psychologist, author of kindergarten screening test and a children's book, The Little Girl Who Grew Up To Be Governor. But I can’t find anything in her background about design. She did grow up on a dairy farm in Kentucky, which may be why the windmill in the design was her idea.
Here is my imagined meeting transcript of the Beautiful Ohio License Plate Committee Special Taskforce on Designery.
Member 1: Ohio’s got a lot of farms. We should have a barn.
Member 2: But we’ve got cities too! We don’t want people to think we’re just flyover country. Let’s put an urban skyline in there.
Member 3: Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus?
Member 1: No, whatever clipart came with your computer is fine.
Member 2: What about the Wright brothers? Weren’t they from here?
Member 3: Yeah, but they flew in Kittyhawk, North Carolina.
Member 1: Yes, but they were born here. Slug the “Birthplace of Aviation” at the top.
Member 2: Do it in a scripty font so we look fancy!
Member 3: Shouldn’t it say “Ohio” on there?
Member 1: Yes. But that’s kind of bland. We need an adjective. “Beautiful?”
Member 2: That’s good. Let’s reverse the “O” out of the shape of the state so people can find us on a map.
Member 3: And in the center of the “O” let’s put “1803,” so people know when we became a state.
Member 1: Great idea!
Member 3: I was kidding.
And this is what it ends up looking like:
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The state is billing the new design as a triumph. Every designer I know uses less-kind words for it.
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