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| Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon speaks during a presentation at Seoul City Hall, Wednesday, to unveil the capital's new brand slogan. Yonhap |
850,000 people participate in slogan project
By Ko Dong-hwan
Seoul City unveiled its new brand slogan "Seoul, My Soul," Wednesday, after a yearlong selection process.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon made the introduction during a presentation held at City Hall.
In August 2022, the city government launched a project to look for a new city brand slogan to replace the city's former logo, "I.Seoul.U," which had been in use for the past eight years.
Four finalists were chosen and after two rounds of public surveys, and the winner was chosen by over 63 percent of 260,513 voters in a final selection between the winning slogan and the runner-up, "Seoul for you."
Design experts then started working on the new brand, adding pictograms to the text to add universality so that the brand can be understood by the global community.
"The image of a heart represents 'love' or the affectionate attention local residents and people from around the world have toward the city," the city authority said.
"The exclamation mark means how the city 'inspires' the residents and visitors with diverse and new experiences. The smile symbolizes 'fun' or the attraction points the city can offer to people."
Some 850,000 people partook in creating the city's new brand slogan, according to the city government. They were the local citizens and residents who submitted their own ideas for a catchphrase and evaluated suggestions by others, as well as experts in branding, marketing and design.
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| The new slogan brand for Seoul in English version, left, and Korean version / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government |
At the ceremony, the Seoul mayor and some 300 guests including citizens and experts who were part of the brand slogan development shared the entire process that has led up to making the final version and what it means to the country's capital of almost 10 million population. The mayor said the new brand slogan was "inevitable to make the city one of the world's top five."
"Seoul is like a raw, untouched diamond," Oh said. "And it won't sell its potentials and attractiveness by itself. We should step up and actively promote them to the world."
The mayor said the city government will keep adapting "Seoul-ness" in shaping its identity. The new slogan represents that initiative, he added.
"The new brand will be a new starting point for the city government to produce more branding and marketing activities," the mayor said. "It will hopefully boost tourism among visitors from overseas and draw investments from foreign firms."
Hong Seong-tae, chief of the Seoul Branding Division under the Public Relations Bureau, said that the new brand slogan is more than a logo for marketing: it expresses the city's identity and self-promotional aspects in a single image.
"Seoul, My Soul will be the city's huge framework," Hong said. "From now on, the city policies will be organized and managed within that frame."
The new brand strikes a similar tone with the city government's present tourism brand, "My Soul Seoul." The previously developed slogan started appearing in the city's tourism promotional materials in video clips and prints in May 2022 ― including "BTS with Seoul" on YouTube that has attracted more than 100 million hits.
"It takes long for a new brand to seep into a viewer's memory and mind," said Lee Jong-min, who teaches at Kookmin University's School of Media and Advertising and was in the advisory group for the city's latest slogan branding.
"Reusing and developing further the previously popular slogan shortens the duration it takes for a new slogan to take root in viewers' minds. It's more efficient."
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