As I was driving across the State last week I saw, in less than two hours, no fewer than 10 different out-of-state license plates…. [Side comment; Yes, It’s wonderful to live in a place where so many other people come for their vacations!]

Most of these stood out simply because they were different … I hadn’t seen them in a while, if at all…. I then saw a plate that really made me sit up and think about the marketing and brand strategy that goes into a State’s license plate design. If you consider how important travel and tourism is to most states, this can be a HUGE fiscal issue directly tied to a brand effort.
Each state has vanity plates and commemorative plates and special occasion plates and veteran plates and handicapped plates, etc., etc…. For the sake of this post, I’m only going to focus on the default plate design …€” the one people will see the most. After a little online research, here’s my assessment…. Let’s start from the bottom up.

MOST BORING: Some State’s just don’t get it. There are 10-15 plates that fall into this category but I’d have to give the nod to my home State of Michigan…. Yawn.

WELL BRANDED: The largest category is of States who have thought about their own brand and identity and are graphically conveying who they are…. Some good examples are Georgia (the peach) and Colorado (the Rocky Mountains). A few states have even turned their plates into artistic masterpieces…. Mississippi, for example, has a beautiful presentation.

GREAT MARKETING:… Only two States, that I could find, have taken their plate design into the world of integrated marketing…. By creating web sites and then taking the opportunity of tens of millions of “plate views” daily, Pennsylvania and Florida win the prize for best marketers…. Interestingly, Pennsylvania has apparently scrapped their old “keystone” graphic from days gone by, sacrificing the brand element for a simpler design and the use of a generic government URL.

THE WINNER: Because of it’s design simplicity, brand ties to the orange producing industry and an integrated marketing initiative …€“ driving traffic to a great domain like “MyFlorida.com” …€“ the grand prize goes to Florida!!

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 7:50 am and is filed under Brand-tastic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.