Students direct city on signage

Last year, a group of international visitors to Atlanta were driving from the airport to City Hall for an important meeting with a city councilman. Though they didn’t have directions and had never been to Atlanta, they were sure a former Olympic city would have adequate signs directing them to the city’s seat of government.

They were wrong, and they were late for the meeting.

As a consequence, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau (ACVB) “hired” a team in the Goizueta Marketing Strategy Competition to study Atlanta’s international signage issue. “This is a critical problem that’s getting worse,” says team leader David Overend ’03MBA. “Atlanta had half a million international visitors this year, but after the new runway at Hartsfield opens in 2005, we’ll have two million per year.”

Overend’s team studied innovative solutions used by Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Orlando, and Salt Lake City. “The industry term is ‘wayfinding,’ ” says Overend, “and Atlanta’s got a long way to go. There are still signs downtown directing people to the Omni!” The Omni was demolished after the Olympics to make way for Philips Arena.

The ACVB team’s main strategy was “to give business people positive memories so they’ll come back as tourists.” The team’s final report recommended a new concept in branding the city as well as how to implement the signage changes.

“Atlanta enjoys the position of eleventh largest overseas visitor market share among major U.S. cities,” says Bill Howard, vice president of marketing with the ACVB. “Since we’re soon to have more than two million international visitors annually, it is of critical importance that this rapidly growing segment of our visitor industry view Atlanta as ‘user friendly.’”—Russ Moore