“We are developing a marketing plan of what regions to go after,” said Nance Larsen, vice president of communications and marketing for the Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Larsen said Feb. 5 that the criticism hurled in the news media was anticipated after the Nerland Agency presented the new Anchorage brand in late January at a crowded downtown luncheon.

“People need a little time to get used to it, and also to see what comes along with it,” Larsen said. ACVB had a similar response in the late 1970s, when the visitor organization introduced its “Wild About Anchorage” promotion, Larsen said.

“It's difficult to find something that everyone likes,” Larsen said.

And indeed, the response to the new brand by many in the Anchorage area has been lukewarm at best.

“I didn't like it,” said Carol Makar, who owns a popular Girdwood bed and breakfast establishment with her husband, Bud. “When I thought about it, 'Big Wild Life' didn't stick at all. It didn't give me a true picture of what people would come to Anchorage for.”

Popular newspaper columnist Dermot Cole of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner said bluntly that the theme “seemed a little dumb to me.” Other news media gave the brand a similar bashing.

But Larsen, whose agency shelled out a chunk of change toward the project, is backing it 100 percent. “A brand is something that has an emotional connection, what people love about being here — the wildlife, the scenery, the mountains ... big, massive and abundant,” she said.

It was that whole idea of an exciting new image that prompted the ACVB, the Municipality of Anchorage and the Anchorage Economic Development Corp. to hire the Nerland Agency and the Colorado-based consulting group Stone Mantel last year to come up with the brand. The three groups split the $80,000 cost of the contract, and the Nerland Agency contributed an additional $20,000 in in-kind work.

“It's not just a slogan or a saying,” said Bruce Bustamante, ACVB president, when the deal was announced in May 2006. “It's an image, a lifestyle, physical appeal, the attraction of the area. That's what we need to come up with.”

The plan was to reinforce for residents their choice of Anchorage as home, to entice visitors looking for a somewhat exotic “wild” destination with urban amenities, and to attract people and organizations looking to do business here.

Photographer Clark Mishler, who counts ACVB among his many clients, recalled that when the visitors bureau introduced its “Wild About Anchorage” promotion back in the late 1970s. It caught on because it reminded people of the then very popular Broadway show “A Chorus Line.”

“Some might say it was a great parody of 'A Chorus Line,'” Mishler said. The cartoon promotion “was delightful; it was very well received in Alaska.”

“'Wild About Anchorage' was designed to get everybody in Anchorage on board to understand, appreciate and welcome visitors,” he said. “We had a problem in Anchorage prior to that. People looked at visitors as a nuisance that we had to put up with. That program was designed to make people understand that the visitor industry was important to Anchorage; and that program really worked.”

The situation today is different, because Anchorage is now a very welcoming community, with a few holdouts, Mishler said. “Beyond that, the new strategy is everyone wants to go to Alaska. Let's make them want to go to Anchorage. What we want now as a community is for people to say we want them to go to Anchorage.”

Mishler, as it happens, also has a book about to be published, independent of the whole brand campaign. It's called “Anchorage: Living the Big, Wild Life.”

“It's going to be about us; the life that we lead in Alaska,” he said. “We're talking about people who get out and do things year round ... 'Big Wild Life' takes Anchorage to the next step. It's directed at the people Outside, to see why Anchorage is one of the wildest, most fun places on Earth.”