By TOM FINK

Claremore City Council members have given their stamp of approval to a new brand designed to reflect the spirit and citizens of Claremore.

The brand, unveiled to the public earlier this week, will replace previous logos and images associated with the city, along with the Claremore’s new tagline “New Vision. Clear Opportunities.”

“Instead of just developing a new logo, we wanted to create a brand for Claremore, one that could be used by the City’s multiple entities — the Chamber, the CVB, Main Street,” said Cassie Sowers, City of Claremore marketing director. “Each of these has its own logo or look and with the new brand, we were wanting to reflect that each City entity is part of more unified whole.”

The image most commonly associated with the City of Claremore, Sowers said, was implemented in 1999 to coincide with the opening of the Claremore Rec Center and Expo Center, and bore a distinctly “carnival” look.

“Several people have commented that the old logo looked sort of childish, so in creating the new brand, we wanted to move away from that and towards something more indicative of the community — we really had nowhere to go but up,” Sowers said. “We held several focus groups to get well-rounded input on what people felt was great about Claremore, and we incorporated those suggestions into developing the brand.

“In the process, we also decided on a tagline for the City — ‘New Vision. Clear Opportunities.’ — which we felt presented Claremore as a unified, progressive community,” she said. “Once we had this tagline, we decided to work it into our brand’s graphic, which our graphic designer, Thumbtack Creative of Plano, Texas, integrated it into the final design.”

Sowers said the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and the City of Claremore have already adopted the new brand, with the Chamber of Commerce to vote on its adoption next week.

“So far, feedback on the new brand has been very positive,” she said. “People feel it presents an image of Claremore that can be taken into the future, one which represents the community as being ready for growth and open to new opportunities.”