Which prompts the other important question: Must we be branded in the first place?

About New Albany, the recently affixed green banners downtown say: "The Heart of the City."

Meanwhile, the city's advertisement in last week's SoIn reads: "New Albany: It's where you should be."

Interestingly, the city's previous ads, which have run for the past two years, note: "More to Explore."

With the horrendous, ludicrous, be-Dudgeoned "Come to City" always hovering in the city's collective memory of atrocities, the preceding slogans constitute another wave of someone's earnest effort -- who or what this someone is suggests the first of several vital questions -- to brand New Albany.

That these efforts invariably sound old and dated provides clues as to their origins.

What these geriatric wordplays seem to have in common is the perennial lack of participation in the branding process on the part of any of those (businesses, citizens) who are about to be branded. No matter what is said by the many who object to their exclusion, or how often it is said, the non-transparency continues ... again, and again.

Thus, as a Twitter reader perceptively wrote: "It's tough to market a brand when you have multiple entities pushing multiple brands."

He then countered with two suggestions of this own:

"New Albany, the Heart of Where You Should Be"

and

"New Albany, no mob of young people here!"

Maybe no mob of young people, but plenty of white-skinned motorcyclists traveling in groups ... and they're the ones who scare me the most. Those costumes ... just terrifying.

Reader MC subsequently embraced the melting pot approach, and synthesized an amalgam:

"Explore the heart of New Albany. It's where there is more to come."

Even the newspaper editor got into the act; SVH suggested:

"New Albany. Better than Regular Albany."

This got the juices flowing, and these ensued:

"New Albany. Old politics."

"What Happens in Inanity, Stays in New Albany."

"Come for the Heart of New Albany -- Stay for the Liver."

"New Albany: Deep in the Heart of Bad Sloganeering."

I persist in thinking that Dave Thrasher's classic take is the best: "New Albany: We're All Here Because We're Not All There." But this idea from old buddy LB isn't bad:

"New Albany: Home of New Albanian Brewing Company."

That works for me!