COVINGTON, Ga. – Designed to complement the recently implemented City of Covington logo, the city’s utility department will begin utilizing its own insignia immediately.
The move to add a logo and feature the water, natural gas and electric departments is intended to aid in securing the utility service contracts of companies considering Covington as a location for their business.
“Depending on many variables, large companies starting operations in Covington have the option of utilizing us or other providers for their utility service needs,” City Manager Leigh Anne Knight said. “By branding our utility services separately, it more accurately depicts the size, scope and capabilities of our department.
“There are a lot of municipalities similar to us in size that aren’t capable of doing the things our utility crews can and we get unfairly stereotyped by potential developments who may think we can’t handle their large-scale needs, when in fact we are more than capable.”
There are many factors businesses take into consideration when selecting a provider for their utility services and Covington Utilities has worked to position itself favorably in terms of rates, service and reliability.
“Price is a big selling point for many and we are competitive in that arena, but it isn’t just about dollars,” Knight said. “If you have electric service from Covington Utilities and you experience an outage, we will be there on-site sooner because of our proximity. There aren’t any other providers that can say that. Also having all of your utilities come from one provider makes things much cleaner and simpler for both the customer and us.”
Before approving the implementation of the additional logo, the City Council wanted to ensure customers did not think the City of Covington had sold their services to another provider.
“We want all of our existing customers to know we are still the same utility provider they have been relying on for years and years,” Councilman Chris Smith said. “We will continue to provide excellent, dependable service to all of our customers, old and new. There will just be a new logo at the top of their utility bill.”
To drive Smith’s point home, the design team for the logo was tasked with creating an emblem similar to the current city of Covington logo while still allowing Covington Utilities to stand on its own. A design was decided upon that maintained the original three box concept but the boxes were inverted and now fit like puzzle pieces into the City of Covington logo, showing the City of Covington and Covington Utilities are one entity. The colors of the utility and city logo remain the same and the three symbols in the city logo were replaced with a natural gas flame, a water drop and a lightning bolt.
Knight stressed that while this may seem like a small change to lure large utility customers, there is plenty of factual evidence that supports the need for a separation between the government operations of running a city and providing utility services.
“There are plenty of case studies out there where a municipality was passed over for utility service because they were stereotyped as being too small to handle the needs of big box stores, distribution centers and factories,” Knight said. “We did our homework before making this decision and are optimistic this change will pay off for us in customer growth.
“We are a utility company in addition to a local government and this separate logo gives us the opportunity to target our advertising efforts appropriately.”
