It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

The Ocean State's marketing captain has been fired by the governor for sinking 10% of the state's $4.5 million budget into a new logo.

Betsy Wall paid famed designer Milton Glaser $400,000 for his work. She poured another $150,000 into logo pre-tests.

Glaser's tab included the tagline Rhode Island: Cooler & Warmer, which the governor has also deep-sixed.

Glaser, the power behind the Dylan Poster and I Love New York, seemed the right man for the job—until media scrutiny took the wind out of his client's sails.

Wall's spending spree hit the front page of The Providence Journal and put the governor on treacherous seas.

"It is unacceptable how many mistakes were made in this roll-out, and we need to hold people accountable because Rhode Islanders deserve better," the governor told the paper.

The day before she was fired, Wall told Adweek she wanted to make a splash with Glaser.

"The Milton Glaser art, that is not your typical state logo," Wall told Adweek. "If you look at what other states have on their websites, it isn't usually true art like that, it isn't usually so thought provoking and inspiring. I can't think of another state, besides obviously New York, that would think to bring in somebody like Milton Glaser."

The storm's just politics, in my book.

In the early 1980s, I spent $450,000 for my employer's new logo.

No one lost her job.

Decades later, a version is still in use.