That’s Buffalo For You

Visit Buffalo

In 2025, MMGY Global had the opportunity to work on a new brand for the destination marketing organization (DMO) Visit Buffalo-Niagara. While another team worked on the new logo and new brand positioning, my copywriting partner Molly Kuehling and I pitched the campaign that would launch their new, simplified brand Visit Buffalo.

Our strategy team provided us with so much insight about the spirit of Buffalo, New York. In particular, we worked with the mantra "Tough to break, easy to love." It captured the unapologetic yet warm personality of the city. We developed the campaign That's Buffalo For You to reflect how even as Buffalo adapts, it stays true to itself—and that authenticity is what makes visitors and locals so passionate about this city. 

The campaign uses seemingly contradictory phrases (Humbly Proud, Refreshingly Spicy) to spotlight Buffalo's character. For the art direction, I wanted those word pairings to feel like bold headlines—so I used the typeface Early Edition and heavy dividing linesto evoke classic American wood typesetting. I loved the lightning bolt motifs on Buffalo's flag, which were also incorporated into the DMO's new logo—so I brought them into the campaign moodboard and used the zigzag shape as a layout element in our deliverables. My colleague and fellow art director Marlena Pierce introduced textural patterns and secondary typefaces to build out the campaign style guide, and I'm so proud of where the visual direction for this campaign landed.

Seeing this campaign launch was one of the most fun experiences of my advertising career—the team at Visit Buffalo were such receptive partners in bringing these ideas to life. One of my favorite examples: As we pitched ideas for the brand rollout, we talked about how proud Buffalonians could wear the new logo. We joked, "Let's sell temporary tattoos in a mini vending machine for a few bucks—or, you can get a real tattoo for free!" And what happened? At the brand launch event, SIX PEOPLE got inked with the new Buffalo logo. (And countless more took us up on the temporary tattoos.)

It’s been amazing to see the impact of such a huge, collaborative project. The campaign even got a quick mention on Late Night with Seth Meyers—see below for our shoutout ;) For more information about the campaign, check out the coverage from Buffalo Rising, Audacy WBEN, or MMGY’s case study.