The Sitch
Buffalo, NY, is bursting with humble pride, polished grit and timeless edge. Buffalonians have a lot of heart for their home (“Buffalove” is absolutely a thing), and locals live up to their moniker, the City of Good Neighbors.
But for too long Buffalo struggled with traveler misperceptions and awareness. Prospective visitors thought of Buffalo as a perennially snowy, hollowed-out Rust Belt town – if they thought of the city at all.
The Challenge
Visit Buffalo Niagara hadn’t undergone a branding process since the 1980s, and its current brand no longer reflected the city’s true character. The existing tourism brand emphasized Buffalo’s proximity to Niagara Falls. But it lacked the low-key loud personality, didn’t reflect locals’ fiercely friendly nature or showcase their refreshingly spicy love for their city.
The Turning Point
Truth is, the city’s been on a major upswing: a cultural revival, a growing food scene, historic architecture being restored, entrepreneurs investing in neighborhoods, new energy surging through public spaces. Locals knew it. Visitors were starting to feel it. The brand needed to reflect it.
So Visit Buffalo Niagara made a bold move: stop, listen and build a new brand from the inside out based on the voices of the people who love the city most. That’s when they hired us.
The Opportunity
We won the Visit Buffalo Niagara business in the fall of 2024 and started work in early 2025. Our strategic brief said MMGY was hired to “Challenge the status quo. Be a catalyst that further unites locals, partners and visitors. Drive year-round visitation and sustained economic impact to every corner of the region.”
Put more bluntly, “Unite, disrupt, deliver. Citywide, year-round.”
The Action
We started with our rebranding process, which included a rigorous competitive analysis. Strategy and Creative team members traveled to Buffalo, interviewing more than two dozen people in two days. We spent time in the city. Visited the neighborhoods. Talked to locals. Drank in corner bars. Ate wings and beef on weck. Inhaled the sweet scents of Lucky Charms being made at the General Mills plant.
From that, we built their new brand architecture, which culminated in a new brand essence: TOUGH TO BREAK. EASY TO LOVE. We recommended they no longer needed Niagara in their name to help them get recognized; they took our advice and lopped it off. We designed a new logo that reflected the city’s gritty roots, renewed energy and feel-it-in-the-air electricity.
Then we really got to work.
The Creative Campaign
After the new “Tough to Break. Easy to Love” brand got two enthusiastic thumbs up from our Visit Buffalo clients, we developed their new creative campaign. We based our creative concepting around one simple question: What if the most powerful thing we could be is … ourselves?
So who IS Buffalo? That’s easy. Proudly humble. Fiercely friendly. Refreshingly spicy. Low-key loud. These descriptors genuinely reflect the character of Buffalo, which then led us to the new campaign line: “That’s Buffalo for you.”
It was time to tell the world.
Which we did, through broadcast (CTV spots); OOH advertising (billboards, bus, train and van wraps); digital (rich media, paid social, display ads and a campaign landing page); print ads – even a Duck Boat in Boston. We were not fooling around.
The Results So Far
Decidedly solid. And it’s only been a week.
Visit Buffalo launched the new brand and creative campaign on Sept. 10, 2025. It was a party atmosphere. Visit Buffalo’s CEO Patrick Kaler got a tattoo (yep, a real tattoo) of the logo. (So did six other people who attended the party.)
The new campaign got a prime-time slot on Buffalo’s WKBW, where Kaler announced plans to open a Buffalo merch store. Another local station, WGRZ, covered the new campaign, too.
Seth Meyers gently poked fun at Buffalo’s new campaign, which was NOT on our bingo card for 2025, but we’re calling it a win (thanks for the free PR, Seth!).
Underdog energy, overachiever results. That’s Buffalo for you.
