Sedgwick County government officially drops ‘Working for you’ tagline. Here’s why

The tagline “Working for you” will no longer appear on official Sedgwick County government branding.

The County Commission voted Wednesday to drop the tagline, which for decades has appeared packaged with the official county seal featuring a stylized illustration of the Keeper of the Plains.

The change comes as the commission adopted an updated brand guide detailing how employees should and shouldn’t represent the county in official materials.

Commissioner Jim Howell cast the only vote against the brand guide, saying he believes “Working for you” sums up the county’s mission well.

“This is the moment where we’re going to get rid of that tagline. Can I steal it?’ Howell asked Strategic Communications director Nicole Gibbs.

“To the extent that the county gets rid of that tagline, I’m going to put that on everything I do personally. I love it,” Howell said.

Gibbs said dropping the tagline will improve the aesthetic appeal of county branding. The goal, she said, isn’t to imply that the government has stopped working for people.

“Just because we don’t have the words out there doesn’t change the work that we do, and we all continually work to serve the community and work for the people, but for our marketing purposes and what we’ve been doing going forward, it makes it a little bit cleaner look and easier for us to go forward without the slogan,” Gibbs said.

She said the change will be gradual, and won’t cost the county extra money.

“It’s not an immediate change. As things phase out and signage is updated, we would then phase out items that have the ‘Working for you’ slogan,” Gibbs said.

Commission Chair Ryan Baty, whose mattress store chain The Mattress Hub has 13 locations across Kansas, said he understands the logic of streamlining a brand identity.

“An organization with twenty-eight hundred plus employees, the size we are, I understand the need to clean up, make sure there’s uniformity and consistency with how the brand’s being used — all the way down to font and color code,” Baty said. “I think that is important. I think that’s pretty customary for organizations, particularly of this size.”