KEY POINTS:
On an island in Vanuatu after the war, the locals built runways, complete with mock aircraft, in the hope of luring bountiful American warplanes back.
Half a century on and way to the south on another remote island, we Aucklanders create logos instead, and pray they will attract foreigners bearing loot.
The city's latest votive offering, a big fat A, was unveiled by High Priest of the Metro Project Michael Barnett this week. Oh, what huge mystical strength he holds out for this symbol. "This brand will establish Auckland's reputation as a destination to visit, work, invest, study and do business."
Heap powerful magic indeed.
Putting aside whether one likes this particular incarnation of the Big A - and from the almost total derision it has received outside the holy circle of supporters, it seems to have lost the battle on the home front already - why is it that in this town our leaders seem to think that when all else fails, a logo will solve the problem.
Anywhere else, the brand and the logo are the icing on the cake, launched with the finished product to identify it from the 101 other soap powders on the market. But here, having failed to create the marketable product, we instead hire a branding expert - costing $174,147 of tax and ratepayers' cash - and pretend all will be well.
One of my favourite failed Auckland logos was MAXX, the pesky pukeko. He was created in 2001 as the friendly face of the region's transport network. The cartoon character was going to be at the bus stop to help you on to the bus.
He was going to answer your queries about timetables or lost luggage. As one of the Donald Duck generation, I was rather looking forward to getting to know MAXX.
But the cute pukeko hardly had the chance to step out of the pages of the PR publicity before he became road-kill to a Stagecoach bus. The owners didn't want anyone cuter than them - which wasn't hard - muscling in.
As for the latest A, we've had so many variations on the Rangitoto shape already, why another? This one is obese, with a bad case of varicose veins on its lower limbs, and worst of all it's orange. They call it "lava-coloured," but I'm not fooled.
Mr Barnett, chief executive of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and deputy chairman of the Auckland Regional Council (which paid for $111,925 of this exercise), has been banging on about the need to replace Auckland's City of Sails tagline for years.
(Ironically, the new Brand Auckland website, www.aucklandnz.com, continues to endorse it as a nickname arising from "the locals' love affair with the sea".)
A few years back, two reports, one from LEK Consulting, commissioned by the Government, and the other by AREDs, the Auckland Regional Development Strategy, warned against putting the cart before the horse when it came to rebranding Auckland. They both said economic growth would drive a new brand's creation, not the other way around.
AREDs chairman, businessman Peter Menzies, said in 2002, "We've got to have strong growth occurring in the economy which will in turn give a brand a reality." He said it "could be quite early in the process that a brand will emerge that suits what Auckland is. Something will emerge from the dynamic growth."
LEK Consulting's Joanne Keestra echoed this at the time, adding the warning that "anything gimmicky ... is unlikely to succeed".
Also in 2002, Mr Barnett supported the idea that private sector finance - not public funds - be used to create the new Auckland brand he craved. He told the Herald if he could get political support for rebranding, "I would be prepared to put resources into it".
One can only imagine his business mates ran a mile every time they saw him coming after that, because with the bills now in, Joe Public seems to have been the only one too slow to get out of his way.
