Mayor William Massengill, downtown director Benjamin Murphrey and chamber director Loretta Byrd unveiled a new slogan and logo for the town last week. Crowds clapped and cheered when they saw the design, which was presented after Dixie Driver performed for Sundown in Downtown.

Massengill hopes the slogan and logo will give the town a positive image. “Our downtown area is something we all love,” he said. “It also represents the fact that we have a strategic location with two major highways. It also gets to promote our businesses and people looking to relocate. We want people to fall in love with our town.”

Folks can look for the logo and slogan in upcoming advertisements, on town stationary and on merchandise. The “center of attention” slogan is placed around several buildings and trees to represent downtown Benson. A sign representing interstates 95 and 40 is nestled in a corner. The Johnston County Visitors Bureau designed the logo and slogan based on entries from a contest the town held.

“The main reason we went forward with it was to come up with something we could use to promote for economic development and business recruitment,” Murphrey said. “A logo can be very important to the town because it’s your identity. When anyone looks at a magazine or drives past a billboard, they know nothing about your town. They should be able to know what your town is like just by the logo itself.”

Choosing a slogan proved to be a hard task, Murphrey said. “Center of attention, when it was first presented, not everybody liked it because I think we didn’t want it to come off as boastful,” he said. “When it was presented the right way, we all fell in love with it. You can use it for so many things.”