If you know what the hashtag #WaterBacon refers to, chances are you live in Peterborough and follow municipal politics.

#WaterBacon is the tongue-in-cheek name given to the city's new logo - a blue-and-white-striped wave - that was adopted by council following a city branding exercise early this spring.

Almost as soon as the wave was unveiled as the new city logo, people started referring to it as #WaterBacon on Twitter.

"I thought that was quite inspired," said Rob Howard. "It's totally a friendly joke - very good-natured and intended to be whimsical."

Howard manages Kawartha Local Marketplace, a store on King St. that sells locally made artisanal gifts and products.

He wondered: How do you convert a Twitter joke into a product?

His idea: commission local naturalist Dylan Radcliffe, who is adept with a 3D printer, to create Water Bacon keychains and bookmarks.

"We've sold enough to know people like the idea," Howard said.

The logo was part of a new municipal brand that council hired local marketing firm BrandHealth to develop, last year: there's also a new city tagline, Live Outside the Ordinary.

For a fee of $77,000, the firm was to come up with a tagline, logo, colours and a guidebook explaining how to use the new branding in material related to the city.

The plan is to put the logo and tagline on everything from city vehicles to stationery.

Although council voted in early April to officially adopt its new brand, the logo and tagline have not yet been widely used by the city.

Brendan Wedley, the city's manager of communication services, said that's because a guidebook for consistent use of the brand is still being developed.

But expect to see Water Bacon more and more.

"Stationary with the new logo will be ordered as the old stock gets used up," Wedley wrote in an email. "Vehicles will get the new branding when they're regularly scheduled for painting, new decals or when old vehicles are replaced."

Wedley also wrote that the city is in the process of trademarking the wave, tagline and wordmark (the word Peterborough written all in lower case).

"The intent would be to have the ability to control the use of the logo when it's found being used inappropriately," Wedley wrote. "We want to encourage the use of the community brand as a positive way to represent our community."

Meanwhile Coun. Dan McWilliams has adopted the city tagline for his business, McWilliams Moving and Storage Ltd.

Some of his trucks have been emblazoned with the tagline 'Moving Outside the Ordinary'; one by one, he's adding it to every truck in his fleet. The tagline will also appear soon on his cardboard moving boxes, too.

McWilliams says he's doing so because he loves how the tagline encourages extra-special customer service.

"When I have that on my truck, I have to perform outside the ordinary," he said. "I have to push that - it gives me the incentive to be that much better."

The brand was never meant to apply exclusively to the municipality, he adds: he'd like to see every business and institution in Peterborough try to be Outside the Ordinary.

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"I'd like to see the whole city jump on it - I encourage everyone to use it," he said. "It's there for everyone in the community to use. It's a community tagline."