After a sometimes grueling process of culling suggestions from meetings and multiple focus groups, the candidates stood at three. And one of them in particular enticed the Utah Office of Tourism and Film. But the world may never know its exact phrasing, and office managing director Leigh von der Esch on Friday would not give it up.

This much is known. It was pretty darned close to that of the Colorado Ski Association's "Enter a Higher State." When chagrined tourism officials discovered that a week ago, the planned Feb. 8 launch of Utah's new branding slogan was postponed.

Von der Esch said Friday that out of hundreds of candidate phrases, one uncomfortably close to Colorado's made it to the finalist list. "We were focused on three, but that one was the one we liked the best," she acknowledged.

It was during the process of registering the state's now-abandoned, new slogan that state officials learned of the similarity. "That's when the Colorado thing came to us, and we decided Utah was more about 'attitude' than 'altitude,' anyway," von der Esch added.

The launch date for a new state slogan will be rescheduled before the end of the Utah legislative session, but von der Esch said a specific date has not been set.

The tourism chief insisted the slogan similarity was discovered during the course of branding team "due diligence" more than a week ago - long before a Friday e-mail exchange with a person who reported the rumor about the slogan and signed off as "a concerned resident." The exchange was copied to The Salt Lake Tribune.

In her e-mail response, von der Esch said that the slogan similarity had been discovered "as part of our research regarding the brand" and that "the brand launch is being rescheduled to make certain our marketing plan is complete."

Von der Esch told the Tribune that once the problem was discovered, there was never any doubt that the questionable slogan would be pulled - even if that meant delaying the launch.

'' 'Enter a Higher State' was something like where we wanted to go, but that won't be it,'' she said.

"We have one chance to get this done, and we want to get it right - we want a slogan that captures the essence of Utah."

bmims@sltrib.com