plonq | Spirited Away (Reply)

Our province has decided to re-brand itself in order to entice more businesses and tourists into spending money here. After careful consideration, the government decided to give a skip to all of the local ad agencies and hired a group out of New York to do the re-branding process. There were a few initial snags when they had to keep pointing out Manitoba on a map, and explain that people really do live north of Minnesota. Eventually the ad firm got the idea, though, and after almost 5 minutes of intense thought, they slapped together two random words and came up with a generic picture with swooshy things and fireworks in it.

What two words did they mash together?

spirited energy

(Note the edgy use of all lower-case lettering.)

That just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? So does sour vomit after a night of drinking, and it leaves about the same taste behind. Others may disagree, but I think it is f**king lame.

Here is the picture that you will greet you when you go to the spirited energy website. It's a glassy-eyed girl wearing an ugly necklace cleverly overlaid with a swooshy ribbon. Oh ya, and there's fireworks in the background. That says it all, doesn't it? No other place in the world has vapid girls, ribbons and fireworks!
The vacant eyes suck at my soul.

I suppose it becomes a question of which demographic you are hoping to attract with your new brand. To me this picture says, "Visit Manitoba. Come for the soulless-eyed wenches and fireworks, stay for the clever slogan stolen from a Japanese soft drink."

spirited energy

It does have a very Engrish sound to it, doesn't it? Maybe we can attract the anime crowd with it.

Here is another image, this time lifted directly from the CTV site (rather, hot-linked to their site. If the image disappears, or is replaced by a goatse picture - an improvement, IMO - then you know why). This time it's the lame slogan with a generic background of angular blue things.
Insert spattering sounds of vomit here.

Depending who you ask, we paid anywhere from $600,000 to over $1.6 million for them to design this atrocity.

I suppose at the base of it, what bothers me the most about this is that none of it says anything about our province. This is generic crap, probably lifted out of the ad firm's archives for when they had a quick one-off job they needed to get out of the way. This says nothing about who we are, or where we are. It is awkward to say and conveys no concrete meaning.

I don't mind living here, but this city and province can be very frustrating and incorrigible sometimes. I've come up with my own slogan and design (which took me 5 minutes, and way less than $600K).

Winter and Skeeters - not much else to it, really.