How not to attract tourists.

last updated 8 January 2015

Canada

John Gleeson

Manitoba’s new motto “is, in a word, ‘lame-o,’” said John Gleeson in the Winnipeg Sun. The province handed over $600,000 to a marketing task force to come up with a new slogan to attract tourism, and in return we got this phrase: “Spirited energy.” The first thing that struck me about the phrase is that it hardly rolls off the tongue. Try saying it three times fast and you just might choke to death. “The next thing I realized about the slogan is that it really sucks.” Both “spirit” and “energy” are utterly vague. Put them together “and what you’ve got is mush.” What kind of energy doesn’t have spirit? It’s easy to see what the marketers were going for in focusing on energy; after all, Manitoba has vast hydroelectric potential. Yet surely there’s a pithier way to reference our resources. The word “power,” for example, has much more punch. How about, Manitoba: “Feel the power”? Instead, we’re stuck with a motto obviously made by committee. The task force “would have done better throwing rocks at Portage and Main and asking the first person they hit for a winning slogan.”