As someone who’s worked in Marketing for a while, I was caught up in the whole branding insanity of the mid to late 90s. It, of course, fizzled miserably - who couldn’t see that one coming? Mutual Fund companies spent millions “building the brand” while their performance sank - sales did too, notwithstanding the brand.

Here’s a clue: the Coca Cola brand? It’s sugar and water in a can, not a fancy logo. You can change the logo, but don’t touch that sugar water - anybody remember New Coke?

Anyway, to the point - Vancouver’s tourism commission has decided to brand the city, and they were yammering on about it on the CBC this morning. I chuckled vigorously when I heard the new mission statement for this city:

The Vancouver experience will exceed visitors expectations and we will deliver superior value in a spectacular destination that is safe, exciting and welcoming to everyone.

What does that mean, again?

This mission statement is a wonderful example of the problem with a lot of marketing copy/text that gets written: it has absolutely nothing to do with anything these people can control.

Safe? That’s the cops job, and these guys have no say in that at all.

Spectacular? Well, God gave us the scenerey, not a marketing board.

Exeeding expectations? Your job is to build those expectations - build them low, and you’ll exceed them in a heartbeat. Swift Current, SK regularly exceeds expectations just because poeple have never heard of it.

I’m not worried though. The next time a tourist gets off a cruise ship and walks through the downtown east side to get to Gastown and get mugged, I’ll just remind them of how great our brand is.

Is it only me, by the way, who thinks it’s ironic that virtually every photo to support Vancouver’s brand is inevitably one of North or West Vancouver? Mountains; forest; streams. These are all in North Van. Maybe I’m cynical.

Posted by skooter at 8:25 AM This entry is filed under Vancouver.