Alberta unveiled its new ridiculous slogan today: ”Freedom to create, spirit to achieve.”
As the Edmonton Journal put it:
Forget the Alberta Advantage. At a price tag of $4 million, after half a year of running focus groups in and outside the province, the government soft-launched its new brand Wednesday at a meeting of rural politicians in Edmonton. In a video featuring images of the Rockies, the Muttart Conservatory, the Badlands and Edmonton’s Fringe Festival, Alberta’s new corporate brand is: “Freedom to create, spirit to achieve.”
This outrageous slogan is the result of focus groups. I’m shocked!
Why didn’t the province crowdsource the slogan? The tools to ask and receive input from the public are accessible and mostly free on the web using social media. But instead of involving the public, for whom the slogan is supposed to represent and inspire, the Stelmach government chose to throw away $4 million on a slogan that invokes the dreaded F word. “Freedom.” Really guys? That’s the best you could do?
Maybe it is.
A friend of mine likens the Alberta Government to a blind-deaf bear. It can smell food, but until it runs into a tree or falls off a cliff, it is content to proceed with business as usual. But the terrain is getting treacherous.
The non-involvement of citizens in the process of this supposed “democracy” seems more and more ridiculous with each passing day. And speaker Ken Kowalski chiding MLAs for twittering during question period is just the tip of the iceberg. The internet really is a “virtual wonderland” where it never would have cost the Albertan taxpayer $4 million dollars to come up with a new slogan. Just ask on FaceBook, twitter and the plethora of other free social media applications, and the public will respond. But I guess that might beg the question as to whether there still is really an advantage to being an Albertan. On the days where focus groups, expensive marketing campaigns and enforced message and communication discipline win the day, I am not so sure that there is.
