Reblanding Lessons

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." – John Wanamaker

If the father of modern advertising were alive right now, I’m sure he would have even choicer words for the Spirited Energy campaign. It was interesting to hear Jim Rondeau on the air yesterday attempting in vain to defend the NDP’s pet project by asserting that venerable names such as Coca-Cola also have branding initiatives.

The better analogy would be the New Coke fiasco. To Coca-Cola’s credit, at least THEY had market research SHOWING that people actually preferred the taste of New Coke to Pepsi. What they missed was the psychological attachment people had to the Classic Coke brand. When terms such as “nauseating” are volleyed about during the Spirited Energy focus group sessions, it would seem that our provincial government had no impetus to go forward with this initiative at all without some semblance of a major overhaul.

Are we perhaps as sentimentally attached to “Friendly Manitoba” as we are to Classic Coke? At least the Manitobans participating in the market research process had the courtesy to give the branding mandarins their take on Spirited Energy campaign from the get-go. If only someone would have listened…