Poor Manitoba. It isn’t enough that my birth province is beset by frigid winters and an overabundance of blood-sucking mosquitoes in the summer. Not to mention a hollowed-out downtown, glue sniffing and a 40+ year exodus to points East and West.

And now, to add insult to injury, it turns out that the reaction to ‘Spirited Energy’, the province’s attempt to rebrand and attract visitors and investment, was less than warmly received when it was tested in focus groups. According the Marketing magazine online (subscription required): consumers ‘were lukewarm and even confused’ about the campaign. (I guess that’s why the provincial government was reticent to release the results and only did so after an order from the ombudsman.)

Competitiveness Minister Jim Rondeau defended the government’s decision to go with the campaign by saying, ‘Before the whole exercise, Manitoba either had a bad image or no image.’’

Thanks Minister. It’s good to see the current government is upholding the status quo.

To be frank, I was completely underwhelmed by Manitoba’s new slogan, too. It reminded me of the wrong-headed, dull ‘Toronto’s Unlimited’ campaign. Both seem to miss the mark in that they fail to convey what it is about those places that make them stand out, that capture people’s hearts and minds. (Think ‘I Love New York’.)

There’s lots to celebrate about Manitoba. The wonderful heritage, endless prairie sky, long, sunny days, Salisbury House and Rae and Jerry’s and the Fabric Centre, of course*.

If you ask me (and nobody did). I think the province should return to ‘Friendly Manitoba’ and build on that. A good image starts with who you are, not who you think you should be.

*Disclosure: The Fabric Centre, Winnipeg’s first fabric retailer, was founded and operated by my father. I worked there after school and for many summers and it’s now owned and operated by my sister.

I (and probably numerous other Canadian PR people) received a letter recently from the company-formerly-known-as-Bowdens*, informing me that they changed their name.

And while I appreciated the news, I wondered how this might affect my agency.

It didn’t take long to find out. There, in the third paragraph, was the promise that I would continue to receive the same ‘Bowdens experience’ I had come to ‘know and trust’.

I wanted to scream.

To me the ‘Bowdens experience’ has been synonymous with mediocre service, missed obvious clips and the phrase ‘if you can tell me what network it was on and the time it aired, we’ll try to find it for you’. I’ve heard similar comments from other Canadian PR practitioners and some Americans, too.

To add salt to the wound, I received this same letter no less than a dozen times (in various bills). Once would have been fine thank you very much. But that wasn’t good enough for the company-formerly-known-as-Bowdens. They had to reinforce their ‘experience’ again and again.

Which only made my frustration grow.

Then around that same time, the company told us that the only good rep we’d ever had in all our dealings with them had been ‘reassigned’. Was she shipped to the Gulag? Where do they come up with this stuff?

Consistently low quality service is something I have complained about to the company-formerly-known-as-Bowdens for many years, regularly calling the president with my gripes. The difference is that before I grudgingly accepted their limitations as someone might accept an inept bureaucrat in Eastern Europe circa 1974. I now think that they’re so out of touch with the industry that they’re marketing their incompetence as a plus.

Will they ever change? I’m not holding my breath.

But there’s one thing I’m pretty sure of: they won’t catch this clip.

*Please note: I’m not including a link because I don’t want to drive traffic to their site.