TORONTO -- The Ontario Crown agency that manages the province's casinos has become embroiled in controversy for spending up to $6-million in taxpayers' money to re-brand the corporation.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., which had been known until recently as OLGC for short, spent between $4-million and $6-million to lop the C from its logo, chief executive officer Duncan Brown said yesterday. He was being questioned by Progressive Conservative MPP Joe Tascona at the standing committee on government agencies.
Mr. Tascona said in an interview after the hearing that the logo change seemed like an "extremely wasteful" exercise.
Mr. Brown said in the committee hearing that the new logo was just one part of the re-branding process. "It's not about dropping a C," he said. "It's about creating a brand that represents trust and integrity."
Maybe it’s me, but when a spokesperson from a government owned and run legalized gambling joint starts talking about creating “trust and integrity”, it strikes me as a complete oxymoron. Especially when it’s underwritten by a $6 million bill for dropping a C.
You could speculate that the Ontario taxpayers got off easy on the vig – think about what a full 'O' would have cost rather than just a little 'c'. And let’s not even discuss the relationship between advertising agencies & the Ontario Liberal party and the underlying potential for seemingly endless opportunities to make or take graf. I haven’t had enough coffee yet and it could make my head might explode.
h/t National News Watch
4 comments:
As a graphics-guy who'd done logo-design work, I wonder it looks like? Is it that compelling? Corporate re-branding can be a very risky and expensive business venture/strategy since brand-identity is a major consumer marketing-latch, is often very hard to shift, and the brand can suffer severe losses. It mostly works best when a complete re-structuring has taken place to enable a new entity to flourish and not be dragged-down by past associations, but there's lots of instances of really poor or uncompelling choices made and indifferent reception...
One company we worked with had an orientalist style of management and branding that simply concatinated item after item so that their brand identification was leangthened and weakened terribly - but that idea could NOT be communicated back to the top, so they were left with a weak and disassociated market-share. Imagine, "Loadstone DVD+Plus Super Gold Diamond Platinum!"
Nobody knew what the hell it was.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder what the point of re-branding was - its a government run and owned monopoly - They could call themselves literally anything and people who insist on gambling would not be deterred in any way shape or form. So why bother? Or is it a perfect way to spread a little political patronage around on the taxpayer's dime.
Or is it a perfect way to spread a little political patronage around on the taxpayer's dime.
Ya think? You hit it square on the head in this comment; it's a govt monopoly, so there is absolutely nothing to be gained, in terms cash flow, unless of course the the Pencilneck's brain trust thinks that by rebranding, they can convince people other than committed gamblers to try their hand at getting absolutely everthing they ever wanted, for nothing. Talk about trust and integrity!
Or maybe they are just rolling the dice.
Ever since McGirlieman and his liberals have come to power in Ontario, I have been saying the province's slogan should be changed from "Ontario - yours to discover" to "Ontario - Only for Liberals to plunder".
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