Regina's New Brand...

...went live today. Here's the website. I give it a "B+" and I'm picky as all crap with this kind of stuff. Our designer's take: "hm, it's good." One member of our fun little gang hates the ribbony "R" but he's just wrong, so too bad for him. The tagline "Infinite Horizons" is quite good, even if it kind of suggests urban sprawl. But as long as we don't start suddenly scheduling bus routes to Harbour landing Wal-Marts it'll all be fine. (Ha. Such a silly thing would never happen.)

Cities, provinces and countries need brands so the can promote themselves to attract new residents and investment. $400K well spent, I says.

(This post was updated Feb. 11)

Today On the Scarth Street Mall

Someone celebrating Hallowe'en early, or an insidious marketing ploy by a coalition of local TV stations to generate public sympathy for their campaign to pressure Ottawa to extract money from so-called "cable cash cows" to help fund local TV news, drama and other programming although some might call bullshit on that given the stations' demonstrated lack of commitment over the last several decades to producing said programming? You be the judge.

News Flash

Speaking of magazines with compromised editorial content, I know who's going to be on the cover of the next issue of Fine Lifestyles Regina (CBC). Just kidding, it's actually this guy. (Nexus Blog)

Prairie Dog Does Not Trade Articles For Advertiser Dollars

"Prairie dog's editorial content is independent and is not for sale under any circumstances. We write what we like, and our readers like it that way."

—From prairie dog's masthead

The organizer of an upcoming event contacted recently to lobby for an article on it. The event—I’m not going to say what it is — sounded sort of interesting and I was fairly keen to cover it, depending on available print space and having an interested writer. Then I got an e-mail from this individual telling me they were buying an ad in our paper — but it was conditional on us writing about their event.

Here's an excerpt: "In exchange for the article, [our organization] would like to purchase a 1/4 page ad. Please have the writer contact me ASAP so that I can meet with him or her [for an interview]."

I sent the organization an e-mail explaining that we don’t trade editorial coverage for advertising. But in a subsequent e-mail to our publisher, this person repeated their demand: "We will be pleased to submit an ad for the issue if there is going to be an article about [our organization].” In other words, this person won’t advertise in prairie dog unless we write about his/her event. Which one might be inclined to call “extortion.”

Long story short, I’m not commissioning an article because we don’t publish a “you grease my back, I’ll rub yours” magazine and I resent the suggestion that we do.

And I assume there won’t be an ad either. But hey, maybe I’ll be surprised.

Advertising is one thing. Stealth advertorials are another. Stealth advertorials are bad business because readers can tell the difference between advertising and editorial content and if they feel you’re trying to fool them with an ad disguised as an article, well, you’ve probably lost a reader.

Hey businesses, want an advertorial? No problem! Buy a decent-size ad from a friendly p-dog sales rep and put a bunch of words in it about your product/event. It will have to be labeled "advertisement" so our readers don’t confuse it with actual content, and it’ll have to use a different design template than our articles — but aside from that, pretty much anything goes.

Editorial and advertising need to remain separate. If you’re mixing them you’re not publishing a newspaper, you’re publishing a catalogue.