Nation Branding for Laughs
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 01.29.08 | 11:11 AM ET
The winning entry in the Times of London’s contest to find a motto for Britain—“No motto please, we’re British”—is equally as funny as the winning slogan in the Washington Post’s Style Invitational competition to create mottoes for countries around the world—“England: Lie Back and Think of Us.” If you’re not an Englishwoman from the Victorian Era, you may be wondering why that’s funny. Try this.
As a whole, though, the Post’s readers hit the international funny bone with more consistency. I guess that’s what happens when one of the prizes is a “can of quite possibly genuine Possum Ding Dongs.”
My top five country mottoes from the Post’s competition:
“Austria: No Kangaroos”
“China: Come Visit Your Money”
“England: We Couldn’t Beat the Patriots Either”
“Germany: It Is Not Necessary to Have a Humorous Slogan”
“Myanmar: We Liked ‘Burma’ Better Too, but These Guys Have Guns”
Then again, none of them proves quite as funny as some of the boneheaded real-life nation branding campaigns we’ve chronicled over the years.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Marilyn Terrell 01.29.08 | 4:07 PM ET
There’s also the Onion’s Our Dumb World Atlas of the Planet Earth, which features such mottos as “French Guiana: The Colony That France Totally Forgot It Still Had” and “Canada: For The United States, Please Scroll Down and Click Below.”
http://www.theonion.com/content/atlas/
Michael Yessis 01.29.08 | 9:19 PM ET
Good call, Marilyn. My fave from the book:
Chile: Preventing Argentina from Enjoying the Pacific Ocean Since 1818.
Evelyn Reynolds 01.29.08 | 9:22 PM ET
The city government and the chamber of commerce of Santa Rosa, CA, USA, recently paid USD$80,000 to a company outside the city to come up with a new slogan and symbol. They came up with “California Cornucopia” as the slogan and a cornucopia as a symbol. The cornucopia looks like it was drawn by a 10-year-old. Items shown in the cornucopia include an artichoke. Artichokes are generally grown in areas about 200 miles south and east of the city. Nothing scandalous or obscene, just boring.
Eva Holland 01.29.08 | 11:47 PM ET
“England: Lie Back and Think of Us.”
Classic.
I liked all the Times of London entries, but that one from the Post is my new favourite!