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Music Monday – “Experience Regina” (Well, It Was An Experience To Be in Regina This Weekend Anyhow!)

“Experience Regina” Parody (Watch It To See Some of Regina’s “Highlights”)

You may have heard that Tourism Regina recently rebranded.

It started with a teaser clip and message on social media at the start of March:

It’s All Happening… ?
Let’s push the narrative; the same old is boring. Our city is changing, and that means we need to adapt.
On March 16th, Tourism Regina will showcase an all-new look and feel to the public for the first time.
What does this mean for you? We will embrace change, diversity, and who we are as people. Will everyone like it? No! But that’s okay.  [Editor’s note: Truer words have never been spoken!] But we promise you will always have a seat at our table.

The big reveal was on March 16 with “Tourism Regina” announcing it was re-branding as “Experience Regina”:

Tourism Regina is no more. As of today, we are… Experience Regina! ?

Our City has been living this brand for a while now, and we thought it was time to own it.
#seeyqr #experienceregina pic.twitter.com/PQOVmJlWGx

— Tourism Regina (@TourismRegina) March 16, 2023

I can’t link to the announcement tweet because you may have also heard that there was so much immediate pushback from the community that they walked it back *by Sunday* (barely a full weekend!) – deleting a bunch of tweets (including the original one) plus some Instagram posts too – and issuing an apology.

They didn’t walk back the the entire re-brand (separate issue but one of their tweets made reference to a “six million dollar morning” which is likely the cost of the re-brand campaign (a reference to the amount of money they got from the federal government for tourist initiatives across the province including two million for Tourism Sask/Experience Regina specifically and which I’d imagine part of which was used for this rebranding. h/t to SaskRyan on Twitter for the correction) and probably not the thing you want to brag about so openly when you end up on the defensive before the weekend is over!)

In the fallout, Tim Reid from REAL has claimed the rebrand cost $30,000 but many experts have weighed in to say this is a *very* low estimate at best – perhaps only taking into account core costs but not staff time or not the cost of external contractors or otherwise trying to minimize the waste of this campaign.

So yeah, they didn’t revert to “Tourism Regina” but issued an apology about how the launch had gone poorly and, without saying it directly, alluded to two slogans connected to the new brand – #seeyqr which was included in their original tweet and “The City That Rhymes With Fun” which was on some merchandise made as part of the campaign by a local company.  (To be fair, there were reports that the hoodie with the slogan immediately sold out.)

https://twitter.com/ExpRegina/status/1637586812427468801

“The City That Rhymes With Fun” is an old joke but when you live in a city that most of the world pronounces “ri-GEna” but the city actually rhymes with…angina (okay, that’s not really fun.  It’s VAGINA everybody! Get it?!?), it’s a pretty common joke you get used to hearing too.

Now, I will be honest – initially, I actually thought “Experience Regina” as a stand-alone name was an improvement over the generic “Tourism Regina”.

Sure, tying into a goofy anti-song from 2008 that got a bit of spotlight again in 2018 when featured on Jimmy Fallon was actually more revealing of the “brand” of Regina than anything that a fancy video, new logo and expensive launch party would reveal – once again, Regina is trying to be hip & edgy but ends up looking like a bunch of yokels who are 5-10 years behind the times.

(Again, a tangent but I firmly believe that creating a brand is more than just saying a bunch of buzzwords then going “BRAND!” like it’s some form of magical incantation.  Brands are created by an organization’s culture and workers, not in a boardroom, and there can be a huge difference between what a brand looks like from the outside on the glossy brochures like a new outfit and some make-up versus and what it actually is on the inside right at the core of the organization.  And if that’s the case, the “brand” of Tourism Regina/Experience Regina doesn’t seem that good at all.)

So anyhow, I saw a lot of pushback about the sexism and misogyny of the new name and slogans on social media.  But I have to be honest again – as a librarian with a huge interest in freedom of expression issues and a strong anti-censorship bias (in any form), I was hesitant about “canceling” this new campaign just because it was tasteless, juvenile and had a few double entendres I’d heard a zillion times before.  Sigh.

What really changed my mind was Shea was…pissed.

Like seriously pissed about this.

She pointed out it’s one thing if her and I joke about “the city that rhymes with fun” privately (and we have) or even if it’s used by businesses or whatever.

But this was the City of Regina’s official Tourism Agency, not just trying to “lean in” (lordy, how I hate that phrase) to an outdated parody – a contradiction right there if I ever (is “Lean Back” a bestselling Sheryl Sandberg book I missed?) – but basically throwing sexism and misogyny into the faces of every single resident of the city and every single potential visitor too.

That’s every young girl (one person invited someone from the campaign to come to their daughter’s school and explain *why exactly* Regina rhymed with fun), every sexual abuse survivor, every waitresses in a bar full of drunk dudes, every teenaged lifeguard (Shea again: “Can you imagine taking the kids to swim lessons and having a lifeguard with #SeeYQR on the front of her swimsuit and “City that Rhymes with Fun” on the back?  Or even if they didn’t brand the swimsuits, that the lifeguards would wonder if people might think of that while they’re just trying to do their jobs?”)


And not just the message it sends to women but the message it sends to men too – we live in a province with the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the country, a tragic number of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women, not to mention prominent men convicted of murdering their wives being invited to our Legislature by members of the current governing party and this campaign is basically telling men it’s okay to objectify women or worse.

I think it’s better for me to link to a post I saw which captures the problems with this campaign and sheer exhaustion of women better than any of my ramblings ever could (quoted in full below for posterity’s sake):

“Like everyone else in the city, I saw the new campaign rolled out by Tourism Regina – sorry, *Experience Regina* this week.
I sighed, rolled my eyes, and continued scrolling. But as the slogans keep rolling out, and other businesses and individuals dog pile on to the “tongue in cheek, pun heavily intended” movement our city’s tourism department has decided to take, I’ve realized I’m exhausted. Exhausted for myself, for every woman in the city, and for the City of Regina herself.
Make no mistake, Regina is a woman. And she is *tired*.
The Queen City, the city who has fought for a place at the table, fought to be taken seriously by the other players, is a city with so much history and so much to be proud of. Now, she faces one of the biggest insults – an insult from within.
Her own tourism department – rather than highlighting all that is wonderful about her – has reduced her to the sum of her parts. Has asked her to laugh along at the jokes made at her expense. Play the role of the cool girl – c’mon, it’s *funny*, don’t take it so *seriously.*
She’s being asked to be sexy, to be fun. Of course, that’s where the value is right? In her sex appeal?
The puns roll out – experience regina. The city that rhymes with fun. She’s asked to show her Regina. To joke about how “flat” she is. Come on, you have to laugh, it’s no fun when you don’t laugh. You must not get it.
To every woman in this wonderful city who resonates a little too much with Regina’s *experience*, I’m sorry. I’m sorry your city is perpetuating the idea that women are only worthwhile when we are sexy and fun, and willing to laugh at the jokes made at our expense. I’m sorry that the women in the position to choose a different narrative for this city have chosen the path of least resistance, chosen to play the role of “cool girl”, compalcent and complicit in our own objectification. I’m sorry that we have months, if not years, of terrible innuendo to endure.
But most of all, I’m sorry that we are still at a place where we have to be tired of the ingrained misogyny.
I want more for Regina’s future. I want a future where we are not asked to laugh at our own expense. One where we are able to proudly declare our pride in our hometown, without a self depreciating chuckle, without a hedged comment. One where we are not asked to apologize for Regina by laughing with those who are laughing *at* us.
We are from the City of Regina and what a beautiful city she is! She’s a complex, layered City, with so much to offer! Far more than a crude punchline!
Too bad her tourism department doesn’t see it.”

I guess I’ll just throw in a few final random thoughts:

* someone said and I checked – six of eight staffers listed on Tourism Regina’s (er, Experience Regina’s) “About Us” page are women.  And this is only the people who make the “About Us” page which is usually your higher-level leadership but not office staffers and lower level employees (also often women.). Can you imagine the potential workplace harassment complaints at an employer where thinly veiled references to female genitalia are literally branded onto everything you see and touch?!?

* I think it’d also be interesting to know who knew what when.  For example, Mark Heise who is President of Rebellion Brewery and was proudly quoted in the launch day about how Rebellion has used “Experience Regina” for its top-selling merchandise item ever issued a very brief and to-the-point repudiation :

* So much of this is about “branding” and companies/organizations are usually very protective of their brands.  So I can’t help but wonder if other partners in this campaign such as those featured in the launch video or who might otherwise be connected to it somehow, are happy with their brands being associated with such controversial material?

* If I can speculate, I’ve seen this happen in other situations where people start to “one up” each other and things can spiral out of control.

I have no idea but wonder if there may have been a similar progression in how this campaign developed (even as the people involved thought they were making it better by “one upping” each idea):

-> “Experience Regina” picked as new name = a bit silly to tie into that old viral song but whatever

-> “#SeeYQR” – hmm, maybe? (but as I learned in an early social media campaign I ran, never use a hashtag that’s easy to subvert – and #SeeYQR makes it easy to post things about Regina that are *not* desirable or sources of pride…as the video at the top of this post shows.)

-> “City That Rhymes With Fun” – suddenly, #SeeYQR is a lot more overtly about “vagina” and the whole campaign falls apart.  I saw people reporting that the hash tag was “#SeeOurYQR” and basically equating it to “See Our Vagina”.

* Cheryl Stadnichuk who is a City Councillor issued a statement saying she didn’t know about the new name until it was announced and would’ve been opposed if she knew.

* On the other hand, he hasn’t issued a statement but something tells me that Councillor Mancinelli was probably okay with the new campaign based on this undated photo:

* City Council was not briefed about this campaign unlike a re-brand of Economic Development Regina. (If I’m a City Councillor, I’m *pissed* because I know I’m going to be blamed for something that I didn’t even know about!)

Stadnichuk said REAL could have consulted with concil before launching the campaign, as it did before the launch of a rebrand of Economic Development Regina.

* Last Mountain Vodka posted about being at the launch party with their dill pickle vodka with an image captioned “Put a Little Pickle In It” (which is apparently their long-standing slogan for this product but again, double entendres running wild.)

* Brown Communications confirmed they were involved in the campaign but denied knowledge or contributing to the unofficial risque slogans:

* 22Fresh was the company that made the merchandise:

* Local designer Dean Renwick was also called out for a shirt design that showed Regina’s twin towers with red heels on top as if a woman with her legs in the air but this was apparently an old design, not connected to this campaign (not that this doesn’t make it any less contentious.)

* Most interesting of all to me is Mayor Sandra Masters who was board chair of REAL (Regina Exhibition Association Limited) before becoming Mayor and REAL is now in charge of Tourism Regina instead of Economic Development Regina.  Hmmm…  This is especially relevant given that Mayor Masters charged “sexism” when some councillors were advocating against homelessness by challenging the female city manager’s budget but then she may have been aware of this campaign which pretty much defines sexism?!?

* Since the controversy erupted, Mayor Masters has called the campaign “tone deaf”…

…but when it was launched (did she know about it even if the rest of Council didn’t?), she called it “fun, genuine, and bold.”

* She also defended the “rhymes with fun” slogan in an interview with CBC’s Stefani Langenegger by citing that noted feminist <checks notes> Mick Jagger?

* To add to the conflicts and contradictions, Tara Osipoff, the VP of Tourism Regina is apparently someone who was very involved at the top levels of Sandra Masters’ Mayoral campaign and a quick Google search also shows she’s someone who had a company called “It’s Nice 2 Be Nice” (you really can’t make this stuff up) and is known as a vocal women’s rights advocate up to and including being sued as the anonymous creator of an Instagram account (which she denied) where local women could share stories of abusive and harassing men.

Osipoff is a vocal advocate for women’s rights in Regina and believes that’s why she was targeted. She said it underscores the lack of strong voices on issues of sexual harassment and assault.

* As with Heise, I’m liable to give Osipoff the benefit of the doubt even though her position and background makes it much more likely she was not only aware but directly involved in the creation of this campaign.  At the same time, libraries are hugely female dominated and yet I’ve seen how hard it can be for women in high level leadership positions to be decisive and respected equally and to stand up for the right thing.  I can’t imagine how much tougher this might be in the world of entrepreneurship and companies/organizations that are often male-driven with focus on sports/booze/concerts.  But it would be nice to see her give a direct statement, free of bland legal/corporate speak, to give her view of what happened and why beyond just having her name added to a follow-up acknowledgement from REAL.

https://twitter.com/ExpRegina/status/1637987662882643970

* And of course Tim Reid, as CEO of Experience Regina and REAL, has to wear this most directly.  Timing is terrible as he’s in the midst of a “catalyst campaign” to advocate for a new arena and as someone online pointed out, if you can’t manage a basic rebranding, how can you manage a multi-million dollar project like a new arena?

* Don’t expect it will happen for Reid but will be interesting to see if anyone is fired/resigned as the fall guy (girl?) for this.  (Depending on what happens, there could be some interesting optics there too.  Unlikely but imagine Reid resigns and Osipoff takes over?)

* Reid was quoted in a follow-up interview with Global TV saying they did two and a half months of stakeholder consultations and city administration was aware of the campaign.  A couple things on that – when this was first launch, a lot of people asked how any organization could get this to the light of day without someone saying “Uhm, maybe this is a bad idea?”  If it also involved consultations with stakeholders, which stakeholders?  And again, no one objected?  And how do those stakeholders and partners feel now?

* I get the feeling there was a lot of “group think” moving this forward and objections were probably dismissed/not voiced (again, org culture will be a big part of this – do staff feel comfortable raising uncomfortable truths?). They even allude to this in that initial teaser admitting “Not everyone will like it” but I suspect this was that old marketing “rule” about “No publicity is bad publicity” and “It’s better to have people talking about you.”  I think they were hoping to create their own “viral” moment, sort of like the original video was viral back in 2008, and draw attention that way and even if it was negative, there’d be value in putting Regina “on the map”.

*  It’s nothing to do with nothing but one weird thought I had – another contradiction in this whole mess is that Regina/Saskatchewan is so conservative and has such repressed attitudes towards sex compared to other cities/provinces in my very generalized opinion yet, for example, in the “city that rhymes with fun”, you literally can’t go to a strip club and order a beer like in pretty much every other province in the country?  Heck, I honestly don’t know if we still have strip clubs (when I was in University, I heard a rumour there was one way out in the industrial area.). Again, we like to think we’re forward-thinking and modern and cutting edge in Sask but we’re often the exact opposite – more bro-country than alt-country.

* Melissa Fiacco, who happens to be the daughter of a former mayor, tweeted about how talking with a friend about different standards for who can say what about women’s bodies including women themselves (and I hope I’m interpreting that right), helped change her initial support for the campaign.

* Speaking of former Mayors, Michael Fougere made a “Regina/vagina” joke of his own when the original song hit Jimmy Fallon.  (Is it different if its a tweet versus an official campaign?  If he’s reaching out to a comedian instead of the community in general?)

* I said earlier that one person on Twitter invited someone from REAL to come to their daughter’s school to explain why “Regina rhymed with fun” and I suspect Shea and I weren’t the only parents having conversations with our kids about respect, humour, and body parts this weekend!  At least the name of Regina isn’t “Runt” or “Russy” so kids are hearing the anatomically correct term.  But it should be a parent’s choice when to have that discussion – not something that the city’s tourism agency forces on you!

* Someone said it was like living through a whole season of “Parks and Recreation” in a single weekend.

* On top of all the other problems with this campaign, a former colleague in the book publishing world speculates whether they got proper clearance to reuse the original song or if there’s some copyright issues happening as well (can you imagine if the city got used for using “Experience Regina” without permission?)

https://twitter.com/cenobyte/status/1638305383935614976

* Apparently people are paying attention.  Guess which are the two days of my blog stats after I posted this summary of the various elements of this whole story:

* A PR agency owner in Calgary weighs in:

* It’s not just other provinces taking note.  It’s a pretty big disaster when you hit the Washington Post and the BBC! They’re even laughing at us in New Zealand and the Bill Maher Show.

https://youtu.be/41pH10zvyZs?t=2818

Again, I can’t help but wonder if the goal *was* to create some (minor) controversy, get some attention/go viral and then be prepared to do a “Sorry if you were offended”-type apology to the small handful of outspoken opponents?  (New Regina slogan idea: “Play with fire – you might get burned.”

* In their rush to withdraw all offensive content, Experience Regina apparently rewrote some content to say that Regina has a reputation as a “boring government town”.  True but again, is that good marketing to draw attention to the negatives?

* Then their entire web site was taken down with not even a link to a previous version *or* a placeholder – four days when noted by someone on Twitter and six days and counting as I type this.  (If you can’t tell, I keep adding to this post as new information or mis-steps are made – it’s actually stunning that this just keeps looking worse and worse!)

* There’s also deeper issues of colonialism, racism and reconciliation in a city now named after a Queen but “prior to its naming of Regina was known as Oskana ka-asast?ki.”  Hmm, if a tourism agency can change its name, perhaps a problematic city name that causes such snickers and titters in locker rooms and board rooms across the city could change too?

So Tourism Regina has rebranded itself to Experience Regina. They launched a social media campaign that was sexist, juvenile and very unprofessional. It’s like Memer’s took over the marketing department that day. They also use a song that Jimmy Fallon laughed at which is a whole other embarrassment. Hearing that song, while not knowing the reason behind it is cringey. They have since “apologized” which is beside the point.
On a serious note if Regina really wanted to rebrand and have people actually “experience Regina” correctly. they need to take a look at their own colonial history.
The area prior to its naming of Regina was known as Oskana ka-asast?ki, which translates to pile of bones. Looking through some of the historical articles and websites, it is said that the Cree word was used as a place name because of the pile of bison bones that were stacked upon each other along Wascana Creek. There’s a couple articles and write ups that mention that some of these bones were from Indian hunters who stacked them there. As soon as I read Indian hunters I thought bullshit because we’ve always taken care of our sacred Buffalo, used every single part of it and would never disrespect it in such a way.
What happened is that settlers and those alike had killed off and massacred the Buffalo to make make make way for themselves and to get rid of the Indian problem. In turn, the selling of these bones were used as an economic supplement at the time. Settlers would go out to the Prairie, collect as much of the Buffalo bones as they could and bring them to the nearest port or train station to sell and be transported to facilities in the states to make things such as fertilizer. So even after they killed all the buffalo they used these animal parts for their own gain and continue to blame the Indians.
So if you want true reconciliation, Regina I would urge you to do a deep dive into your history and take a critical look at your historians, their accounts as well as consider Traditional Indigenous Knowledge as facts before you go and try rebrand your city.
It was known as Oskana ka-asast?ki because of colonialism and genocide.
If you want to “lean into a name” about an old outdated joke that wasn’t even of your own creation, – “the city that rhymes with fun”, why don’t you reclaim the fact that this city was built upon the bones of my ancestors, the Buffalo and the children who are buried at the Regina industrial school? Start there.
You are all responsible.

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