“Live Like You Mean It.”
The Wisconsin Department of Tourism rolled out a new slogan, with accompanying cartwheel logo, to promote living, working, and playing in Wisconsin. The slogan replaces the one that’s been used since 2005: “Life’s So Good.”
Apparently, life’s not so good in Wisconsin. State marketing officials must have noticed Wisconsin ranked a dismal 37th in the “Freedom in the 50 States” study.
According to the Eau Claire Leader Telegram,
UW-Madison marketing professor Thomas O’Guinn said the new slogan is a major improvement over the old “Life’s So Good,” which he found bland and lame.
“We’re not going to stand in the way of you having fun. It signals, come up here, have a great time, we’re not going to bother you a whole lot. Hedonism is okay. Fun is okay. As these slogans go, I think it’s pretty good.”
Have the state’s police been warned that we’re now promoting a devotion to pleasure? To satisfying the desires of the senses? Have they been alerted not “to bother you a whole lot?”
Maybe we shouldn’t tell people, then, that Governor Doyle’s new budget includes money to install surveillance cameras all over the state?
That’d sure get in the way of the hedonism.
If the state really wants to create magic to attract new business, new residents, and more tourists, it doesn’t need a lame new slogan.
It needs to lower taxes!
The Badger State has been securely fixed in the top 10 highest taxed states in the nation for the past 30 years. Mixing in a little “hedonism” doesn’t change that fact.
Provide actual, real incentives for people to move here, spend their money here, and move their business here.
A new slogan is just putting fresh lipstick on the same old pig.
