December 19, 2003
(Updated) Oregonians Deconstruct (And Misrepresent) New State Slogan
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
Today's Portland Tribune has a couple of items on the new state slogan, which also gives me the chance to reach back and pick up an item I neglected to mention earlier this week.
First, one Lane Browning attempts to parse the "We Love Dreamers" slogan word by word. While it's all very charming and clever, I suppose, it suffers from the same problem so many other commentators seem to share -- namely, it completely ignores the underlying campaign.
Which brings me to an article from last weekend's Sunday Oregonian. It's not so much the article itself that's important (it essentially allows the creators of the slogan to point out that there's a larger campaign behind it), but the fact that the print edition of the article included two of the ads that have been drafted to illustrate just what the campaign is all about.
Best of these is the so-called "manifesto" ad which I referenced in my coverage of the new slogan when it was released at a recent business conference here in Portland.
Click to Enlarge
Read the entire ad, of course, but here is an excerpt from the tail end:
In a country where OK is too often OK, Oregon is that troublemaker in the back who keeps piping up and challenging the status quo if there might be a better way. But of course if you asked Oregon, Oregon would say it's something different. Oregon would say it is a refuge for idealism. ... Where it's still possible to truly enjoy life. Where possibiltiy is still a real possibility. And maybe, if Oregon keeps questioning and keeps challenging, Oregon just might change the minds of a few, who just might influence a few more, who just might change the world for the better.
For what it's worth, the original version of this manifesto ad, as shown to that business conference, used "pain in the ass" rather than "troublemaker" -- I sort of wish they had kept the original. Also for what it's worth, this is what I mean when I refer to the campaign as occassionally brash and audacious.
Which brings us back to today's Tribune in which the "color commentary" panel of which I am a part weighs in on the question, "What do you think of the new state slogan, 'Oregon. We Love Dreamers'? Do you have an alternative slogan to offer?"
On the whole, the panelists also make the mistake of focusing almost entirely on the slogan itself and not the underlying campaign, which is something that we're going to need to correct if we want to have any sort of substantive discussion about promoting Oregon. But it seems that most commentators are more interested in sounding clever and scoring rhetorical points.
Update
Silly me, I didn't notice that there indded was a counterpoint to the Tribune commentary which dismissively parses each word of the slogan. Not entirely my fault, however, since the Tribune website places it in the wrong spot.