A New Slogan for Nelson

Despite the ominous creaking sounds from Nelson city’s overburdened and out dated infra structure, at a time when town water supplies are under constant threat and sewage is threatening to burst free from a straining and inadequate system, its all too predictable that the peripheral business of “branding” has risen high on the local agenda and is the one exercising the finest minds of the city’s brains trust. Our brilliant city fathers or someone purporting to be like them – a committee of the council dolts who squander our rates with idiot insouciance has decided we need to upgrade the present underwhelming city slogan “Nelson – Live the Day”. You can’t help but agree that this meaningless drivel should never have been permitted to see the light of day.

Saatchi’s stolen branding for Wellington, “Absolutely Positively Wellington” arguably did that city no harm and, given its “free from the ether”provenance, must have done well for generously recompensed Saatchi’s too. With all the creative talent supposedly centred in Nelson and budgets strained to breaking point and beyond you would hope that our brains trust might resist the idea of farming out the slogan job to expensively hired outside talent. However the involvement of pricey consultants might be an idea too hard to resist for the profligate Hands Up gang. Before they blow more of our hard earned shouldn’t we, the beggared victims of Hands Up, offer our own fragrant thoughts and suggestions.

Let’s see, what has Nelson got going for it? Supposedly, we are a centre for the arts – oceans of crap and mere spoonfuls of quality art are produced here, although in insufficient quantity to maintain any sort of effective arts marketing presence. We receive a lot of sunshine. We are a tourist destination, a small ugly town in the midst of beauty. We are comically badly run. We have reasonable schools and some faltering industry. We are a significant fishing port. Wine is produced locally. We are so laid back as to be almost comatose, hence of course “Live the day”, a slogan too stupidly diffuse to mean a thing. According to some notions of geography we are close to the centre of New Zealand.

I propose these for consideration

Distinctly Average at the Centre of New Zealand
The Sunstruck Navel of New Zealand
The Sun Shines out our Arsehole

Now of course it’s early days yet and a lot more consideration may have to be given to these, and others as you might submit. More consideration perhaps than the city fathers showed when they elected to build two unspeakably inept, architecturally nil, sheds on the fringes of Trafalgar Park, sited to be amongst the very first things our visitors will see as they enter the city. Implied but not stated is, Nelson – who gives a fuck.