Tourism Regina was using sexualized slogans months before campaign launch

An investigative report into Regina's recent rebranding fiasco, which played on the fact that Regina rhymes with vagina, blames a junior staffer, who it says authorized the publishing of sexualized slogans to the city's tourism website without management authorization.

But CBC's review of the report, documents obtained through access to information and other public records shows that Regina Exhibition Association Ltd. (REAL), Regina's tourism arm, was using those slogans months before, including commissioning a hoodie with the slogan, "The City that Rhymes with Fun."

The campaign, which launched March 16, received international mockery and criticism for its use of that slogan and another, "Show me your Regina."

"The issue of who initiated the surprise release of slogans onto the Experience Regina website lies at the heart of the 'Incident,' " wrote Alberta consultant George Cuff in his report, released last month.

Regina city councillor Andrew Stevens doesn't buy that. He says REAL couldn't have been surprised about those slogans or their inclusion in the tourism campaign, noting the whole rebrand was designed around the vision "Make Regina sexy."

"This was not just some lowly marketing grad who put together a slogan and it happened to weasel its way through a maze of oversight mechanisms," said Stevens. "It was all deliberate. This was not an accident."

The campaign was cancelled days after it launched, and REAL hired Cuff to investigate. Stevens was one of the people who recommended Cuff.

The report said there were many contributing elements — poor oversight, a busy CEO and underfunding — but the biggest single factor was when a junior employee gave the thumbs up for the website with sexualized slogans to go live. 

"So the first time he probably had an opportunity to make a significant decision and he did so without getting the green light from somebody up the food chain," said Cuff in a news conference.

Cuff said he was told the racy catch-phrases "were considered at best 'draft slogans.' " He said he was told it was going to take another couple of weeks before the site was ready for public consumption.

"So there was no need to worry about, 'Is this publicly palatable or isn't it?' because there was no urgency around that," said Cuff in an interview with CBC.

Stevens said that he and the rest of council received a briefing shortly after the March controversy, but until he read Cuff's report last month, he had heard nothing to suggest that the troubles were caused by a low-level employee.

"There was no indication this was an 'oops' until this report comes out," Stevens told CBC. 

Have a tip? Contact Geoff Leo at geoff.leo@cbc.ca