BURST
Surrey is pulling a tourism campaign aimed at attracting World Cup visitors with the tagline Surrey, Not Sorry after negative feedback from residents, including the mayor who said she wanted it withdrawn.
On Friday afternoon, just a day after the campaign’s launch by Discover Surrey, the destination marketing organization for the city, Mayor Brenda Locke said the campaign misses the mark.
“While I appreciate the intention, I do not support a slogan that falls short of the confidence and pride this city deserves,” she said in response to questions from Postmedia.
“I have made it clear that this campaign should be withdrawn and that future efforts to promote Surrey must better reflect the city we are and the city we are continuing to build.”
Ange Chew, executive-director of Discover Surrey, said the campaign was stopped and will be revamped with input from the city before it is relaunched.
She said the city had received negative feedback from residents about the tagline, which she admitted was “on the cheeky side of things.”
In a news release announcing the campaign on Thursday, Discover Surrey said the campaign was as “confident and unexpected” as the city itself, and an “open invitation to look past old assumptions and discover what Surrey has quietly been building all along.”
While the Discover Surrey website highlighted the city’s “stunning shorelines … global flavours and seamless connections across Metro Vancouver,” it also alluded to a “reputation shaped by old assumptions.”
Chew said the “edgy” message was intended to help Surrey break through the noise as Metro Vancouver cities vie to attract World Cup visitors.
“It is a challenge. Surrey is not a primary destination, it is an emerging destination. It can be a challenge to highlight all the wonderful things the city has to offer,” she said.
Chew said the campaign was created by an in-house team and not an outside marketing firm, and it was the first time they had tried to “push boundaries.” The campaign was geared toward American and international visitors in their 20s to 40s, not B.C. residents. The idea was to capture attention with the tagline and then show that Surrey is “unapologetically proud of what it has to offer.”
“FIFA is an opportunity to showcase the city … to an audience with no preconceptions of what Surrey is,” she said.
But marketing experts said that was what made the campaign perplexing.
“Is it mocking how Canadians say sorry, or is it a private joke for locals?” asked Paula Skaper, a business strategist and founder of 33Dolphins Growth Strategy. “It’s either incredibly clever, or a bit of a dud,” she said, speaking before news of the campaign’s cancellation became public.
Skaper said taglines should not require people to think too much about what they might mean.
“Simple and obvious is what you want,” she said. “The fact that we’re talking about the tagline and not about all the things Surrey is doing around the World Cup is a problem. I think it’s getting in the way of the message.”
Skaper said the tagline ultimately comes with a very “defensive posture” and runs contrary to the intent of the campaign, which is to show the city as a confident, thriving place that people should visit. She said she couldn’t imagine Vancouver running with a tagline that features an apology or allusion to a negative reputation, which made her wonder if Surrey wasn’t “undermining” itself with the campaign.
“I’d say this is a miss.”
Mary Charleson, a marketing strategist with Five-Minute Marketing, said she thought the campaign was “edgy and fun,” but she also struggled to understand the target audience.
The allusions to Surrey’s past reputation could play well with locals, particularly if Discover Surrey is aiming to attract residents of other Metro Vancouver cities to its fan zone to watch games.
“Most locals know more about the reputation that Surrey has and might find the fun, cheeky approach of just owning it,” she said.
Like Skaper, she also wondered if the “Surrey, Not Sorry” tagline was meant to play into the stereotype that Canadians are always saying sorry. She said it made sense for Discover Surrey to be trying to get the attentional of international visitors ahead of the World Cup.
“They might not know much about Surrey, but this (campaign) could get their attention, even if it does produce the thought that it might have a reputation,” she said.
In her statement about the campaign, the city’s mayor pushed back against the idea that old assumptions have any place in Surrey’s future.
“Surrey is a remarkable city that is strong, vibrant, diverse, and full of promise, and I will always be a strong advocate for the people of Surrey and for our city’s reputation,” said Locke. “Surrey’s brand should project confidence, optimism, and ambition. It should reflect the strength of our community, not undermine it.”
It is not the first time a Canadian tourism organization has raised eyebrows with a campaign meant to be edgy.
In 2023, Experience Regina apologized for a rebrand that featured the tagline: “We are the city that rhymes with fun.” And in 2015, the town of Okotoks, Alberta began working with a branding expert after it became the subject of online ridicule for its tagline: “There are a number of things to do in Okotoks.”