Alberta’s $25-million re-branding ad campaign features kids running along a pristine beach in, er, the north of England
A beach near the village of Bamburgh in Northumberland, a ways north of Newcastle-on-Tyne in the U.K. and not far from Bamburgh Castle, purportedly the home of Sir Lancelot, has somehow made its way into Alberta’s new $25-million ad campaign re-branding the province. That’s not all that funny–stock pictures and footage are the lifeblood of the advertising industry, after all. What is funny is the explanation provided by Tom Olsen, Premier Ed Stelmach’s director of media relations, an excuse the Edmonton Journal’s Paula Simons calls “without a doubt, the lamest explanation I’ve ever heard the Public Affairs Bureau come up with for anything.” Says Olsen: “There’s no attempt to make people think that this is Alberta … There’s no attempt to mislead. That picture just fit the mood and tone of what we were trying to do … The children are a symbol of the future. They symbolize that Albertans are a worldly people.”