May 5, 2006
If Toronto Were An Ice Cream Flavour?
The Toronto Sun and Torontoist agree on something. That Toronto Unlimited Logo totally bites. It bites so much that a giant room of monkeys working in front of iMacs would eventually design a better logo. Instead of going this experimental route billboard company Astral Media teamed up with OCAD advertising students to come up with alternative slogans for the city.
The winner was "Metropolitan Flavour" and an image of a giant ice cream cone that represents Toronto's oh so delicious cultural diversity. The image will be up on a number of Astral's billboards throughout the month.
Christopher Hume likes the ad campaign too. The runners-up can be seen at BCE Place.
Blatantly posed photo from CNW
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i'm still saying "come play" for a tourism campaign
if people only knew what they could get away with here...
All I could think about when I read this post is that those girls have nice bums. Yes, I'm also a pervert.
Mmm, cultural diversity is delicious!
I can't decide if this simply lame or strangely offensive. It kind of has a "collect all four" ethnicities quality to it.
Why do you think that Toronto is _so_ diverse? Honestly, why is that even a selling point? Thanks for diluting Truly Toronto Culture with Culture From Other Places, and selling it to People From Other Places.
Ethnicity (ie, race, evidence by the colors) isn't the mark of diversity; language is. Dialect, ethnolect, sociolect, pidgin; these are the marks of _cultural_ diversity.
Far more languages are spoken in New York City, and even more in London, and yet even more in Singapore.
Yet, in all those cities, there is a firm culture not rooted solely in either language or race; each city has a marked and noticeable local culture, and they do not, repeat: do not, sell anything but their distinct culture to tourists.
Imagine those cities above encouraging you to come and gawk at immigrants rather than visit the museums, the landmarks, the markets, the parks, the architecture, the galleries, the shops, the local cuisine, the nightclubs.
Why, if they did that, don't you think you'd just stay home, here in Toronto rather than go and see what you're already surrounded by?
Do you think that Chinese and Italian and Portguese diaspora represent some kind of neato culturally iconic selling point? Maybe if you're from Sudbury or Hamilton. To the people spending money, coming from afar? Nothing to offer here.
This is another piece of evidence that the Canadian psyche is firmly entrenched in some kind of notion that watering down what is left of Canadian culture with other cultures, ie, acculturation, is inherently better then the American notion, ie, assimilation.
Resistance is futile... unless you think multiculturalism is good. Then, well, that's a great excuse for living in a racially or linguistically segregated society and refusing to adopt the language, customs, and culture of the country to which you are (only nominally) now a citizen.
Toronto culture? What is it? Just every other culture mishmashed together? The True Toronto Culture is not to be found in Chinatown, it is not in Corso Italia, it is not in Greektown.
Buy into this and all you'll get is gwai lo-focused lo mein, imitation spagehtti bolognese, and ground-meat faux gyros; then you'll never get to see what Real Toronto is all about. Real Toronto People Not Selling you the imitations and fakery of their former homes. If Toronto, Canada, is your home, please remember what makes Toronto Toronto is not Hong Kong, Bologna, or Athens. It is Toronto, pure and simple; Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
What a load.