We now know, from Sunday's Toronto Star page D1 article on the branding of
cities, 'Brand it and they will come. Or maybe not.', that London, England,
used the tagline 'unlimited' to promote themselves in 2003. Just two short
years ago!

What?? Four million dollars was spent by Toronto's supposedly 'professionals
of the tourism business' on what looks like a plagiarized city marketing
concept? This is mind-boggling and stomach-turning to say the least. How
could Tourism Toronto not know about this? Don't you Google?

That Toronto is the object of a manufactured image that uses a term already
pre-empted by another major world city is the last word in stupidity for me!
And I do believe that I speak for the majority of Torontonians who think
likewise ­ and for all those who don't even know what's happening to their
city in the eyes of the world.

So I hereby demand, on behalf of all Torontonians, that this program be
terminated immediately. For we are now the laughing stock of the world's
business community, at least, and we can hear ordinary people saying, "Poor
Toronto, what a sad, sad story about a really good city." This cannot be
allowed to continue.

More questions: Why did Tourism Toronto, and all others involved, create
such a disaster? Is it because everybody's head is stuck in the sands of
dead 20th Century marketing myopia ­ or somewhere else unmentionable? Since
when is Toronto a bottle of pop, a can of beans, or a cold, lifeless
commodity to be dolled up by uninspired, deadening thinking?

WAKE UP Tourism Toronto! We are PEOPLE! We're alive and kicking! We are
HUMAN BEINGS, not products and services. We laugh, we cry, we dance, we sing
­ and we work our fingers and brains to the bone every day to make life
better for ourselves and for others not so fortunate. We love life, and we
love our city!

And so we deserve a lot better than your present insensitive and insulting
marketing approach that totally lacks any aspect of human-ness. In my
opinion the present Toronto unlimited program is more damaging to
Torontonians than any other disaster we have ever endured.

The very fact that visitors to Toronto are being dicked with a fee to pay
for their own advertising is proof alone of the totally flawed thinking
behind your actions. Furthermore, the arrogance of the program's manager,
when, to excuse flagrant plagiarism, she states, "Nobody can own the word
'unlimited'", is inexcusable and cause for termination, along with others at
the top.

So where are we now? We, proud Torontonians, are not at all satisfied or
delighted with Toronto Tourism's work and what has happened to our (and
other Canadians') money and image ­ and we want it back! As it's hardly
possible we'll be refunded any day soon, the only way things will get better
­ a lot better - is if we do it ourselves.

Torontonians are GOOD PEOPLE. We've got what it takes to make our city great
on the world stage. It has already started. Good people are already at work
for the good of Toronto and it can't be stopped.

So just leave us alone ­ and from now on we'll shine up our city and radiate
our true essence to the world!

Then, and only then, will they come.

Citizen Adrian Harvey. Toronto.

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416.534.2131
1082 Dupont St., Toronto M6H 1Z6
adrianharvey@sympatico.ca