I received an invitation yesterday to attend a “round-table discussion on ‘Developing a Marketing Brand’ for Downtown Charlottetown.” I am told that “professional moderators from Cossette Atlantic will guide us through a discussion” and that the end product will be “positioning for the new Downtown Charlottetown Brand and subsequent marketing plan.”

Is it just me, or does Downtown Charlottetown (I prefer the more humble downtown Charlottetown myself) need a brand like it needs a hole in the head?

Sure, the brandocrats will tell us that a brand is all about “positioning your qualities in the consumer’s mind” and associated rubbish. But brands are really, at their core, about telling a Big Lie. Or a series of Big Lies.

Downtown Charlottetown is in the process of withering away. Why not concentrate efforts on stanching the wither, and working for real improvement instead of wasting time painting a coat of socially-engineered artifice on the problem?