Once more we suffer the indignity of the big little town Cambridge retailers window display competition. Poor, inappropriate and downright inaccurate branding offers nothing to Cambridge – and its partner in this endeavour – National Fieldays.
A promotion which does not call a spade a spade is a failure. Cambridge the Waikato town – most probably the largest Waikato town – functions, in large part, as an agribusiness hub – supplying its hinterland and beyond with goods and services. It is a busy place.
The sillyness of ‘villagising’ Cambridge and reducing commercial activity to the level of comic hayseediness is just wrong. Cambridge is in the business of attracting punters to buy its goods and services. National Fieldays is a celebration of businesses that thrive on innovation and all that other fancy go-get stuff people like to talk about.
This promotion fails both by subverting the strengths, aspirations and branding of both enterprises.
3 replies on “Cambridge BIG little town”
[…] before. And of course we are launching forth into that disagreeable season of the Big Little Town or is it Little Big Town promotion that Fieldays inflicts upon Cambridge once a year. […]
[…] } I made the point last year. The sign says it […]
Ana Samways at Spare Room (and the back page of the NZ Herald Section 1- daily) has her say on marketing – Auckland – in Auckland’s Big Pretentious Little City at http://www.spareroom.co.nz/2009/05/20/auckland’s-big-pretentious-little-city/ – a coincidence I know but the discussion is interesting. What is real and what is imagined about a place.