I had to get this down quick because I think we’ve reached a watershed moment. I must plead ignorance, yet again, about the whole city amalgamation since I did not live here when it happened. But all I know is that 10 years into it the only legacy that I see from this myopic spreadsheet vision is Peter Kelly, half-shoveled sidewalks and the no-name HRM. By this measure, even if you’re a PK fan, the experiment has been a colossal failure.

Like most people, I’ve felt a sense of hopelessness over the past couple of years as our once-great city name of Halifax (one of the oldest in the country) has been bastardized to the HRM. Today, I went to a very enlightening luncheon at the World Trade Centre hosted by the Greater Halifax Partnership. And I think the crowd of 300+ concerned citizens felt a collective kick in the HRM when the entertaining speaker, Carol Colletta, admitted that she found no redeeming qualities in our no-name HRM. Like her, I get the push back from Dartmouth, Bedford, Lower Sackville and the rest of the boroughs in the region who spitefully must have said, “If we can’t have our name, you sure as hell can’t have yours.” At the time, the administrative advantages of one police force, one water commission, one city hall… you get the idea… must have been too tempting to resist. But for God’s sake, could they not have had the good sense to foresee the soul sucking effect that would happen when they called it the HRM. I only wish I’d been in the room when that first bureaucrat uttered those three little letters. After all, I’ll bet you could not find one parent out there that considered for a moment calling their child PFT just because they could not decide between aunt Pat, cousin Fiona or Grandma Tish.

I say enlightening, because the over whelming support for the re-elevation of HALIFAX was palpable. On several occasion the audience erupted into applause when reference was made to such an idea. Of the many points that Ms. Coletta made, the most resounding was that we can’t wait for politicians, policy makers and processes to launch this movement. So, since I don’t have access to a network broadcast like Peter Finch in Network, I’ll… stay tuned.

I've been in the marketing game for almost 25 years now and the most valuable thing I've learned is that I have a whole lot more to learn. I started off in sales and worked my way up (so I thought) to advertising. In hind sight, I realize that sales was the top! You can have sales without advertising, but advertising without sales is just useless art. When Trampoline Branding was formed, we set out with that firmly planted in our minds. Now more than ever we need to keep it very simple for consumers. Good thing, I'm a very simple guy!