I know it has been almost 2 years since we pooped the bed over the Commonwealth Games, but I’m just now getting over the pain and almost over my embarrassment. Still not sure if enough time has passed for us to show our face again in public but more on that a little later.

Just for fun, I Googled 2014 Commonwealth Games. Can you remember who got it? Glasgow. Have you ever been to Glasgow? NO? Well now you have an excuse. Oh, BTW- in Wikipedia they say that the Canadian bid Halifax “later withdrew due to unacceptably high cost projections”.

As a parallel, I read with regret and envy in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail about a recent financial outlook for British Columbia by their finance minister, Colin Hansen. In his report, he states that “no sector of the province’s economy expects to be untouched, and that includes the vibrant, labour-intensive tourism industry that has helped see BC through some dark days before”. In fact, he thinks that this current financial crisis would be one of the worst the province has ever experienced except for one thing- the 2010 Winter Olympics. And even that is no guarantee of their salvation.

Roll back the clock 10 short years. The British Columbia economy was on speed. Housing prices were seeing double digit increases each year. Hong Kong was pouring money into the province faster than Vancity could build new locations. Whistler had become the first ski area in the world to host 2,000,000 skiers in a single winter. And the Canadian dollar was closer to a peso than a US$. Then a small band of lunatics said “Hey let’s go after the Olympics”. I can tell you from first hand experience that though there was some support for the idea, the majority of stakeholders in Whistler were not in favour. “Why would we waste our time and money to chase something that will cost so much money and make the place even busier?”. Luckily, the powers in place at the time had the foresight to realize that they had no idea what the future might bring.

So I guess the moral here is don’t let politicians that can’t look beyond their next leadership race make decisions for our city. So, the next time opportunity knocks we should open the door wide, give them a great big wet one and pour them a Keith’s.

Back to that ‘enough time’ thing. I figure we’re still 2-3 years away from going out in public. That would make us ready to take another crack at it for 2022. And if you’re wondering who has the URL halifax2022, you can stop wondering!

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!