The embarrassing slogans dreamt up by marketing gurus are a betrayal of Scotland's national self image and belittle our history and achievements.

Perth and Kinross Council take note!

The following abstracts are taken from an article in the Scottish Daily Mail on Saturday 6th August 2005 by Tom Brown

A group of Ayrshire people have rebelled against the tyranny of the marketing man and slogans that sell Scotland short. Hundreds of signatures have been gathered for a petition against those three little words 'pure dead brilliant' - which have been adopted as the crass catch-phrase for Glasgow Prestwick International Airport. Their complaint is that the phrase is too 'ned' - too Glasgow - and is damaging to Scotland's international image.............

But the rebellion should not stop in Ayrshire. It should spread across Scotland and we should all be shouting down the silly slogans that do nothing to promote the real Scotland. And right at the top of the banned list should be the first Minister Jack McConell's cringe-making motto portraying Scotland as 'the best small country in the world'.

McConnell's repeated use of the phrase during the G8 summit only served to make us look like a pygmy nation hanging onto the coat tails of the global big boys - an image that may seem appropriate for the First minister but should cause deep resentment among Scots who are proud of their heritage........ As was unkindly said in the press pavilion when he trotted it out at Gleneagles: 'What next? A competition to find the best small leader in the world?'

Question: How many agencies, spending how much money, brainstorming over how many expense account lunches should it take to devise a simple phrase that sums up Scotland and its attractions? Answer: Too many.

Question: How often do they come up with the right answer: Hardly ever.

The one inspired exception has been the Glasgow's Miles Better campaign launched in 1983 ......... it got over brilliantly the message that Glasgow was a friendly place and 'No Mean City'. After an attempt to replace it with 'Glasgow's Alive', it was resurrected in the mid 1990's and finally put to bed two years ago in favour of 'Glasgow - Scotland With Style' which made nothing like the same impact.

Glasgow's great rival has done no better with the recently unveiled 'Edinburgh: Inspiring Capital'. It took £800,000 of council tax payers money and months of research and focus group testing by a London advertising agency to come up with that uninspiring result.

Adslogans, the database used by top agencies worldwide, says in its Art and Science of the slogan section that a catchline should reflect the brand's name, be campaignable and competitive and impart positive feelings for the brand. 'The Best Wee Country' does non of these things. It should not be negative, prompt sarcastic or negative response, make you say 'so what?' or 'ho-hum' - which is exactly what Mr McConnell's mantra does.

McConnell whose Executive spend on advertising now tops £10 million a year, is also responsible for "Scotland is the Place', for his Fresh Talent initiative not to mention Healthier Scotland. Natural Scotland, One Scotland and Smarter Scotland. We've also had 'Scotland - the Brand', the trying to be trendy 'Cool Caledonia' and the Scottish Tourist Boards somewhat baffling 'Live it. Visit Scotland', which only works alongside images of people wheezing on mountain tops or hurtling down waterfalls.

It can only be a matter of time before some whizz kid conflates The Da Vinci Code and the latest issue of the Fortean Times, which credits us with a higher incidence of ghosties and ghoulies, mysterious happenings and paranormal phenomena and markets us as 'Scotland: The Weird'.

The best advert is to be yourself and be better at it than anybody else. This is something our tourist industry has to learn as many visitors looking for some warmth on a dreich day in a Scottish town have learned.......... Until we learn how to welcome visitors and provide proper service, perhaps we should stop sloganising at them. As the drily commonsensical Will Rogers said: 'If advertisers spent the same amount of money improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't need to advertise them'.

These days, advertising gurus seem to be disappearing up their own corporate gobbledygook.

Still at least they get rich extracting large sums of council tax payers money from gullible councils!!!