Come Visit. Live Life. Eat Cheese.

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

Wisconsin has unveiled a new official state slogan, “Live Like You Mean It,” much to the dismay of some Wisconsinites who wondered why their tourism department spent $50,000 to come up with a catchphrase that used to be in a Bacardi Rum ad campaign.

“It wasn’t so much we didn’t like it as — it’s been used,” said Warren Bluhm of The Green-Bay Press-Gazette, who wrote an editorial denouncing the choice. Under further questioning, Bluhm admitted that he also didn’t like it.

I have been thinking a lot about state slogans this week. Some days when you’re confronted with the Chrysler bankruptcy and the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, you just decide that this is the moment when you’re going to take a cold, hard look at the difficulty marketers have in coming up with a good state tourism campaign.

Besides, I am a big fan of State Things — the ever-growing national collection of mottos, songs, slogans, nicknames and state birds, flowers, rocks and animals. This began back when I was a legislative reporter in Connecticut and covered a hard-fought contest for official status between the deer and the whale, during which the State Senate, in a moment of extreme pique, voted to make Connecticut’s state animal the human being.

(More here.)