The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is taking issue with the $300,000 price tag for a Saskatoon city bus rebrand.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says Saskatoon’s rebranding of Link (formerly known as the bus rapid transit system) was a waste of money.
The CTF’s prairie director, Gage Haubrich, said $317,757 was spent on hiring a design firm, Entro, to come up with a new name and brand for the public transit system.
The project took almost three years to complete and the new logo uses the same colours as the existing Saskatoon Transit logo, Haubrich noted.
“The city’s next slogan should be: ‘Saskatoon, where consultants rip off taxpayers,’ ” he said, adding that the rebranding could have been put together with an afternoon brainstorming session.
If a project this small in the grander public transit project costs so much, people should be concerned about what other costs will come up with Link.
In a prepared response, city staff noted the rebranding project came in under budget, costing less than the $500,000 that was allocated for it.
“To give some perspective, the investment to date is about 0.1 per cent of the total $250 million project funding. This amount was not unexpected since our research has shown that other cities who undertook similar BRT projects ranged from $300,000 to $500,000 for a marketing and branding component,” the response said.
A similar rebrand in Calgary cost that city $366,000 in 2018; a 2012 project in Waterloo, Ont. cost $500,000, and the York Region in Ontario spent $300,000 for its transit marketing and communications consulting, the city noted.
Adam Slobodzian, an assistant professor of marketing at the Edwards School of Business, said the amount the city spent is nothing out of the norm.
“And if we hyper-fixate on that it’s only the name and the colours changing, it sounds alarming, of course,” but it’s well within the range expected for a city project like Link, Slobodzian said.
The goal of rebranding is to change people’s established perceptions, and that requires a lot of work to achieve, he said.
“There’s a lot of people involved and they’re doing the research. They’re meeting with these groups, they’re employing professionals.”
Perceptions of a brand drive user engagement, and if the work isn’t done to get it right, people will talk about it as a failure, Slobodzian added.
“It’s quite refreshing to see that they’re willing to put in this work early on to get it right and to set a good direction.”
Coming up with a cheaper product is always possible, but whether or not the quality holds up is the question, he said.
“We’d probably still criticize them regardless of what they took, because that’s simply the nature of marketing and branding. It’s easy to criticize when you hyper-focus on a name and colours changing.”
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