Well, the East Asian Games have started, and I hope they go well - and of course that Hong Kong performs well. But I am still waiting for someone to tell me what the Games' slogan is all about.
Be The Legend.
Be the what? First of all, who is it addressed to? If it's to the people of Hong Kong, how can we be the legend? A slogan is not enough - we need an instruction manual to go with it.
If it's to the athletes, well I wish them luck, but I very much doubt we're going to see any real sporting legends here. A true sporting legend is someone who dominates their sport internationally and sets the benchmark that others aspire to - and if they have a dash of charismatic flamboyance in their character, so much the better. Think W.G. Grace, Pele, Tiger Woods, Martina Navratilova, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, Lance Armstrong, Michael Schumacher, Torvill and Dean.
No doubt we will see some keen competition here this month, but I don't expect much of it to be of that class. Which is not at all to disparage the efforts of those who do their best. Hong Kong may not have raised any global sporting legends (yet), but we have had our local sporting heroes, a couple of them world class: Lee Lai-shan, and probably our finest current sportsman, Wong Kam-po.
Anyway, good luck to all the competitors - but next time, give them a better slogan. And those mascots are pretty silly, too...
6 comments:
Hi Private Beach.
I know. If they were going to have a silly slogan, the least they could do was write it properly. "Be A Legend" makes (relatively) more sense?
I'm not sure if these mascots are more or less disturbing than the Olympic fuwa.
It is crimally bad, in English at least. You might have thought they'd run in past a professional copywriter at least?
Get a professional copywriter or someone who has a good and solid command of the English language to take a look at their work?! Now, why would they do such a sensible thing like that? I mean the HK government seems to pride itself on coming up with grammatically-challenged slogans, posters, leaflets and ads.
Which silly mascot? The one on the right? ;-)
My first impression of the East Asian Games is that it is “very childish”, which is very much like most products that are promoted by Hong Kong or Chinese companies. This is hardly “professional” to a Western audience, but presumably it is aimed at East Asians?
At least the mascot is better than that of the Shanghai 2010 EXPO...
That makes me think of some sort of professional dentistry gathering.
they'd have been way more successful if they'd licensed Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel, that way they'd have hit the soft spot of the target market and saved TONS on consultants.
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