Owner of marketing agency Tag Concepts provides comments on the Canadian Energy Centre logo. (CHAT News photo)

By Alex McCuaig

CEC marketing

NDP call for government to scrap energy war room

Jan 6, 2020 | 5:29 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – With criticisms mounting, the provincial NDP opposition is calling on the government to scrap the problem-plagued Canadian Energy Centre, providing a list of ten reasons to scrap the $30 million publicly-funded so-called war room.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t costing Albertans $82,000 per day,” said NDP energy critic Irfan Sabir Monday in a press conference outlining the issues with the CEC.

Among the reasons the NDP say the war room should be scrapped is the response by the CEC to an opinion piece in the Medicine Hat News with the provincial opposition saying it was trying to “intimidate” its author following publication of an unflattering piece on the Alberta government-owned corporation.

The NDP also cited the CEC’s inability to come up with an original logo, despite two attempts to do so in less than a month.

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The owner of Medicine Hat-based marketing agency Tag Concepts says there could be a number of reasons why there could be such issues in developing an original logo – lack of time and client direction chief among those reasons – but the result is the same.

“There is inspiration from a number of different things,” said Deanna Haysom. “Then there are times where you will see a logo and think, that’s a real copy cat. And I think in this instance, that’s what they are experiencing.”

But there are ways to mitigate such risks when you have a brand with the intention of reaching beyond a city or a province.

“We talk to (clients) about some of the things they may need to be aware of – like trademarking – especially if they’re an organization that’s not the mom and pop shop in Medicine Hat but something that might be going outside of our province’s boundaries,” said Haysom.

At the time of the initial issue with the first CEC logo, the provincially-owned corporation called it an “unfortunate situation” and would discuss with its agency how a near identical logo to one used by a US tech company was used.

Calls by CHAT News over several weeks for comment have yet to be responded to, though, Brooks-Medicine Hat MLA Michaela Glasgo affirmed her support for the CEC and its CEO Tom Olsen.