separating the wheat from the chaff

Well they've only been in power for a couple of weeks now, and the Sask Party is not off to a great start. When they should be focusing on their key campaign promises and the big issues, Saskatchewan's New Government (sound familiar?) decided to turf the province's 30 year old logo, a stylized wheat sheaf.

Now, in their own defence, I wasn't able to write about this quick enough, as the Saskatchewan's New Government has, with tail between their legs, turned around from this position already. Public outrage over changing the logo, their lack of any sense of priority, and the cost of such of a move has made them change their mind. Not only did they change their mind, they announced it twice, releasing two news releases only hours apart changing the wording between the first and the second.

None of the current SaskParty Cabinet members have any experience in government and it is already beginning to show. I know it will take some time for them to get up to speed, but their lack of political savvy is alarming. The SaskParty railed against the NDP's decision to rebrand the Saskatchewan wordmark as Saskatchewan!. They argued it wasn't necessary, it was too much money, government should be spending money on more important things. However, as soon as they are in power they arbitrarily declare the wheat sheaf persona non grata and replace it with the Government crest, announcing they will go through a costly process of developing a new logo.

Speculation is that they are not happy having a logo created by an NDP government, that has been in use during a period dominated by NDP politics. However, there were conservative governments during that period.

Sending out two press releases changing the words in a quote from one to the other is not acceptable. The story as it was in today's local paper was about the retreat and the fact that they sent out two press releases saying two different things.

This is bad public relations skills. You can one shot at trying to explain a mistake or backpedal so you better get it right. Make sure that you can live with every word in your news release. If you can't don't send it out until you get it right. If you get it wrong, own up to it, don't try to pass it off in another news release. The Deputy Premier should have got on the phones and worked new quotes directly with the press rather than try to pass off another news release.

Hopefully the SaskParty is staffing up with some skilled politically savvy people otherwise they could be in for a long and bumpy ride.