Experience Regina is a phrase that has been used to make fun of the capital city of Saskatchewan for many years.
The fact that Regina’s name sounds like a word for genitalia made a song about the city very popular. Now, Regina, a city whose name rhymes with “fun,” is trying to own the joke by renaming its tourism organization after the song.
“It’s a good chance. When you travel around the world and talk about it, people sometimes ask, “What’s the city called again?”” Tim Reid, the CEO of Experience Regina, said this.
“Don’t be afraid of it because it is what it is. It is the name of the city, and we should be proud of it.”
The new name for the group that used to be called Tourism Regina was announced on Thursday.
Randy Boissonnault, the federal minister of tourism, joined Reid and Mayor Sandra Masters as they showed off a music video of a song that made the phrase “Experience Regina” well-known.
The original video was posted to YouTube in 2008, and in the 14 years since then, it has been watched nearly 700,000 times.
The Regina Leader-Post says that the song was written by two Americans under the names Melody and Tim after one of them took a road trip across Canada in 2008.
The video went viral because it had synths, a hypnotic off-key singer, and video of different places in Regina.
It gained a lot of new fans in 2018 after Jimmy Fallon played it on his show.The Tonight Show, This made Fallon’s co-host, members of his band, and the audience laugh.
Even though its use brought attention to the song and got then-mayor Michael Fougere to invite Fallon to visit the city, the city didn’t take advantage of the chance at the time.
Rebellion Brewing was one company that did this.
Since the slogan took off on Fallon, the Regina microbrewery has been putting it on a lot of different things.
“When something like that just happens, you should grab it and run with it. This is what we did, “Mark Heise, who owns Rebellion Brewing, said this.
The decision has paid off.
The company ships T-shirts with the slogan all over the world. Mark has stopped keeping track of how many they’ve sold, but he knows it’s one of their best-selling items.
“It’s well-known everywhere I go. People want what we have. They want me to give them everything I own. It has some truth to it, “he said.
Even though the song is stuck in your head, the rebranding of Regina’s tourism organization has been criticized on social media.
Some people have said that the joke is a bit inappropriate, while others have called it “low-brow humor.”
Reid said that’s unavoidable.
“I think that connection will always be there,” he said, urging people to be proud of the name of the city no matter what.
“That’s not a bad thing for those who want to laugh about it. Embrace it. We’re not going to change Regina’s name any time soon.”
He said that anyone who wants to use the new slogan will be able to, and that Experience Regina will be more than happy to help.
Heise knows that some people don’t like how the slogan can be seen as making fun of people who live in Regina, but he said it’s not making fun of specific people.
It’s something that makes everyone laugh.
Heise said, “It’s great branding and marketing.” “You couldn’t do this on your own.”