11/22/2006: "We Have A Winner!"

"Branding the San Juans is the highest form of patriotism" -T. Jefferson

It was a dark stormy Saturday night. We sat around a dimly lit table at Ship's Bay Inn on Orcas Island reading witty slogans out loud. Nine of us were judging the "Branding the San Juans" contest. Four of us were from Orcas, five from San Juan. We expressed our amusement with a great deal of boisterous laughter.

Folks that had come to the restaurant for a quiet romantic candle light dinner were almost certainly disturbed by our noise. We watched as most of the customers got up and left. I was fairly certain that our rowdy conduct drove them away. The wait staff kept giving us that ‘go home!' stare. Soon they began to put on their big winter coats and head out the door shooting at us with that look. We were still laughing at slogans as they closed the place up.

More than 121 slogans were entered in the contest. All of them were good. I had a chance to carry a shop-worn folded list of them around with me for a week. I pulled it out and observed while my friends and neighbors read it and laughed and blew their drinks out of their noses. I made a note of which slogans caused this reaction for later judging.

I had to add some rules along the way. The first one was "AMATEURS ONLY". As you might have guessed a contest this big drew professional sloganeers like moths to a flame. SJ Lions Club President, Jim "The Brander" Carroll is one of those marketing pros. A little known fact about "Brander Jim" is that he has worked on some famous slogan campaigns. Remember SAY WA? Well Brander Jim came up with the second and third place winners in that contest, SO WA? and WA? Jim also coined the famous Marysville phrase, "Home of the Virgin Mary (okay, just Mary)". He tried to use these slogans again in this contest but it did not fool one attentive reader who blew the whistle on him after blowing diet cola out of his nose.

Brander Jim has made the San Juan's famous by driving around America with a spare-tire cover with the slogans "San Juan Islands, 247 days of sun shine! Guaranteed to be surrounded by water or your money back!" These slogans are winners that have already become famous.

Another rule I added was that the slogans had to be "ORIGINAL". There were 2 slogans entered that have been floating around in the oral traditions of the Islands for generations. Credit must be given to Scott Bell and Amy Wynn who grabbed these slogans by the tail and dragged them kicking and screaming into print and sent them through cyberspace where they ended up in the branding contest. These are absolutely great slogans that have the ring of truth as well as being hilarious. They cracked everyone up who had not heard them before but unfortunately we could not award them a prize. Here they are:

"Romantic San Juan Islands, where you never lose your sweetheart, just your turn! "

"Looking for a date in the Islands?
The odds are good but the goods are odd."

So, how did the judges decide upon the winners? We used the process of elimination and the democratic voting method. All entries were anonymous so as not to prejudice the judges' decisions. Believe me it was hard to decide; especially in the dark. Here are the top ten slogans:

10. San Juan Islands, Where no whacky idea is without a sponsor.
Yours truly

9. San Juan Islands, Off the coast but still on the chart.
Anonymous.

8. San Juan Islands, Where liberal hypocrisy reigns supreme.
Ray Bigler

7. San Juan Islands, Where common sense takes a holiday.
T. Jefferson

6. San Juan Islands, Where everybody's business is everybody's business.
Margaret Bell

5. San Juan Islands, Where government raises taxes to make living more affordable.
John Evans

4. San Juan Islands, West of conventional.
Anonymous

3. San Juan Islands, Where rich liberals settle to repent.
General G. Pickett

2. San Juan Islands, Go East for free!
Elwa G. Ferry

Number one! And the winner is -drum roll please:

1. "San Juan Islands, Left of America, Right of Canada"
-Alex Gavora

We plan to award a nice prize to Alex Gavora. We have yet to determine what the cash prize will be except to say that as of the published date of this column she has the promised amazing fame.

We plan to make bumper stickers out of many of these slogans and paste them on the cars of unsuspecting tourists so that when they go back home people will be exposed to our Island sense of humor and stay away. But seriously, we will make some of these into t-shirts. Some of the wordy slogans will only fit on double –X size. The more succinct slogans will easily fit on petite sizes and on bumper stickers. So that is the end of the branding contest until next time. Thanks for sending in your slogans!