It’s Official: No Longer “Best Place On Earth” – “Best Place on Earth” was a “broader brand” used only in B.C. “to help motivate British Columbians.”

In April 2007, VANOC CEO John Furlong (left) and then Premier Gordon Campbell unveiled licence plate naming B.C. ‘The Best Place on Earth.’

“BC No Longer Calls Self ‘Best Place on Earth’.
The boast is vanishing from official branding. Where did it go, and why?
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The “Best Place on Earth” and the sunshine-and-mountains logo (is it setting or rising?), was launched in 2005 and registered with Industry Canada’s Canadian Intellectual Property Office the following year. It appeared on ICBC’s Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics licence plates in 2007, replacing the traditional “Beautiful” above a photograph of Mount Garibaldi and the VANOC inukshuk logo.
But something funny happened on the way to the biggest show on Earth. When Campbell put on his salesman-in-chief hat and attended the Beijing Olympics in 2008, he called British Columbia “Canada’s Pacific Gateway” instead of the “Best Place on Earth.” With a pinch of sarcasm, I asked him, why? If B.C. is really the best place anywhere, why not tell the world?
First the world has to find B.C. on the map, he said.
Jobs, Tourism and Innovation minister Pat Bell offered few hints about the slogan’s fate when he was grilled by NDP critic Spencer Chandra Herbert in a May 5 budget estimates debate.
“Yes, I am proud of the province and I think it’s the best place on earth, but it was probably not the best way to attract people from other parts of the world who think their little section of the world was the best place on earth,” Chandra Herbert said to Bell. “I’m just wondering: is ‘best place on earth’ shelved for now, and we’re now not going to see that anymore, and we’ll see ‘Super, natural B.C.’ in its place?
Bell answered that “Best Place on Earth” was a “broader brand” used only in B.C. “to help motivate British Columbians.”
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Since Premier Christy Clark’s March swearing-in, the bold advertising slogan of the Gordon Campbell era has slowly and quietly disappeared from government websites and letterhead. You can still find it if you look, but blink and it could be gone.
How could a province with a misery-filled neighbourhood like the Downtown Eastside and a nation-leading child poverty rate ever call itself best-on-Earth in the first place? How did the politicians and bureaucrats decide to deep-six the slogan?
The decision, I am told, was not even of the “back-of-the-napkin” variety, because no scrap of paper was used to record it.
– Bob Mackin, TheTyee.ca, 4 Oct 2011
[hat-tip Nemesis]

So, now we understand. We have always been puzzled by the claim, this explains all.
The slogan was not an actual claim that BC was the “Best Place on Earth”, it was used “only in B.C., to help motivate British Columbians.”
So, citizens of BC, how does it feel to have been treated all these years like children; like the second to last team in the local Under-7 hockey league?
The real problem is that many folks lapped it up. And, relevant to us here, it helped push them to reach for that much more debt, so they could overextend even further to buy that much more unaffordable ‘BPOE’ real estate.
“C’mon, you can do it, you can do it… Bid another $75K beyond your means! You can do it! Stretch, stretch…!”
– vreaa

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UPDATE: More on this story from Doug Ward, Vanc Sun, 7 Oct 2011
“My initial reaction is ‘hurray,'” said Peter Williams, director of Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Tourism Policy and Research, about the slogan’s demise.
“It was presumptuous. If it was meant to endear people to us, it probably wasn’t going to do that given that a lot of other people live in other parts of the world that are pretty nice. And probably quite competitive to B.C. in many senses.”
[Off with his head! -ed.]
Government communications director Greer said the slogan was aimed at British Columbians and not for a global market. “It was more of in-province pride thing.”
[See: appropriate for 6 year olds, above. -ed.]
“Canada Starts Here” is also the brand used in the marketing of Clark’s new jobs strategy.
[Actually, wouldn’t it be just as accurate to say “Canada Ends Here” ? -ed.]
B.C.’s tourism brand continues to be the venerable “Super Natural British Columbia.”
SFU’s Williams said the “Super Natural British Columbia” brand has gone through “many reincarnations but it’s held up pretty well and I thought this ‘Best Place On Earth’ was creating some confusion in the marketplace that we didn’t really need.”
[Whereas “Super Natural British Columbia” was a big hit with visiting goblins, gremlins, elves and apparitions. -ed.]