the Borg is less than 48 hours from Earth

Perhaps you've heard that the Olympics are coming to Vancouver. 

It's hurtling toward us at the speed of CTV programming, inexorably, hour by hour. And when it arrives it must and will assimilate all life as we know it.

Sigh.

Of course as a Canadian I'm happy for the opportunity to show the world something about who we are, and the chance to win a gold medal on our own soil. As a marketer it's an unmissable event; the attention of millions of Canadians will be focused there for days on end, and we have clients who have quite properly partnered with the Games to gain an advantage over their competitors.

It's just that personally, I'm already sick of it.

CTV's bombardment of the Superbowl the other night, and the Globe's relentless shucking, have both soured me. (In comparison, our clients' use of the Games has been relatively restrained.) In fact CTV's Olympic campaign has gone on far longer than the Games themselves. And they're prime culprits in telling me how I should feel about the Games; how proud I will be, how engaged I'll be, how Canadian I'll feel. And that's the worst kind of marketing. It's not the frequency that bothers me so much; it's the volume, and the message. Stop shouting at me, especially about what being Canadian is.

If they were being at all honest, they'd be listening to that stereotypically small Canadian voice inside them that says Canadians don't like to boast. We just like feeling quietly smug, hopefully while counting several dozen medals.