Golden Boy top of mind for Manitobans: poll

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This article was published 05/03/2020 (2208 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobans have a clear idea of what their province’s image is, and it sits atop the Legislative Building.

Polling firm Leger provided Manitobans with 14 different images and asked them to pick two they felt most accurately portrayed Manitoba. The Golden Boy statue overlooking downtown Winnipeg was voted as the most iconic image, taking 29 per cent of the vote.

A photo of a bison was a close second, with 28 per cent of the vote. Other images in the running included a cityscape, the Winnipeg Jets, and Louis Riel.

The poll, which was conducted on behalf of the Free Press, was taken by 800 randomly selected Manitobans aged 18 and older between Feb. 7 and 17.

Leger executive vice-president Andrew Enns said overall, the results seemed par for the course, based on his experience.

“It’s sort of interesting every now and then when the research sort of actually confirms maybe (where) your intuition would’ve probably taken you,” Enns said.

Several images shifted in support, depending on whether voters lived within or outside of Winnipeg.

While the cityscape image polled at 26 per cent for Winnipeg residents, it dropped to 16 per cent for Manitobans outside of the city. A canola landscape, on the other hand, polled at 29 per cent from non-Winnipeg residents and only 15 per cent from Winnipeggers.

Another notable shift was in age groups for one image in particular: the Winnipeg Jets photo. While it polled at 27 per cent with voters aged 18-54, it dropped to only nine per cent support with voters 55 and older.

“It’s how people kind of approach the question a little bit, right?” Enns said. “So I think people maybe of a certain generation approach things with a different sort of set of criteria than somebody a bit older that maybe puts more onus on maybe a cultural or historic kind of lens they gauge these photos by.”

Despite saying most of the results were not “super surprising,” Enns noted there were several images that scored lower than he would have guessed. In particular, the polar bear image, Louis Riel, and The Forks river skating trail image all received around 12 to 17 per cent of the vote.

“I think people sort of took the questions at face value and tried to associate the image in terms of the actual province in a fairly broad way,” Enns said.

An image of Festival du Voyageur mascot Léo La Tuque received about three per cent of the vote.

“Given the timing, we were sort of in around Festival time and there’s a lot of buzz going on, just the fact that we were doing this in the winter versus the summer, I thought that might have a bit of an influence there,” he said.

Dave Wilkie, chief executive officer of local advertising agency Fusion, called the results “interesting to hear,” but added he was also not surprised by them.

“They’re iconic images that have been promoted so much here, for so long, and I think when people think of the brand, they’re thinking of the things they’ve seen that represent the brand,” he said. “So, like the Golden Boy and the bison, huge, huge, iconic images that have been connected to Manitoba for years and years.”

However, Wilkie said when he thought of what images represented Manitoba, his mind went to those more relevant to the experiences the province has to offer.

“When I think of the brand of Manitoba, there’s other things that aren’t iconic, they’re more feeling and more evocative, more emotive,” he said. “There’s the multiculturalism, there’s all the festivals we have, there’s the many, many lakes, I like the outdoors a lot.

“So it’s funny that when somebody says in a poll, ‘Pick one of the images that best represents the brand of Manitoba,’ they pick almost sort of like a logo, in a way.”

Wilkie also emphasized the inherent difficulty of defining Manitoba in one image.

“The idea of capturing our province in an image would be pretty tough, because we’re a very diverse kind of place,” he said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_