Happy Glasgow too expensive to keep

We mentioned the 25th anniversary of the Glasgow’s Miles Better campaign recently, and our own thought that it was the only one that really worked, primarily because it was fun, and didn’t try to make its point by being demeaning to others, something that the truly dreadful Glasgow, Scotland with style slogan markedly fails to do – and has rightly earned local derision as a result: the irony of Glasgow: Scotland with Style®

We had a comment with some more info, which we thought merited another mention as it adds some detail we were unaware of.

Some years after the original Miles Better campaign, and some less than successful attempts to emulate the original’s success, there was a further run of Glasgow’s Miles Better that lasted for about three years. The revised campaign came to an end when Mr Happy proved to be too expensive to be retained as the headline celebrity of the campaign, and a demand of some £28,000 in copyright fees for his appearance led to the end of the campaign.

You just have to think that somehow, that’s not really what copyright’s meant to be used for, but, that’s the way the system works, so that’s that.