#NameAFerry idea swamped by wave of social-media anger
Contest is a disaster for B.C. Ferries as fed-up users vent their resentment with names such as ‘The Spirit of Coastal Corruption’ and ‘SS Service Cuts’
I guess it sounded like a good idea at the time.
When B.C. Ferries announced a contest to name its three new foreign-built boats, the high-priced executives in those cushy corporate offices thought they’d struck public-relations gold.
Instead, they tapped into a deep well of public resentment and anger at the over-priced ferry system.
By late in the week, the idea had backfired into a social-media firestorm, as thousands of ferry users took to Facebook and Twitter to suggest bitterly sarcastic names using the #NameAFerry contest hashtag.
Suddenly, B.C. Ferries was inundated with media attention. But not for the reasons they envisioned, and not just locally.
The Daily Mail, one of the most popular tabloids in the United Kingdom, ran a story on the backlash. And B.C. Ferries fielded media calls from other points in Europe, the United States and Asia.
Everyone, it seems, is interested in the new ferry names suggested by B.C.’s fed-up ferry users. A small sample: The Spirit of the WalletSucker: The most popular name suggestions reflect the public’s anger with those massive fare hikes.
Between 2003 and 2015, fares skyrocketed by up to 164 per cent on some of the smaller ferry runs and by 78 per cent on the main routes between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
No wonder other suggested ferry names included the Coastal Extortion and the Cash Cow Queen.
The MV Executive Bonus: Mike Corrigan, the president of B.C. Ferries, received total compensation last year of $563,000, which included two pensions, a vehicle allowance and a “salary holdback” performance bonus of $48,558.
Two other top ferry executives banked more than $470,000 each in total compensation.
Corrigan’s salary-holdback bonus was earned for meeting performance targets that included “collaborating with the provincial government on a long-term vision for coastal ferry services.”
How does B.C. Ferries set these executive salaries? By comparing the salaries of executives at other Canadian companies including Kellogg Canada, UPS Canada, Xerox Canada, The Brick, Indigo Books and Fortis Alberta.
The SS Service Cuts: Back in 2013, Transportation Minister Todd Stone ordered B.C. Ferries to find nearly $19 million in cost savings, leading to large-scale service cuts.
Nearly 7,000 sailings were cancelled on the minor routes, to the outrage of ferry-dependent communities.
On Thursday, B.C. Ferries surprisingly announced that sailings would not be cut on the major routes, though some critics think the timing was suspicious.
“This name-the-ferry contest has been so damaging that it’s easy to imagine some executive saying, ‘We have to stop the bleeding,’ ” said ferries advocate Jim Abram, a municipal councillor on Quadra Island.
“How do you do that? Throw us a bone. But I think the bone will be rancid.”
Abram thinks services to the public will still suffer as B.C. Ferries looks for alternative ways to save money.
The Spirit of Polish Job Creation: The name-the-ferry contest was announced to find names for three new vessels being built in Poland.
“It’s sickening to think we’re building these vessels offshore instead of building them here,” Abram said. “They could have created jobs in British Columbia. Instead, the jobs are being created in Gdansk, Poland.”
The Christy Clark Ark: A lot of suggested ferry names take shots at the government for mismanaging the system.
That includes Stone, the transportation minister, who suggested last November that the government might shut down the busy Departure Bay ferry terminal near Nanaimo to save money. He reversed course the next day following a huge backlash, including from his own Liberal colleagues.
Other popular ferry-name suggestions in this category: The Spirit of Government Ineptitude and the Coastal Corruption.
Then you had the HMS Cantafford, the MV Sailing Wait, the SS ShouldveBuiltaBridge and the Spirit of Bad Wi-Fi.
Does B.C. Ferries admit a mistake with this name-the-ferry contest debacle? (The prize, by the way, is a $500 travel voucher — enough for a family of four to take just two return ferry trips between Victoria and Vancouver.)
“People are having fun on social media,” said B.C. Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall. “We get it.”
But I’m not sure they do get social media at all. This is the same B.C. Ferries, after all, that complained about a sarcastic Twitter account called @BCFerrys that poked fun at them online.
The spoof account had 3,400 followers before the official complaint from B.C. Ferries. After all the free publicity, the account has picked up 2,400 new followers.
“We were suspended for a day and Twitter fans went a little crazy,” the anonymous operator of the @BCFerrys account told me in a Twitter direct message.
Going a little crazy, indeed. Just like socialmedia users are doing now. But for B.C. Ferries, this is one ton of free publicity they could do without.