It’s been on the air for three days, but the Yukon’s first-ever national television commercial already needs an edit — or a lawsuit may follow.

The ad, unveiled this week to some fanfare, concludes with a de facto tag line almost identical to one used by a U.S. motel chain for nearly 30 years.

“Wherever it takes you, we’ll leave a light on for you,” a narrator enthuses in the Tourism Yukon promo.

Motel 6, a budget hotel based in Texas and operating continent-wide, uses a suspiciously familiar tag line: “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

The commercial, launched Monday in Whitehorse and Ottawa, stood out as a potential case of trademark infringement that left producers scrambling for a voiceover change.

Outside The Cube, the Whitehorse media firm behind the ad, quickly took responsibility for the near-cribbing.

“The error was on our part,” said Dee Enright, the company’s president and CEO.

“It was a great line, but apparently Motel 6 thought so too.”

Enright said changing an entire brand name or official slogan as part of a new campaign would trigger more thorough consultation with the firm’s legal advisers and trademark agents.

“But if we’re just writing copy and content for the ad, then generally our team will do a search looking for any potential trademark infringement,” she said.

“It all came back clean, no trademark, no infringement.”

A Google search of the phrase “We’ll leave a light on for you” — without quotes — yields 12 Motel 6-related results in the top 15.

Within quotes, the sentence spits up fewer, but still produces a Wikipedia page on Motel 6 and the Motel 6 homepage itself as the top two results.

The Yukon’s official tourism motto remains “Larger than life.”

Enright said a friend in Alaska as well as several social media commenters pointed out the two tag lines’ one-word difference shortly after the first broadcast.

Correcting the “miniscule distinction” was an easy decision, she added. “We just thought ... let’s just be prudent ... it saves anybody from any worry.”

The new de facto tag line will read: “Come to my Yukon – We’ll light the way.”

No obvious trademark infringements were highlighted by Google.

The change will cost at least $800, to be paid for by the company, Enright said. The cash will go toward getting ad narrator Moira Sauer, a local actor, back in the studio along with a small crew to remaster the sound and redo the closed captioning.

The ad, which has been running across the country since Monday, will be re-delivered to the 24 networks and specialty channels that feature it.

Motel 6 has not contacted Outside The Cube or the Department of Tourism and Culture about the overlapping copy lines, Enright added.

The 60-second piece — also packaged as a 30-second clip — pans across a pristine landscape as a group of adventure-garbed Yukoners trudge on snowshoes to a wood fire outside a brightly bulbed cabin, all beneath a blanket of northern lights and spoken Robert Service poetry.

The commercial cost $250,000 to conceive, design, write and shoot, according to Outside The Cube.

Buying three weeks of ad space on two dozen stations tacked on another $220,000.

Canadians can look for the ad on CTV News and TSN broadcasts of hockey and curling, as well as the History Channel, Home and Garden, National Geographic and Showcase during shows “like Gold Rush and Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet,” said a Tourism department spokesperson.

The department is facing criticism for another supposed flaw in the promo — lack of First Nations cultural representation.

Yukon filmmaker Dennis Allen has called that a “blatant snub” of aboriginal Yukoners and “their contribution to Yukon history.

“The new Yukon television commercial is not representative at all of the true Yukon,” he stated in a letter published Tuesday in the Star.

“As a creative professional, it baffles me to think that during the creative process for this production ... Yukon First Nations were not considered as content.”

Grand Chief Ruth Massie of the Council of Yukon First Nations told the Star Wednesday Tourism Yukon had not contacted the council for consultation.

The Tourism department pointed out the ad is only the first in a series of four or five to air over the next year-and-a-half.

“There will be ample opportunity to portray First Nations identity in some of the upcoming commercials,” said Jonathan Parker, the department’s director of policy and communications.

The ads’ two thematic “pillars” are the northern lights and the midnight sun, supported by four other motifs: heritage and culture, “iconic drives,” the Klondike Gold Rush, and wilderness and wildlife.

“Within the theme of heritage and culture, the First Nations theme is absolutely critical,” Parker said.

“We’re pretty confident that after seeing the full suite of commercials, Yukoners are going to be satisfied that the full diversity of Yukon culture has been portrayed.”

A second winter-oriented ad — already shot — is set to run this fall. Two or three summer commercials will be shot this year and air in the spring of 2016, he added.

The initial ad was filmed over four days at the Wheaton River Bed and Breakfast on Annie Lake Road, with a cast and crew of about 25 Yukoners.

The video promos are part of a $3.6-million marketing drive — dubbed Yukon Now — announced by the federal and territorial governments last September. It builds on the $5.8 million already set aside in the budget for tourism marketing.

Other “consumer-focused initiatives” include user-generated photo, video and story submissions, now posted on Travel Yukon’s newly live Tumblr site.

A three-part webisode series is also set to launch, arriving on the Tumblr page Feb. 19.

A smaller percentage of the Yukon Now funds is slated for international marketing.

Premier Darrell Pasloski unveiled the defective commercial to “Outside audiences” at a Monday night reception in Ottawa at the national Winterlude festival, the release stated.

“This is an exciting time for tourism marketing in Yukon,” Neil Hartling, the chair of the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon, added at Monday morning’s announcement.

Hartling said last September he was looking for a “greater return on investment,” with dividends paying off in the form of more local jobs and a sustained cash influx for the territory through the winter months, mitigating the boom-and-bust cycles of the Yukon’s past.