What Québec Wants

Knowing when to adopt, adapt or create.

There’s an interesting article about marketing in Quebec in the latest issue of Marketing Magazine.

Following are two excerpts about Headspace Marketing and what we believe. Click here for the full article.

Eric Blais, president of Toronto's Headspace Marketing, was born and raised in Quebec and has made a business out of helping marketers understand its nuances. His firm conducts research and helps develop marketing plans for companies looking to make inroads with consumers in the province. "I always say to our clients that there are an awful lot of similarities between Quebec and the ROC (rest of Canada), and they certainly often don't require a different approach," says Blais. "But oftentimes, the differences can be a competitive advantage that you can leverage."

The idea that marketers have greater flexibility in their approach to Quebec is symbolized in the phrase that adorns the boardroom wall at Headspace: "Successful brand building in Quebec is knowing when to adopt, adapt or create for Quebec."

For those (few) who care, here’s a photo of the wall:

 

You can always get what you want.

If you paint it.

This post has nothing to do with Quebec but it’s about “wanting” so it belongs on this blog – sort of.

In its “Consumed” page, The New York Times Magazine's latest issue has an interesting piece by Rob Walker about a couple working in advertising that wanted to work together on a creative project. They hoped to make some extra money and took a refreshing approach - for people employed in advertising. They decided to be totally transparent.

They wanted to spend a night in a hotel with a view of the Vegas strip so they painted one and it sold for $488.50. See all the masterpieces on the couple’s website wantsforsale.com

“Fourth Night in Vegas” sold for $299.00

If you’re interested in this art form, “A Little Shopping in SoHo” is on sale for $2,500.00

All paintings are done in acrylic on 2” deep gallery canvas. As the website says “The price of each painting is exactly what it costs for us to buy that item”.

Playing computer games in the nude.

According to a survey by Ipsos Reid, one in five (17%) Canadian men with Internet access have played a computer game in the nude.

I’m not a gamer but I guess this would be the digital evolution of strip poker.

Always curious, I Googled “video games in the nude” and came across this shot from the game Tomb Raider which follows the adventures of Lara Croft after a powerful syndicate hires her.

Now I understand.

The same survey provides further evidence that Quebec is lagging the rest of the country when it comes to computer games.

On average, 53% of Canadians have bought a computer game. Residents of Quebec are the least likely to have done so at 40%.

25% of Canadians say they have played a game on Facebook, like Scrabulous. Only 12% of Quebeckers claim to have done so. For more on this, see this previous post

Another revealing stat:

Asked what their earliest memory of using a computer is, “playing Solitaire, Free Cell, Minesweeper or Mah Jong" tops the list among 29% of Canadians and 32% of Quebeckers. But Quebec stands out from other provinces with 25% of Quebeckers saying they first used a computer for email, compared to only 15% of Canadians in the ROC.

Wal-Mart in Quebec – Oups we did it again.

What the “Bought in Quebec” program giveth to the Wal-Mart brand, the closing of its unionized Tire & Lube Express in Gatineau taketh away.

Wal-Mart’s approval rating in Quebec took a nosedive after the closing of its unionized Jonquiere store in 2005 because it wasn’t profitable. It dropped 60 points between 2004 and 2006 to just 11%.

In a case study presented at the recent ESOMAR conference in Montreal, Wal-Mart outlined its successful response and PR offensive: the Achat-Quebec program which highlights and encourages consumers to buy products that Wal-Mart is sourcing from the province. A kind of “chez-nous” statement meant to warm up things. It apparently worked. According to the case presented, since the introduction of Achat-Québec in 2006, the company increased its approval rating back to 41% and claims sales have increased by nearly 10% and market share by 1%.

Let’s see what happens to the approval rating now.

Perfect Pitch

What we can learn from elections and new business pitches.

As we await the news about Stephane Dion’s political future following Tuesday’s brutal results, I am reminded of Kim Campbell’s famous pronouncement that “an election is no time to be discussing complicated issues”.

The Gazette’s Craig McInnes put it this way in his September 12^th column  : It's not actually that issues can't be discussed, it's that debates and advertising in elections aren't about seeking truth, they are about winning. A politician willing to ignore the truth can easily twist a complicated issue to his or her advantage when winning is all that matters. Harper's attack on the Liberal's proposal to revamp the tax system with a "Green Shift" is simplistic and fundamentally dishonest, but also brutally effective as long as Canadians are as lazy as he appears to believe we are.

It made me think of the ad business, specifically the lifeblood of the business: new business pitches.

I once heard an ad agency veteran say that “the business of new business is not the business of advertising”. Just as an election is not a time to be discussing complicated issues nor is it during a new business pitch when agencies compete to win an assignment.

The brand might need a serious overhaul to succeed. The spending requirement might make clients run for cover. An objective analysis of the research data might show a glass that’s half empty. The operations might not be ready to deliver the brand promise. Or the client’s internal marketing resources might not be battle ready. It’s the truth and telling it usually loses you the business.

Think about it. How often do you read about an agency winning an assignment because they confronted  the “brutal facts”? (to borrow from Jim Collins’ Good to Great) I once worked on a major pitch where it would have been wiser to tell the client to hold off advertising until the organization was ready to live up to the brand promise. We would not have won the business. Instead we said what we had to say to win and we packaged it all beautifully. And the verdict was “We really like these guys. They understand our needs. We can see ourselves working with them.”

At least until the next election.

Ultra-thin models in Quebec

A follow-up to my previous post about ultra-thin models.

Quebec's minister of culture, communications and the status of women revealed plans yesterday to forge ties with the fashion industry to tackle the issue. A committee of between 25 to 30 people from different parts of the business will be formed to work in tandem with the province on drafting a charter by next spring. For more on this, read this CP story

The politics of culture in Quebec

A follow-up to a previous post about Quebeckers and culture .

The Globe and Mail's Campbell Clark quotes a disheartened Conservative explaining what the Conservatives' "stumbling strategists" in Quebec failed to understand: "Culture might mean cocktails and galas in English Canada but in Quebec it means identity".

On being Canadian (in Quebec and in the ROC)

How Quebeckers' sense of identity differs from that of Canadians in the rest of Canada and Americans.

As election day nears in both Canada and the US, it’s interesting to look at what, in the end, voters are most likely to base their decision on: which party and/or leader best connects with their values, attitudes and identity.

This data from Ekos Research Associates from 2005 paints a telling picture of the differences between Quebec, the ROC and the U.S.

It’s somewhat dated but such fundamental values and attitudinal differences usually do not shift dramatically in a few short years.

When asked what it means to be Canadian, Quebeckers are significantly more likely to say

• being free to do and think as I please
  
• leaving a healthy environment for future generations
  
• having social & health programs to support all citizen
  
• paying taxes

and significantly less likely to say

• having a say in the political, social & economic development
  
• living in the best society in the world
  
• being able to count on your fellow citizens if you are in need
  
• serving my country when it needs me

This data is about what it means to be Canadian or American and not about what voters wish it meant (if politicians got it right) but it still provides a good indication of how they might vote.

As expected, being “American” is more about “serving my country when it needs me” (46%) and less about “having social & health programs to support all citizens” (39%).

Although I don’t have a crystal ball, it sure looks like “Country First” is about to be trumped by “Change”. 

Keeping up with the Joneses

The popular catchphrase is defined by Wikipedia as referring “to the desire to be seen as being as good as one's neighbours or contemporaries using the comparative benchmarks of social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.”

The phrase apparently originated in the U.S. but the Brits have their own version;  “keeping up appearances” or “keeping up with the Beckhams”. But I can’t think of a Quebecois version.

Some are arguing that this desire to keep up with the Joneses is at the root of the current financial crisis – perhaps more so than Wall Street’s greed. Here’s an excerpt from a Globe & Mail article  by Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class  and the recently published Who's Your City?

So many of us came to define ourselves not through our work or creative endeavors, but through what we could purchase. We were fooled into believing that our identity and self-worth somehow depended on acquiring expensive or impressive belongings - much of it on credit.
Regardless of how or when the financial markets are restored, credit will be much harder to get - the age of the house as piggy bank is long gone.

How will we define ourselves when we can’t get a quick self-defining “makeover” at the dealership, the electronics store or the mall? How will we rebuild our way of life and our very identity? Those are the questions that many of us, and our society as a whole, will be confronting long after the financial markets have been restored.

One area in which "living above ones' means" has caused negative social effects is that of credit card  usage. In the first quarter of 2002, total credit debt in the U.S. was $660 billion. Total credit card debt was approximately $60 billion. By 2005, the total credit card debt had increased to $735 billion. Americas' average credit card debt in 2007 was $8400 per household. By the end of 2007, consumer debt in America had risen to $2.5 trillion. According to the Federal Reserve, over 40% of households spend more than they earn.

Quebeckers and credit card debt

Quebeckers have fewer credit cards, generally spend and owe less, and are slightly more likely to pay their monthly balance in full by the due date.

Quebeckers are also more likely to say they postpone a purchase than buy on credit – 57.2% of Quebeckers agree with this statement compared to 49.8% of Canadians in the ROC. (Source: PMB 2008)

Quebec women are more “limber”?

A new study by Leger Marketing & Sun Media very creatively called "The Great Canadian Male Sex Survey"  – a survey the authors claim “goes deep” - offers an entertaining, albeit somewhat cheesy, break from all the election polls.

Sun media asked various sex experts to provide penetrating insights. Here’s one about Quebec women from Sarah Rowland, 24 Hours relationships writer:

A meager 58% of B.C. men are sexually satisfied with their current partner. Likewise, guys in Ontario and the Prairies seem pretty lukewarm about their mates’ performance in the sack. In Quebec, however, a whopping 72% of the men polled couldn’t be happier with their bed buddies.
I guess there’s a reason Cirque du Soleil was founded in la belle province. Clearly, the women are just way more limber there.

More limber?

Practice makes better

Perhaps practice makes better. Data from the 2002 year-end poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel for Maclean’s magazine, Global TV and Southam News found that 76% of Quebeckers said they are sexually active – making them the most active lovers in Canada. Ontario held the last-place position at only 54%.

Catholics and sex : They get more of it and have more fun

Rev. Andrew Greely, a prominent sociologist, is the author of Sex : The Catholic Experience. His book reviews survey data from 1989 to 1991 on American’s sexual behaviour collected by the National Opinion Research Center. He claims that while Catholics might be repressed, they are less repressed than others.

His findings include:

• More than two-thirds of Catholics engage in sex at least once a week, compared with 56% of non-Catholics.
• Among older persons, half of Catholics age 55 and older report having sex at least once a week, compared with 40% of others.
• Catholics also rate higher on “sexual playfulness.” For example, 30% of Catholics say they have purchased erotic undergarments either often or sometimes, compared with 20% of others.

You might be asking what this has to do with building brands in Quebec?

It matters if your selling condoms, not just as contraceptives, but as pleasure providing devices. It’s exactly what we did in Quebec a few years ago for Durex with a campaign about the “Cinq a sexe” (a play on the words “cinq a sept” or happy hour from five to seven pm.)

We also conducted qualitative research on condoms and other related products such as this “pleasure ring” and I can confirm that many Catholic women in the groups were quite familiar with the device.  And this focus group was the first confessional they had gone to in a long time.