What Québec Wants™

Love boat

Despite the economic downturn, Canadians (69% of them) are still planning vacations according to a recent poll conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of TripHarbour.ca

And it appears that Canadians are also increasingly looking at cruising for their vacations. Two in ten  (21%) have taken a cruise vacation in the past, and one in three (33%) say they’d consider taking a cruise for their next vacation.

But it’s clearly a more popular option outside Quebec.

Albertans (44%) are most likely to say they’d consider a cruise for their next vacation, followed by those in British Columbia (41%), Ontario (40%), Atlantic Canada (34%), Saskatchewan and Manitoba (25%), and Quebec (17%).

More boat than love for Quebeckers

Another survey conducted by Leger Marketing last year offers an interesting glimpse at what goes on in cabins on cruise ship. We learn that not only are Quebeckers less likely to take cruises, “Cruise-going Quebeckers are less likely to have had sex (22 per cent) than the rest of Canada. British Columbians and Ontarians boast the highest membership in the ‘Naughtycal Mile Club’ (57 and 55 per cent respectively)” – For more on this fascinating topic of significant interest to the travel trade, read this article creatively titled “Canadians kiss and tell about sex at sea”. I'm waiting for the survey on Quebeckers suffering from motion sickness to draw conclusions.

Risky business

Advertising to kids in Quebec is prohibited. Not just in “traditional” media.

“I have an idea. Let’s take this brand of snack cakes for children called Igor and its loveable gorilla character and promote it through daycare centers in Quebec as a way to encourage children to be active  by doing Igor’s dance.”

“But wait, what about the law prohibiting advertising to children in the province?”

“Fine. We’ll use the web instead and posters in daycare centers. As I was saying, Let’s take this brand of snack cakes for children…”

I have no idea if this conversation actually took place at Saputo’s Vachon division but the $44.0K fine against Saputo suggests a version of it did. For more on this, read this previous item posted on May 8, 2008. (When it comes to advertising to children in Quebec, outside the box thinking can get you outside the law.)

Getting smarter

“Hot smartphones for hot, smart people.”

This headline on a retail poster for Rogers caught my eye.

Not because it’s clever.

The phones are no doubt smart. But how smart are we with them?

If not the smartest, Apple's iPhone is certainly the hottest. It's described as the “first true mobile computer”. As Josh Quittner writes in Time Magazine this week, “Anyone who thinks it's a cell phone with a college education hasn't been paying attention.” He adds “Together with the Apple App Store, which has more than 10,000 free and cheap applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple--that is, Jobs--has built a platform that will generate billions of dollars."

So I checked out the most popular applications at the App Store. I found games, lots of them. And some email apps. “Part fun. Part function.” That sums it up nicely.

I have no doubt that the iPhone and its applications will generate billions of dollars for Apple. However, for now, it’s more about games and convenience than knowledge and skills that would make us smarter.

Ipsos Reid conducted a survey last fall (October 2008) among Canadians and asked “Do you download applications for your mobile device? Applications include things like weather updates and stock market news that you download to your mobile device.” Only 9% of Canadians said yes. 72% said no. Quebeckers were most likely to say no at 84%. And perhaps most telling, 12% said, “I don’t know anything about downloading applications.”

Looks like hot, smart people have some catching up to do.

Sign language – Part Deux

A follow-up to my previous post about Mouvement Montréal français’ insistence that Red Bull be marketed as Taureau Rouge in Quebec  - just as it’s called Toro Rosso in Italy.

Sam Hamad, Quebec’s Employment Minister, is quoted in today’s edition of The Gazette: “It is clear in Quebec that French comes first. French is the working language, it is our language and our pride.”

- No debate on this point.

So the government will ask the company to have a logo or another name that would give some indication, in French, that Red Bull’s Crashed Ice event takes place in Quebec.

- Reasonable.

Hamad rejected the idea of the company changing its name: “Are you going to ask Wal-Mart to change its name tomorrow for a Quebecois name?”

- Not an option. You’d have the change the law to do so.

For more on this, read the Globe & Mail’s Jennifer Wells’ blog Adhocracy .

Taking calls while having sex.

I spend a lot of time in airports. Which means I can’t avoid listening to other travelers chatting away on their cell phones – particularly the louder types who pace the lounge while reminding their interlocutor that they were in Vancouver yesterday and will be in New York tomorrow. And there’s the special times when I’m standing at the urinals next to a guy talking on his Bluetooth-enabled phone or, worse, holding his phone with one hand while maneuvering his other device and zipper with the other.

So I chuckled when I saw recent data from an Ipsos-Reid survey conducted in October 2008 asking Canadians “if your mobile device were to ring in the middle of making love, would you answer it?” I  suddenly had visions of the same guy wearing his Bluetooth device and nothing else taking an incoming call (excuse the pun). Seven percent of Canadians said ‘yes”. As high as 10% of residents in BC said they would answer the call and there were no differences between those in households with kids or without kids.

The same survey also asked the question “What do you come in contact with most during your day - your mobile device or your significant other?” A majority of Canadians (66%) said they are more in contact with their significant other than their mobile device. That number goes up to 83% in Quebec – a significant difference with the rest of Canada.

What this survey doesn’t tell us is if the significant other is calling while they’re busy with another significant or less significant other… more on that in future posts.

Sign language

Every once in a while the temperature rises in Quebec over the use of English names in the branding goods, services retailers.

In a letter to the editor of La Presse this week, a reader complains that 1-800-GOT-JUNK gets away with such a name in big bold letters on its trucks.

There was of course the uproar in 2007 over Esso’s plans to rebrand its Marché Express to On the Run. A decision that was eventually reversed.

And now there’s a press conference being organized today by Le Mouvement Montreal francais to denounce Red Bull’s Crashed Ice event in Quebec City this weekend. MMF, in a press release on CNW

 (available in French only coincidently), calls this “spitting on the French language” – the translation is mine of course.

The release refers to data from a SOM-La Presse survey from 2007 that revealed that 68% of Quebeckers do not like signs in the English language. In fact, 35% say that it has a somewhat or very negative influence on their choice of a store.

It seems to me that this is comparing apples and oranges. Brand names on goods aren’t the same as store signs.

As far as store signs are concerned, the law is clear. Article 25 of the Reglement sur la langue du commerce et des affaires states that a trademark can be used exclusively in English e.g. Costco Wholesale, Home Depot, Canadian Tire.  That’s why l’Office quebecois de la langue francaise ruled that GOT-JUNK could keep its name.

And as far as calling Red Bull “Taureau Rouge” as demanded by the MMF, I can’t wait to see where they’d go with Cheez Whiz.

I’m all for keeping the Quebec landscape predominantly French but there are rules and marketers follow them. Perhaps the MMF should take a different approach; one that compels rather than confront retailers to use French names. And they should start with the gay village. A Gazette reader with the help of http://www.gueermontreal.info surveyed the gay village and found these names on signs: Rocky, Cocktail, Unity, Stock, Stud, Tools, Sky, Backroom, Club Date, Metro Lounge, Parking, Metropool, Stereo, Drugstore

"For days like today" when you check things online and buy from bricks and mortar.

Canadian Tire’s website no longer sells merchandise for home delivery.

Wise decision by Canadian Tire to pull out of online selling.

Richard Talbot, president of Talbot Consultants International and quoted in a National Post article , put the challenge of sustaining an online retail business in Canada this way:

“It is expensive to sustain an online retail business in Canada given the country's population relative to its geographic size.” And then he added: "Everybody, I think, knows that with the exception of some categories like CDs and books, most people use the Internet to check prices and product specs, and most of the purchase is done in the stores. I think this will be the first of several as more and more retailers realize that consumers are doing this."

I guess not everyone knew. But Wal-Mart knew.

Wal-Mart Canada developed Web sites to showcase products but does not sell online.

Quebec consumer behaviour on the internet

One of the key findings from the Canadian Internet Project’s 2007 report supports Mr. Talbot’s views: 

Three of every four Internet users (77%) who conduct online shopping product research make their ultimate purchase in-person from a local retailer (i.e. not online).

The study does not provide this data for Quebec compared to the ROC. But given Quebeckers’ lower usage of and familiarity with the Internet overall, we can safely assume that the percentage of Quebeckers who use the Internet to research and then buy from stores is at least as high.

Quebec fathers know best

A survey conducted for Pampers by Ipsos Reid found some very significant differences between fathers and expecting fathers in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

• Fathers in Quebec (87%) are much more likely than those in Ontario (65%), Atlantic Canada  (64%), British Columbia (61%), Alberta (53%) or Saskatchewan and Manitoba (53%) to say that they were ‘completely prepared’ for parenthood.
• Quebecers were also most likely to say they knew how to burp a baby (88%) when their first child was born, but British Columbians (84%) were most likely to say they knew how to change a diaper, and how to put their newborn down to sleep (86%).
• Fathers in Quebec (89%) are most likely to say that they and their wife were equally prepared for parenthood, followed by those in British Columbia (83%), Atlantic Canada (77%), Ontario (75%), Saskatchewan and Manitoba (67%) and Alberta (65%).
• Quebecers (86%) were most likely to say that their wife was a great source of information, while those in Atlantic Canada (84%), British Columbia (83%),Saskatchewan and Manitoba (80%), Ontario (80%) and Alberta (67%) were less likely.

Perhaps this can be explained in part by the impact of Quebec’s Parental Insurance Plan introduced in 2006, which included higher benefit rates, no unpaid waiting period, coverage of the self-employed and a five-week non-transferable leave for fathers.

The program had an immediate effect when it was introduced in 2006.

Of those men eligible for the program, 56% claimed benefits in 2006, up from 32% in 2005. The participation rate for fathers outside Quebec remained steady over the three years examined, at around 11%. And even though the parental leave benefit program was the same across Canada prior to 2006, Quebec had a consistently higher proportion of fathers claiming benefits. For more on this, read Statistics Canada’s study, "Fathers' use of paid parental leave" published in Perspectives on Labour and Income.

Quebeckers and Obama

They’re less likely to tune in to the inauguration but they might be cheering louder than other Canadians.

Quebeckers are less likely to watch or listen to the inauguration of Barack Obama today than Canadians  in the rest of the country. 56% of Quebeckers say they do not plan to either watch or listen compared to 45% nationally.

But it’s not for lack of enthusiasm.

Quebeckers are significantly more likely than Canadians in the rest of the country to say that the election of Barack Obama is a good thing (84% in Quebec compared to 76% nationally)

A majority of Canadians (52%) and Quebeckers (52%) believe expectations of Obama are overblown and people are expecting way too much of him and his new administration. Yet Quebeckers are significantly more likely to say that, in his first year, Obama will have a “big” impact on

• Improving the image of the US around the world (57% in Quebec compared to 43% nationally)
• Getting the US economy back on the right track (28% in Quebec compared to 19% nationally)
• Helping bring peace to the Middle East (17% in Quebec compared to 12% nationally)

Quebeckers are also more likely to say that Obama will have a “medium” impact in terms of making real progress on global warming (43% in Quebec compared to 30% nationally)

Source: Ipsos Reid survey for Canwest Media conducted January 12-14, 2009

Close to Seth

I spend much more time writing this blog than marketing it. I guess I feel its subject matter is too narrow to make it big in the blogosphere. But I still write because I like to. And because it’s about what our firm is obsessed about. Some read it and some comment.

This little blog is included on two blog rolls (that I know of). One is the Canadian Marketing Association’s blog. 

The other is Quebec’s marketing publication Infopresse.

You’ll notice that the blog is either listed next to or close to Seth Godin’s blog.

While mine is no purple blog, maybe I should just sit tight – close to Seth – and hope that it’s “remarkable” just by being there.