What Québec Wants™

The real winter games

That’s how Québec City’s winter carnival is being marketed these days. The event is on until February 13th and is only outranked in size by carnivals in Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans. It’s estimated to generate more than $30-million each year for the local economy. And while the carnival and its mascot Bonhomme now have a strong following, it wasn’t always this way. For a look at the history of what started as a way to attract tourists during cold months, read this article by Rhéal Seguin published in the Globe & Mail in 2004.

Here’s an excerpt:

Few believed that the carnival could become a major annual winter festival. It took Louis Paré, a Quebec City tourism officer, four years to persuade local businessmen to organize the first carnival in 1955. The city had organized winter festivals on a regular basis since 1894, but the event had died out after the Second World War.

Paré understood the need to create a mascot to market the event. A local businessman, inspired by a scarecrow-type figure used in European festivals, suggested creating a jovial snowman, dressed in traditional Quebec garments that the coureurs de bois wore centuries earlier. After all, besides being one of the oldest cities in North America, the region also had one of the highest levels of snow precipitation in the world. So Bonhomme was born, someone who would disappear to the North Pole at the end of the festival and return to rule over the city in the middle of each winter.

Street-smart?

Macleans magazine is publishing a ranking of Canada’s ‘smartest cities’. The ranking is based on the Canadian Council on Learning’s annual list.

Montréal doesn’t do very well.

Macleans chose to highlight this fact with an article entitled “Why does Montreal rank so poorly? Despite its abundance of culture, attendance is low.”

The choice of photography for this piece struck me. While photos for the other cities discussed in this issue show culture and learning-related images, the image of Montréal is of a young man setting something on fire during the riots that irrupted after the Habs win last week.

 

Tourism Québec claims via its slogan that Québec has been ‘providing emotions since 1534’. Its residents might spend relatively less time in museums and at the ballet but they make up for it with emotions. It’s apparently good for tourism.

 

Advice to Dr. Rapaille as he begins his search for archetypes in Québec City

A follow-up on my previous post about Québec City’s decision to hire Clotaire Rapaille to build its brand.

Québec City’s newspaper Le Soleil reports that Dr. Clotaire Rapaille arrives in town today to begin his branding initiative using his unique approach – which is well document in his book The Culture Code. According to the paper, he will receive $250,000 for this assignment lasting ten weeks – plus another $25,000 for incentives for 330 focus group participants, plus travel and accommodation.

It’s the talk of the town in Québec City. The mayor has had to defend his decision to hire this outsider from the moment it was announced. Le Soleil covers it all including the stormy debate among the city council and the mayor’s visible irritation. The mayor even brought his consultant’s book into the debate yesterday and implored his opponents to read it.

Unsolicited advice:

Dr. Rapaille, forget the formal research – it’s going to be biased anyway given the debate raging about your legitimacy as an expert who can guide Québec City’s destiny.

Here’s an archetype – free of charge: CHAUVINISM

Chauvinism is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a blind belief in national superiority and glory. By extension it has come to include an extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of any group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards a rival group.

Try building a brand with that one. Good luck. Bonne chance.

Love Boat - Part Deux

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

New data from an Ipsos Reid poll conducted on behalf of TripHarbour from January 13 to 15, 2009 confirm the rather significant difference between Quebeckers and the rest of Canada in terms of the  appeal of cruise vacations.

While 33% of Canadians say they would consider taking a cruise for their next vacation, only 17% of Quebeckers say so. What’s going on here? Quebeckers would rather have their feet on the ground? They’re more prone to vertigo? They watched Titanic too often? If someone knows, please comment.

Montreal, Paris and beauty

Paris Hilton was in Montreal last weekend to promote her new line of footwear at a downtown Browns Shoes store where she also declared Montreal “ a beautiful city”. If you’re interested in Ms. Hilton's insights into her life, politics and her friend Britney, read Mathew Hays’ article in the Globe & Mail - Entertainment

Paris Hilton’s declaration that the city is “beautiful” must make the folks at Tourism Montreal very happy. The organization is launching a new campaign to promote Montreal to Torontonians, New Yorkers and Bostonians. Unlike the usual tourism ads where “beautiful” refers to landscapes, landmarks or architecture, this campaign seems to emphasize the beautiful latte-sipping people of Montreal with gorgeous shoes. A contrast from the bland, grey folks you presumably find in Toronto, New York and Boston. It’s an interesting departure from the typical “Paris without the jet lag” ads attempting to convince the same target that a weekend in Montreal is like a weekend in Paris.

Is this a cliché about Montreal or is there more “beauty” there?

Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I won’t answer. But survey data paint an interesting portrait of Quebeckers and the importance of looking good.

An Ipsos-Reid survey from 2004 revealed that 75% of Quebeckers agreed with the statement “I’m high maintenance, I constantly make an effort to look and smell great” while only 38% of Canadians in the rest of the country agreed. Data from the Print Measurement Bureau supports this finding: 18% of Quebec women “don’t feel complete without perfume” compared to only 12% of women English Canada.

77% of women in Quebec agree with the statement “I always make the time to shop for clothes that are exactly right for me” while 56% of women in the ROC do so.

If looking young actually looks better, Quebec women are more concerned about looking younger. Almost twice as many women in Quebec (36% vs. 19%) agree with the statement “I want to do everything I possibly can to look ten to fifteen years younger.”

Yet it seems that Quebec women aren’t significantly more interested in cosmetic surgery than women in the rest of the country. An Ipsos Reid survey conducted for CanWest News Service in 2007 indicated that the provinces and regions where having plastic surgery is most desired were: British Columbia and Saskatchewan/Manitoba (24%), Quebec (21%) and Alberta and Ontario (20%).