Our friends at Juniper Park created a simple yet powerful tool that allows people to add their voice to the growing effort to end violence against women. And we were glad to create the French version.
Leading up to the 25th anniversary of the massacre at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, where 15 women were killed, the YWCA Canada is providing a social media tool that will allow people to take action, however small, on the issue of violence against women.
#NOTokay #PAScorrect
We all know that physical and sexual violence is wrong. But there’s an onslaught of images, videos, tweets, news clips, music lyrics, and posts that we see on a daily basis, where women are belittled, objectified, and attacked.
We want to make it easy for people to stand up and say it’s NOT OKAY.
So we created a tool in the form of a hashtag - #NOTokay #PAScorrect– that can be used to point out anything from a misogynistic tweet to a video game where women are gratuitously beaten, raped, and killed.
People are invited to visit the website, notokay.ca (pascorrect.ca) where survivors ask them in their own words to share and spread the word. The site will also aggregate all posts and tweets with the hashtag #NOTokay, and provide tools to share and continue to spread the word.
On November 25th, the date of the campaign launch, we will invite Canadians to change their profile pictures to our #NOTOkay logo, magnifying our efforts to bring this issue to light, and encouraging people to continue to act on it everyday.
We’ve also created these radio spots that will no doubt trigger conversations.
The sisters achieved instant celebrity status following their victories in Sochi. At press conferences and in interviews, the Dufour-Lapointe family was telling its amazing story to news media. That story included a brand which the media happily mentioned. Here’s how The Globe and Mail told it on February 9th:
Ms. Dufour described cramming her sleepy kids and their gear into the family Volkswagen on early weekend mornings to drive to the Laurentian mountains.
Thanks to smart thinking from Volkswagen, the story has a new chapter.
Moved by this family's story and proud of their Olympic and World Cup victories, Volkswagen decided to offer each of the Dufour-Lapointe sisters a car. And they had their pick of model: Chloé chose a Golf GTI, Justine a Beetle, and Maxime a Tiguan.
It was the sisters' parents who drove them around in the now-famous Jetta; in a way, it has become a symbol of their devotion. And so Volkswagen Canada thought the parents deserved a little recognition as well.
When VW presented the sisters their keys, it also surprised their mother, Johane, with a gift: a 2014 Jetta in blue, the same shade as the Jetta that has driven her daughters this far.
Here’s the video.
The story was also told by the family on Monday on Pénélop McQuade's popular show on Radio Canada. You can view the clip here.
How brands interact on Facebook in Québec could cause more harm than good.
Half of French Quebeckers who stopped following a brand or company page on Facebook did so because the brand did not respond to their inquiry.
We asked 3,000 Canadians if they followed brand or company pages on Facebook. Over a third of Canadians in the ROC (35%) and 29% in French Québec say they do.
While relatively fewer in French Québec use Facebook to follow brands, they are significantly more likely to pay attention to brand updates on their newsfeed. 69% in French Québec say they read updates as if it they are from one of their friends compared to only 16% in the rest of Canada. Conversely, only 28% in French Québec briefly skim or skip over updates compared to 79% in the rest of Canada.
French Quebeckers might be more engaged with brands on social media but they’re slightly more likely to stop following brands on Facebook (59% in French Québec compared to 55% in the ROC). There are major and very telling differences in the reasons Facebook users give for having stopped following a brand.
In English Canada, the two main reasons are that the content was not relevant and the brand posted too frequently. In French Québec, the two main reasons are that they stopped liking the brand and they did not get a response to their inquiry - presumably because the brand could not answer promptly in French. One in five French Quebeckers (20%) say they stopped following a brand because the page posted little or no content in their preferred language and 7% say they did not get a response to their inquiry in their preferred language.
Marketers have an opportunity to truly engage on social media with French Quebeckers who will chat with them as if they’re friends. But they need to say something and respond in French or their followers will give up on them.
Some may dismiss this week’s story about how the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) ordered Eva Cooper, a small retailer operating a location in Chelsey, Quebec, to translate her Facebook page or face a fine as just another example of overzealous officials putting undue pressure to conduct business in French.
Marketers should pay attention to how this unfolds. This is likely not another Pastagate.
Some context: A year ago this month, an inspector from the OQLF sent a letter of warning to an upscale restaurant, Buonanotte, for using Italian words such as "pasta," "antipasti," "calamari," etc. on its menu instead of their French equivalents.
Instead of complying with instructions on the letter he received from the OQLF, the owner of Buonanotte went public and it generated a widespread public outcry across the province, even among francophones, about the Office abusing its powers. The incident also received international attention in newspapers, thus causing an embarrassment to the provincial government. The incident led to the resignation of Louise Marchand, head of the OQLF, on March 8, 2013.
Ms. Cooper has gone public too. And the media amplified the story this week.
Michael Bergman, a lawyer specializing in constitutional and human rights issues interviewed on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning, made his case against the OQLF's position:
“The language charter was enacted before social media existed and, for that matter, before the internet was popular. The French language office is expanding into the cyber sphere an ancient concept, so to speak, of traditional advertising. Social media is far from advertising, it's an interactive dialogue."
This seems right. After all, Facebook is a “social” network. It’s about personal conversations between friends. That’s what it was meant to be.
But when companies use Facebook to promote their brands - some do it very effectively by posting well-crafted relevant content while others use the social network as just another advertising media - the line between personal and commercial has been crossed.
That’s where the OQLF has a point. One that isn’t as ridiculous as ordering that antipasti be translated into French.
Jean-Pierre Le Blanc, a OQLF told the CBC:
“When it’s used for commercial publication, or commercial advertising, then it has to be written in French. More and more we see businesses using social media to advertise, to sell products. This is where the law comes in.”
This should not be about the law.
Target posts in French with translated, adapted or original content for Québec.
If marketers wish for consumers to “like” their brands, interact with them and become cult-like followers, they should improve their conversational French. While some have gone to great lengths to post unique Québec content and interact in French, others have jumped into social media without a rigorous approach to managing their French-speaking followers and have left their French-speaking communities wondering. Sadly, you can see the result on some brand pages: often previously loyal users exasperated by brands who can’t or won’t speak to them in French are asking in English for answers in French.
As brands' Facebook pages become an online contact point for customer care, answering promptly in French is just good business.
In 2011, Pfizer commissioned Ipsos to ask Canadians about how they would celebrate Valentine’s Day given that it fell on a Monday and could therefore be celebrated on the weekend. Quebeckers were significantly more likely to say that “the weekend creates more opportunity to plan a romantic surprise.” (35% in Québec compared to 22% nationally and only 16% in Ontario).
Valentine’s day being a Friday this year, when can assume that Quebeckers are still more likely to plan a surprise than Canadian in the RoC.
On the other hand, in Ontario and other Canadian provinces Valentine’s day is the beginning of a three day weekend for some. Could that entice Canadians in the RoC to get more romantic this year?
Perhaps but cupid has his work cut out. In that same study, 35% of Canadians said they do not celebrate Valentine’s Day. 45% said so in Manitoba/Saskatchewan, 40% in Ontario and only 28% in Québec.
On a related note, here’s a great App and a great way for this jeweler to leverage social media with fun content without hard sell.
She’s everywhere - including a show on the Food Network and a book titled “SKINNY CHICKS EAT REAL FOOD”.
She’s quintessential Hollywood.
Her profile states that she is a classically trained French chef, Certified Nutritionist, Media Spokesperson, TV Persona and Co-Host on Food Network’s show Fat Chef. She has been Hollywood’s go-to nutrition/culinary expert for celebrities such as Jeremy Piven, Audrina Patridge, Giuliana Rancic, Johnny Galecki, Paula Abdul, Rich Sommer, Jason Statham, Samantha Harris, Chelsea Handler, Henry Winkler, Kym Johnson, Steven Segal and Marcus Allen. Christine has counseled more than a thousand clients one-on-one in her private nutrition and fitness coaching practice located in New York City and Los Angeles, who have collectively lost more than 10,000 pounds.
Christine has shared her nutrition and culinary advice on the Today Show, Dancing with the Stars, Rachael Ray, The Doctors, Good Morning America, Oprah’s All Stars and dozens of others. Her insights can be found in magazines such as Vogue, W, New Beauty, Women’s Health, US Weekly, Health, Fitness, InStyle and many others.
She also recently endorsed The Skinny Vine launched in the US in January by Treasury Wine Estates, the Australian company behind Penfolds, Lindeman’s and Rosemount Estate. Yes. It’s wine for the calorie conscious.
According to an article by Peppi Crosariol in the Globe and Mail:
The Skinny Vine has shipments already exceeding 100,000 cases, the three wines – Slim Chardonnay, Thin Zin and Mini Moscato – weigh in at just 7.3– to 8.5-per-cent alcohol and 86 to 95 calories per five-ounce glass. That compares with an average of between 120 and 141 calories for comparable varietals made in California.
As expected, Christine’s visibility is enhanced by her extensive use of social networks. The day Peppi wrote about her endorsement of The Skinny Vine in the Globe, Christine tweeted “Got a great #shoutout today in The Globe! Many Thx @Beppi_Crosariol.
And on it goes...
Meet Dr. Isabelle Huot - Québec's version of Christine Avanti.
They share looks, a knack for getting exposure and a very smart business sense.
Isabelle Huot holds a PhD in Nutrition. One would think she also holds one in marketing with a specialty in personal branding.
I met her several years ago when she was a nutrition advisor for one of our clients and later became a spokesperson. Back then, she already had a binder full of press clippings to impress me during contract negotiations. There’s clearly no need for that binder anymore.
She is a successful entrepreneur who knows the importance of carefully cultivating her brand and generating visibility. The woman is everywhere in Québec.
She's on television. She is a regular contributor to TVA’s Salut Bonjour morning show. Québec’s version of The Today Show.
Salut Bonjour - TVA's morning show
She's in book stores. She has published six books with Les Éditions de l’homme (a division of Québecor Média)
One of six books published by Dr. Isabelle Huot
She's in advertising. She is the spokesperson for Québec commercial bakery St-Méthode. She appears in television advertising and her conseilsnutrition.tv advice is available via the bakery’s website.
She's on the web - in every way. Her ConseilsNutrition.tv website is classic content integration connecting the dots between the books, recipes, and online videos. It links to her website which goes a step further with a link to Kilo Solution, her nutrition and weight loss clinics.
Nutritional advice via web videos and other content
She's on cruise ships. Meet the doctor aboard a Royal Caribberan cruise ship. She’ll deliver conference themed “Nutrition at the heart of health”.
An invitation to hear her talk about nutrition while cruising the Caribbean
She’s on TVA’s Shopping Channel. Where she sells her line of food as part of her weight loss program.
She's on the radio. She has a regular segment on Rythme 105.7 FM in Montreal.
A radio commentator
She's in newspapers. She has a weekly column in Le Journal de Montréal (another Québecor Media property) where she delivers advice and she pitches her line of food. Why not treat promotion as news, if you can?
A weekly column
"News' reports
Or she reviews and recommends food products. Why not use that influence, if you can?
Reviewing and recommending products
She's in magazines. She is regularly featured on magazine covers.
Celebrity treatment on magazine covers
She’s on Twitter and Facebook. And she’s active.
Twitter & Facebook to engage and extend her reach
What’s missing?
Wine. I bet it won’t take long for the über nutritionist to start pitching it.
Agreement with the statement "I am confused about how to eat a healthy diet": 35% of French Quebeckers compared to 25% of Canadians in the rest of the country.
French Quebeckers are a social bunch. And they know it. Our What Québec Wants™ study reveals that 62% of French Quebeckers self-describe as “social” compared to only 39% of Canadians in the ROC.
While French speaking Quebeckers are more social, they are less so online than Canadians in the ROC. We asked 3,030 Canadians about their agreement with the statement: I often use social networking sites such as Facebook. 45% of Canadians in the ROC agreed compared with 39% of French Quebeckers.
Canada boasts some of the world's highest internet penetration and social networking usage rates. However, there are differences between age and language groups. Usage rates among Francophones are lower than among Anglophones. As the following table shows, in 2011, the gap in Internet usage between Anglophones and Francophones was non-existent for the 18–34 age group and minimal for the 35–49 age group; however, the gap was much wider for the oldest age group.
Behaviours are changing rapidly and the older age group is catching up. The CEFRIO’s most recent data shows that 53% of those 65 years and older in Québec were using social media in 2012, up from 39% in 2011. At this rate, older French Quebeckers will soon be as active on social media as younger ones which will likely make Québec as a whole as socially networked as the ROC.
For more about our What Québec Wants™ study, click here.
Just when I thought I was getting a case of Twitter fatigue, the randomness of what it serves up keeps it interesting.
The telegenic spokesperson for the most militant Québec student association, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, tweets that he’ll be on CNN in 15 minutes. Would CNN cover a peaceful protest?
A 75-year-old judge in Québec City is found guilty of murdering his disabled wife. The judge, known for his proper use of the French language, said one word when the verdict was read: ostie. (Québec French profanity)
Then there’s the tweet from Adweek about CocaCola’s security camera footage campaign. A clever twist on the grainy images usually associated with the darker side of society and a beautiful reminder that people can do good.
How about joining peopleforgood.ca and make the world a better place?
According to this 2009 article published in Inc. magazine, “Even a casual mention of a product, exposed to her (Oprah’s) 44 million weekly viewers, is a boon for the company that makes or sells that product. Several companies from the 2009 Inc. 500|5000 have been so lucky as to score a spot on The Oprah Winfrey Show over the past three years, perhaps accounting for a great deal of their growth during that period.”
When Oprah endorses products and people, including a Presidential candidate, they’re adopted or elected. Read this Time article Under the Influence of Oprah for more.
Québec also has a talk show host, actor, comedian, producer who has Oprah-like influence.
Guy A. Lepage is the host of the immensely popular weekly talk show Tout le monde en parle on Radio Canada. The show typically draws over a million viewers each week. Although its audience has dropped under the million mark earlier this year.
Jack Layton was a guest on Tout le monde en parle during the last federal election. Guy A. Lepage called him a ‘bon Jack’ - a Québécois expression for a ‘good guy’. Quebeckers went on to vote for an orange wave of MPs. Many of them had not even bothered campaigning. The NDP’s success in the province can’t be attributed solely to Guy A. Lepage’s ‘bon Jack’ endorsement but I’d argue it was the tipping point. For more on this, read this previous blog post.
The high priest of Sunday night television also makes his views known outside his Tout le monde en parle soap box. He tweets regularly to his 115,000 followers.
He recently tweeted his outrage at juice maker Lassonde for its aggressive legal stance on a trademark issue. Over the course of a weekend, the issue went from a newspaper article in La Presse to an online explosion fueled in a large part by Guy A. Lepage’s announcement that he’d boycott Lassonde, a Québec Inc. success story. For more on this, read this previous blog post.
Last year, Guy A. Lepage was musing about boycotting Banque Nationale because its VP of IT was a unilingual anglophone. The headline in Le Devoir read: “Guy A. Lepage considers boycotting Banque National. ‘I can’t believe that we cannot find bilingual bankers!’
It would be an understatement to say that things are rather ‘tensed’ in Québec these days. And they may well get ‘tenser’ as the Charest government takes more drastic steps to end the student protests.
Québec’s Oprah is of course adding his voice to the debate.
In an article in yesterday’s Le Journal de Montréal about the preparations for the Fête nationale on June 24th, Guy A. Lepage says ‘there is collective indignation’ right now in Québec. The article claims that in the midst of a social crisis, the Fête nationale celebrations at the Maisonneuve park will be more political than ever and that artists aren’t afraid of words.
These are strong words from a powerful media personality.
The student protest in Québec over tuition costs is now in its 14th week.
Line Beauchamp, the Education Minister and deputy premier resigned yesterday. Jean Charest is vowing to end the unrest that’s paralyzed a city and made headlines here and abroad.
This isn't a political blog so we won't get involved in the debate. However, the whole saga offers an interesting study of how the media covered this story and how each side is using the media, including social media, to mobilize its supporters and shape public opinion.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the spokesperson for the CLASSE, the most radical of the student associations involved in this protest, is on the front cover of Québec leading newsmagazine L’actualité. He has become a media darling.
The same issue of l’Actualité includes a very insightful article by Jean-François Lisée on how the students have been outsmarting the government by leveraging the web, especially social media. Adman Jean-Jacques Stréliski calls it the ‘quiet e-revolution’.
This revolution happens at Internet speed and the government isn’t as fast as the students. The Minister resigned at 15:45 yesterday. Almost 24 hours later, the website set up by the government to tell its story www.droitsdescolarite.com still shows videos of the Minister explaining the government’s position and stating that ‘the Government of Québec has signed an agreement in principle with the four student associations’.
By the way, the government’s website has been ‘highjacked’ by students who created a similar looking site.
In ‘traditional media’, the government ran newspaper ads in Québec’s major newspapers on April 29th outlining its ‘global solution’. It had the requisite Government of Québec visual identity in the bottom right corner. Whoever designed these ads chose to add a squiggle in the bottom left corner of the ad. There must be a reason. If anyone knows what it’s meant to communicate, we’d like to know.
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