What Québec Wants™

My country is not a country, it’s winter.

Interesting comment by Derek Kent, chief marketing officer for the Canadian Olympic Committee, about the Team Canada campaign “We Are Winter”:  “The essence of this campaign originated from conversations with our athletes who all said the same thing: Winter defines them and defines who we are as a country”.

Winter defines us as a country.

This reminds us of the lyrics of Québec poet and singer-songwriter Gilles Vigneault’s famous song “Mon pays”. Composed by Vigneault in 1964, the song’s lyrics are best known for this line: “Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver”. (My country is not a country, it’s winter.)

According to this Globe and Mail article, “the COC and its agency, Proximity Canada, worked with a literary consultant to comb through 19th-century Canadian poetry looking for references to winter – which is a bit like finding a needle in a stack of needles.”

Vigneault’s poem could have been one of those needles.

Unless it was judged to be a tad too nationalistic for Team Canada. According to Wikipedia: “The song was written for the NFB film La Neige a fondu sur la Manicouagan, directed by Arthur Lamothe. The song, with its lyrics about winds, cold, snow, and ice, of the solitude of wide open spaces and of the ideal of brotherhood, has become a kind of anthem in Québec, with many people seeing it as expressing the free spirit of the province; Vigneault, however, has denied that this was ever his intention.”

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.

 

Move on Tiger

A majority of Quebeckers, and significantly more than Canadians in the rest of the country, believe that ‘whatever Tiger Woods has done in his private life of late is now in the past and he deserves to get on with his life and career’.

According to a survey by Ipsos-Reid conducted on behalf of Canwest News Service and Global Television, 93% of Quebeckers feel this way compared to 86% of Canadians. Quebeckers are also more likely to say that Tiger can redeem himself and be a role model again for youth and that it’s time for sponsors to endorse him again.

Wondering why Quebeckers appear more tolerant of Tiger’s indiscretions?

Here’s one data point that might explain why:

Agreement with the statement “Everybody should be free to do their own thing”; among English-speaking Canadians 64%, among French-speaking Canadians 80% (according to Yankelovich).

What’s an Olympic medal worth?

The medals themselves are worth roughly $500.

Depending on where the athlete is from, they can be worth much more once the government hands out the ‘incentives’. For example, in 2008 the Russian government awarded $100,000 for gold, $60,000 for silver and $40,000 for bronze. The U.S. paid $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze.

The Beijing Olympics marked the first time Canada’s athletes received cash for medals. A gold was worth $20,000, a silver $15,000 and a bronze $10,000.

Here’s a look at what other countries have handed out in the past:

Philippines: Harry Tanamor was the Philippines’ only boxing hope at the Beijing Games - and if he brought home the country’s first Olympic gold, he would have received a promotion from the rank of sergeant, and a cash bonus, according to the Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff General Alexander Yano.

The Philippine government was dangling more incentives to the athlete who brings home the country’s first-ever Olympic gold medal, with the pot now worth 15 million pesos ($313,000).

Belarus: Belarusian athletes who won gold at Beijing were to be provided with meat sausages for the rest of their lives.

Kenya: The President had said that each Kenyan athlete will receive a cash prize of 750,000 shillings for winning a gold medal, 500,000 shillings for silver and 250,000 shillings for a bronze medal.

Source: LeapComp

For more on the value of gold, silver and bronze and how Canadian athletes will benefit from their Olympic performances, you can view my interview on TFO's Panorama last night (in French).

 

The Olympics on three screens for a lot of money

If you understand French, you might want to watch my segment on TFO last night about the big show that begins Friday night, what the broadcasters paid and what advertisers hope to get in return for their investment.

 

Click on the image to watch or click here.

No excuses

As I watched my youngest son learn to play hockey this morning with other Timbits 'future stars', I wondered if one of them would one day purposely hit another player on the head.

I have to admit that I don't play hockey or follow the sport so I don't have personal experience with this. But it seems to me that there just isn't any excuse for Patrice Cormier's behaviour last month.  

The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League called the hit "dangerous and unacceptable”.

While I might not be qualified to comment on this, I am glad to see that a majority of Canadians believe that hits to the head are unnecessary and usually done on purpose in hockey.  According to a recent Harris Decima survey, 2 in 3 Canadians believe hits to the head are targeted and done on purpose. 65% were of the view that hits to the head are unnecessary and usually done on purpose in hockey, while 26% felt head shots were unavoidable in a fast-paced game like hockey.

Quebeckers most likely to feel that hits to the head are something that can and should be avoided.

Residents of Quebec are particularly convinced that hits to the head are unnecessary and done on purpose (80%), fully 16 points higher than Ontario (64%), the region with the next highest belief that hits to the head are done on purpose.

 

Playing games.

Today's editorial in the New York Times titled 'Super Bowl Censorship' deals with the touchy issue of abortion. However, the debate over the censorship of a TV spot during the Super Bowl should be a non-issue.

Here's the editorial:

The commercials during the Super Bowl, a showcase for the best (or worst) in TV advertising, often generate buzz and sometimes outrage. This year, viewers will see one ad that has already triggered a heated debate about abortion and censorship.

The 30-second spot, financed by the conservative religious group Focus on the Family, is said to recount the pregnancy of Pam Tebow, mother of the college football star Tim Tebow. After falling ill during a mission to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child, who became the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner.  

The National Organization for Women, NARAL Pro-Choice America and other voices for protecting women’s reproductive freedom have called on CBS to yank it. Their protest is puzzling and dismaying.

A letter sent to CBS by the Women’s Media Center and other groups argues that the commercial “uses one family’s story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk” — a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening. Others argue that even a mild discussion of such a divisive issue has no place in the marketing extravaganza known as the Super Bowl.

The would-be censors are on the wrong track. Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

CBS was right to change its policy of rejecting paid advocacy commercials from groups other than political candidates. After the network screens ads for accuracy and taste, viewers can watch and judge for themselves. Or they can get up from the couch and get a sandwich.

Quebeckers and abortion

According to a Leger Marketing survey conducted in 2004, residents of Quebec and B.C. are most likely to say they are in favour of abortion.

Give or take a few billions

'Tiger Woods scandal cost shareholders up to $12-billion.'

This headline for an item from Reuters published in various papers today caught my attention - in part for the amount but mostly because its apparent precision. After all, how can one truly measure the value creation of a celebrity endorsement (and its impact on a firm's stock value when the celebrity's image takes a beating)?

University of California Davis Assistant Professor Victor Stango has studied stock market tendencies, stock value and the timeline of Tiger's accident, concluding that significant shareholder losses resulted from the ensuing saga. Here's the abstract from the study he co-authored with professor Christopher Knittel also from UC: (Shareholders Value Destruction following the Tiger Woods Scandal).

We estimate that in the days beginning with Tiger Woods' recent car accident and ending with his announced "indefinite leave" from golf, shareholders of companies that Mr. Woods endorses lost $5-12 billion in wealth.

We measure the losses relative to both the entire stock market and a set of competitor firms. Because most of the firms that Mr. Woods endorses are either large or owned by large parent companies, the losses are extremely widespread. Mr. Woods' top five sponsors (Accenture, Nike, Gillette, Electronic Arts and Gatorade) lost 2-3 percent of their aggregate market value after the accident, and his core sports-related sponsors EA, Nike and PepsiCo (Gatorade) lost over four percent. The pace of losses slowed by December 11, the date on which Mr. Woods announced his leave from golf, but as late as December 17 shareholders had not recovered their losses.

One sentence in the report caught my attention: Finally, we should caution that our estimates are statistically `noisy,' in that they could be significantly higher or lower than the numbers we report.

Imagine paying for a study involving predictive modeling and being told that its findings are 'statistically noisy'...

Go on. Don't be a Tiger.

Ever since Tiger Woods’ single car crash, the public relations experts have been saying that his transgressions (now elevated to infidelity) will have no significant impact on his brand. He will still be the PGA’s biggest asset and his yet-to-be-announced return to the game will be the biggest show. They’re partly right. Golf needs him and sponsors like Nike need him.

However, I argued a few weeks ago in a post that not all Tiger Woods’ sponsors should be lumped together. Not all will be equally prepared to stand by him. I wrote that ‘many are used to sponsoring athletes who have a bad boy image so this isn't particularly different. Not sure however how the folks at consulting firm Accenture are assessing this.’

So I’m not surprised at Accenture’s decision to pull the plug.  

Here's what the CEO said in 2003 when the firm announced its deal with Tiger Woods for their 'Go on. Be a Tiger' campaign: 

“Tiger Woods’ strength, mastery, discipline and relentless focus on winning are universally recognized qualities that mirror the characteristics of a high-performance business, making him the ideal representative for our market positioning,” said Joe W. Forehand, Accenture chairman and CEO. “A high-performance business is one that optimizes its resources to achieve its objectives and consistently outperforms competitors. Tiger is the best at his game, and we want our clients to be the best at theirs.”

The decision to end its association with Tiger Woods was explained this way by the consulting firm quoted in today’s Globe and Mail: “After careful consideration and analysis, the company has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising. It wishes only the best for Tiger Woods and his family.”

I’m sure they had hoped for this to blow over quickly. While I suspect the golfer’s actions weren’t what Accenture meant when it talked about his ‘strength and mastery’, it’s the media frenzy, and his handling of it, that are causing the real damage.

Here’s an interesting perspective from sport lawyer David Yates in Lawyer Weekly.

Yates said the explosion in new technology; camera phones and blogs meant that sports players were under intense scrutiny, with the slightest indiscretion possibly ending up in the media. 

"Ultimately, it may not be the actions of sports star, but the amount of negative publicity those actions generate that lead a party to consider invoking a moral hazard clause," he said.

The future (of the Montreal Canadiens) ain’t what it used to be.

To coincide with the team’s 100^th anniversary, Historica-Dominion Institute conducted a survey via Ipsos-Reid on what many consider to be Canada’s hockey team.

One in two Canadians ‘agree’ that ‘the Montreal Canadiens is the greatest hockey team in history’. Predictably, this number jumps to 54% in Québec.

Two data points jump out:

• While six in ten (57%) Ontarians agree that hockey players are better today than ever before, two in three (64%) Quebecers disagree with this notion.
• Most (69%) Quebecers believe that the Montreal Canadiens’ best years are behind them, while only 53% of Ontarians believe this to be true.

To borrow again from Yogi Berra, if ‘95% of this game is half mental’, looks like the team and its fans could use some positive thinking.