Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Another Reason for Business to Embrace Social Media

Breaking down organizational silos in favour of organization-wide collaboration was a predominant theme at CMA’s Social Media Conference last week. Presenters emphasized the significant value proposition of this more holistic approach to management – with the caveat that a full implementation of such a dramatic new policy will prove difficult.

“I think they’ll always be silos,” said David Armano, Senior Vice-President Digital at Edelman, in his keynote address. But you have to make the silos more permeable, he said. Several speakers provided useful examples of how to break down the barriers created by fragmentation. Jeff Gluck, Senior Manager, Marketing Communication and Web with MTS
Allstream, discussed the company’s Idea Factory initiative. The project saw the development of an intranet-based social media tool where employees in all departments could submit ideas to better the company. The response to the project, Gluck said, was very positive. Similar initiatives have been undertaken by myriad organizations – even the United States government operates a similar program though the Department of Homeland Security.

Another illustration of breaking down silos was provided by presenters from Research In Motion. Becky Young and Michelle Kostya are RIM’s Social Media Marketing Manager and Community Manager respectively. While they both leverage social media for the benefit of the organization, they are responsible for separate departments, which have unique areas of focus.

However, they make considerable effort to foster collaboration between their individual segments, particularly with respect to social media. Kostya says within RIM there are councils that have weekly calls to discuss social media policy, ensuring coordination across departments. This helps ensure customers get a consistent approach from Blackberry support teams providing user assistance through social media channels. “When consumers are online (using social media) they don’t expect to hear from one department or the other,” said Kostya. “They just want to hear from the company.”

Additionally, Kostya works out of a Young’s office once a week. This would be a frightening proposition for many - but it surely helps RIM’s Community Manager gain valuable insight into the operations of her colleague’s department.

A full transition of an organization’s structure from one of isolation to complete collaboration will face considerable challenges moving forward. But the introduction of social media tools into the marketing mix has helped to clearly demonstrate the benefits of a more holistic approach to company operations. If marketers continue to discuss and promote these benefits as they relate to profitability, senior managers will undoubtedly be galvanized in support of the destruction of organizational silos. Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Jordan Sandler at CMA

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Marketing for Financial Institutions

From savings to loans, millions of Canadians turn to financial institutions for sound, sage advice. With significant competition in the Canadian marketplace, financial institutions need to stand out and grab the attention of risk-averse consumers’ during an economic recovery. When it comes to marketing, financial institutions stick with terms, subjects and formats that are most familiar to them. While safe can be good in our bank accounts, it won’t set you apart from your competition, nor will it keep you top of mind for your clientele. Marketing has become an integral part of business development and maintenance, but it is also an area that is sometimes forgotten.

Here are some smart and easy tips on marketing solutions to help your financial institutions succeed:

1. Know your brand. Before you can tell someone what you do, you need to know what you do. Consider the personality of your company and stick to it. Be consistent in your message, values, slogans, images and colours. These items should not only be consistent with each other but also with your product. Make sure everyone that represents your company knows the brand and portrays that message.

2. Know your audience. To know your brand is only half the challenge. The other half is to know your audience. Research your audience. Who do they trust? What do they like? Where do they go for information? When do they need your services? Why are you targeting them? How do they communicate?

3. Keep it simple. The financial industry can be overwhelming to your audience. Not everyone understands the difference between stocks and bonds and it can be easy to mix up RRSPs and RESPs, so make sure to keep your marketing clear and simple. It will help your customers feel at ease, which can be extremely important given the subject matter. It can be that simple.

4. Keep with the times. We live in a world of constant change, from interest rates to the latest in mobile technology. This week’s trends will be different than next week’s trends. It’s important to stay tuned to what your audience is watching, using and listening. This will help you predict upcoming trends and use them to communicate effectively.

5. Utilize social media. Social media has become the hottest thing since parity. With so many different sites and applications, it can be overwhelming – and tricky – to understand when and how to use each. Don’t try to join everything. Pick the tool that best suits your brand, audience and product and incorporate it into the rest of your marketing initiatives. Remember, social media is not a one-time thing. If you use it, make sure it is updated regularly with relevant information.

While the role of financial institutions has remained consistent, we must acknowledge that clients’ needs have changed. Companies must learn to stand out through effective marketing communications to demonstrate an understanding of clients’ needs. The time to act is now. By investing in effective marketing today, you’re ensuring a significant return on investment for both your organization and your clients.

Nicky Milner, Vice President, Program Management, Transcontinental...Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Mobile Commerce & Retailers

A previous post of mine talked about the rise in retailers focusing on mobile marketing strategy to increase their awareness, drive traffic to stores and keep customers engaged via their mobile device. The mobile ecosystem is evolving extremely quickly and I’d like to continue the theme of retailers but will take this opportunity to focus in greater detail on mobile commerce.

Mobile commerce means different things to different people, depending on who you’re talking to. I’ve come across the following definitions of Mobile Commerce:

• PSMS (Premium SMS) where a user’s mobile bill is invoiced due to a user sending a premium rated SMS to a short code (MO) or by the user accepting a subscription type billing for alerts.
• NFC (Near Field Communication) where an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) equips handsets with Hardware/Software that facilitates a wave and pay type of solution. (May also use RFID – Radio Frequency Identification, Bluetooth, enhanced SIM cards)
• Other often used terms are Mobile wallets, where users can use third party providers like PayPal to facilitate transactions.
• Mobile banking is another popular term that gets thrown into the mix, however M-Banking has very little coverage in this post.

The M-Commerce I’m talking about is payment of products or services via credit card (debit card) using an encrypted mobile internet protocol to facilitate purchases. You’ll also hear the term PCI DSS compliant in this mix (for those not familiar with this acronym, it means Payment Card Industry Compliance Data Security Standard). It’s designed to mask/encrypt the credit/debit card information.

Our discussions with retailers have yielded some thought provoking information, most significantly that consumers are making purchases from their mobile devices on NON mobile friendly e-commerce sites. Not surprisingly the benchmarks for time on site is lower, bounce rates are higher, basket size is lower and drop-off is higher when comparing the experience to established e-commerce portals. Nonetheless the major point here is that PEOPLE ARE BUYING!

This begs the question of the ROI (the Hard ROI not media ROI) of developing a commerce portal that is mobile friendly where benchmarks narrow. To me, this seems like one of the easier business cases to build especially considering the enormous momentum of web friendly handsets, affordable data fees, and increased propensity by consumers to use their Credit Cards on mobile devices.

Mobile marketing will reach new heights because transactions will close communication and campaign loops to purchases. Now we have scenarios where end of the season clearance sales will live inside mobile portals. It’s also worthy to recognize other channels of mobile marketing that will benefit from commerce like SMS. Reward your loyal SMS subscribers with first to know and exclusive offers and alerts of discounted items. Use mobile display banner ads and yield exceptionally high click through rates of featured items and convert to checkout. Develop mobile friendly versions of emails for those consumers who read e-newsletters on handsets. Explore affiliate mobile networks (and cross retailer downloadable applications) and pay the content owners or application owners upon conversion to sale. I’d like nothing better than to see SMS joke of the day ads replaced by “Be the first to own an iPad! Click here”.

Some thought starters…

Go to your webmaster and ask him/her to pull the web reports on types of browsers accessing your site. Parse the data and look at bounce rates of mobile browsers vs. traditional browsers. Take a quick audit of your page views accessed through mobile browsers, what information is being viewed? Some of my guesses are Store Locator/Maps, Store Hours, Specials and Price Comparison tools.

Pull the report from your email CRM activities, see how many page views are coming from Mobile browsers – and then look at your newsletter on your handheld.

Start asking for mobile numbers and opt-ins from your sign up section of your website – you’ll be shocked at how many consumers are willing to give up their mobile number.

Look at using web to mobile tools like “send to my mobile” for online flyer/catalog searches that will send wish lists, product information, mobile coupons, store address etc. direct to you via a shortcode (or by updating your native application through the PUSH API).

Tag offline media like flyers, FSIs, POS, print, newspaper, OOH with mobile messaging calls to action and start changing impressions to interactions and now transactions.

If your site has e-commerce does your commerce provider have the ability to use webservices? You’ll need to decide on a transcoded (operation of changing data from one format to another, such as an XML to HTML, so the output will be displayed in an appropriate manner for the device) mobile site OR to build from scratch (potentially using a mobile internet middleware solution) optimizing navigation and content for groupings of mobile handsets based on form, feature and function. Do NOT compromise on user experience.

The advent of mobile transactions will better equip marketers to assess the dollar value of a mobile number, which in my mind is critical for next generation mobile strategy. Our industry must move beyond last of the budget and end of the year throw in experiments. Above all focus on utility, don’t think of mobile as native application, OR messaging, OR mobile web, OR mobile advertising – these are all ANDs.

Finally don’t build your mobile strategy on an island – it must integrate and fit within your overall communication plan...Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Brady Murphy

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Marketers Need to Reflect and Change

More on the CMA National Convention held last week in Toronto.

A few speakers highlighted the challenges that marketers are facing in the new decade:
-The 2009 consumer recession triggered significant job losses in marketing;
-Marketing is under siege; and
-Marketing budgets were cut but are starting to rebound in 2010.

Ken Wong from Queen’s University outlined two key challenges:

1. Marketing has a perception problem - Ken bluntly told the audience that research indicates that Senior Execs don’t value marketing. Marketers are perceived as “margin sucking maggotts’. They are seen as cost centers that don’t like to measure. But the key to “C-Suite” credibility is proving that marketing is a profit (or margin) driver.

2. Focusing on the tactics rather than strategy - marketers often change tactics randomly which Ken calls “schizophrenic” marketing. Changing tactics confuses customers and dilutes the impact on strategy. Companies need to build their marketing strategies around their overall business strategy and stay focused on key outcomes (not blindly chasing market share).

On a positive note, those marketers who can correlate their marketing efforts to generating profits will win big. Marketers just need to think more broadly in a business perspective and less narrowly about your business model and how you can manage customer segments and profitably change customer behavior. Profits will follow.
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Geoff Linton

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: The Emergence of Influencer Relations in B-to-B

With the rapid rise of social media, buyers are placing growing trust in the opinions of new sources that use blogs, online forums, and sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to spread their message; by doing so, they have morphed AR into a broader category we call influencer relations (IR). Today’s influencers come in all shapes and sizes; they live both outside of an organization’s walls as well as within them, when evaluated as a whole, they fall into four categories, including:

1. Traditional. Just because buyers are placing weight on new groups of influencers doesn’t mean they are ignoring analysts, journalists and associations, particularly when it comes to their most important purchases. The well-respected analyst firms typically carry more weight than individual analysts that have set out on their own; rosters within both categories must be tightly maintained. Gathering feedback from sales will help in understanding when in their processes that buyers are relying on traditional influencers, as well as tracking any changes in behavior. Understanding how traditional sources of influence are using social media means to expand their reach will help ensure your organization is properly monitoring all of the ways that these influencers are talking about your organization and its offerings.

2. Social media pundits. From influential bloggers to Twitter personalities, new groups of pundits regularly come and go, and exert different degrees of influence over buyers that must be monitored. Create a list of criteria that will help set the level of engagement that particular influencers require, using the quality of content, their relevance to your business, search engine ranking data and buyer surveys to understand the degree of influence they exert. It’s not enough to look at quantitative measures to rank influencers; there may be bloggers that gain notoriety simply by being negative all the time; thus, no amount of engagement is likely to change their opinions. When your list is complete, consider how this group wishes to engage; some may only want to be dealt with electronically, while others may be willing to attend live events. Work with local representatives and communications agencies to identify any regional social media influencers under your online radar, as well as how these influencers prefer to be engaged.

3. Customers. Existing customers can have a significant effect on shaping the opinions of prospects in the late stages of the buying process. While traditional case studies and other reference components are certainly valuable, nothing will have as much weight as a happy customer who goes public in forums such as live events, online events and social media vehicles from blogs to communities. The rise of social media means that buyers can now have a network to leverage throughout the buying process to ask specific questions about a vendor. Pay attention to the sentiment and tone of customer postings, and don’t neglect the value of a customer community. Buyers want to engage with other buyers; give them platforms for discussion.

4. Employees. Particularly from a support standpoint, employees who are engaged and forthright have the opportunity to promote positive interactions with a wide range of customers and influencers through social media. Organizations should promote employee use of social media to encourage their potential impact on other influencers. By having a centralized policy to govern the use of social media, organizations can support employee involvement with customers while maintaining policies and procedures on the types of information and content that can be shared publicly. Not only does this strategy act as an early warning system for identifying potential issues, it also heightens the possibility that a company can impact influencer views by engaging quickly and leaving positive impressions in the public space.

While it may be easier to maintain a simple checklist of the usual analysts and journalists to interact with, having a wider influencer universe can help get your message out to a larger range of prospects. The evolution from AR to IR, however, means that communications executives must be more proactive in identifying and engaging new categories of influencers on their turf, and on their terms. Due to the nature of social media, the credibility and influence of individuals can change rapidly; the better you understand your customers’ habits and requirements, the more you’ll know who to engage with and how. Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Albert (Ally) Motz

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Why It's Still Cool To Be a Marketer

As social media continues its assault onto the mainstream audience, one of the side-effects has been the emergence of the view that marketing isn't allowed in the space. Conversations on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere are vocal in the opinion that marketing is dead; we choose who we buy from and whose reputation we ruin; what gets our eyeballs and what doesn't. Simply put, old school is dead; long live the King (of new media school). And, to a degree, it's correct - old school is dead. But let's not get too carried away by our new best friend social media, either.

Any time a new marketing platform comes out means that the "old school" is dead as it was; but now you use it in conjunction with the new. The view that we (as consumers) have all the power and that brands now need to listen to us is nothing new. Sure, we have a soapbox on which we can stand now that allows us to share our likes, dislikes and outright hatred of a brand, product or service, and to a worldwide audience looking for the next fix of brand assassination on YouTube. But at the same time, is this really new? Haven't we always had the power over brands? It doesn't matter how great advertising, marketing or PR messages are -if we don't like something, we vote with our wallets. This has been happening since the dawn of the first trade agreement. Just because Coca-Cola runs a great Christmas advertising campaign doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly buy Coca-Cola. I don't like the stuff, so their marketing and advertising is lost on me.

The view that social media has allowed us to force marketers to think differently isn't completely true either. Good marketers have always planned with their audience in mind - it's one of the key tenets to marketing in the first place. We don't just come up with an idea and hope it works - like a duck on water, there's a lot more going on that you can't see, while the pretty stuff on public view looks effortless.

Additionally, good marketers have always known when a message is right, if the timing is there, and reacted as a campaign has progressed, using analytics and feedback. Kind of like Twitter does now, or blog posts - the main difference is now you have instantaneous feedback to work from, as opposed to waiting on figures coming in from print or TV/radio media.

There's no doubt that social media is one of the biggest changes in the marketing (and business in general) landscape when it comes to tracking, measurement and engagement prior to, and after, the launch of a product or service. But to say that it means marketing is no longer needed is missing the boat slightly. Like any sound business, the good marketing tactics will work and the lesser ones won't. But isn't that how it's always been? Danny Brown - Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by CMA on behalf of Danny Brown

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Measuring Social Media

Measuring media has been a challenge of business for a long time. I even wrote a controversial blog entry here on The Fallacy of Return On Investment in Marketing.

Now with internet, social media and web 2.0, the challenge is even greater. This new media has "democratized" the press and proliferation is huge. Tracking this new media and combining it with "old media" measurement is the new goal.

Let's first remember how much the media world has changed. Media was formally shout box from Brands to Consumers: TV, Radio, and Print: that was about it. Then technology and the Internet came along with a major curveball.

The world went online. All the news, weather, sports - everything went online. The sources of information increased dramatically. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc became easily accessible to all. Plus, these medias had influence. But their influence varied based on the number and character of each site. They are not all of equal value. It depends on the quantity and quality of the readership. Measuring the sentiment and changes in sentiment became a challenge.

Listen carefully. The noise on the internet is your customers. Your place is determined by your competitors. You need to see where you stand. Measuring it is the new challenge. Twitter, Blogs and Web sites can make and break companies. And there is no professional editor checking facts. But the media value still impacts. Measuring social media is not like measuring the news. These are your very customers, the most passionate of the bunch, talking about the very products you
are trying to sell. Listen to nuances, the qualitative component of discussion. Discover the context, associated topics and sentiment-laden words. And then check for volume, exposure, and statistical relevance. Your focus groups are
fine, but this is better.

The world has shifted from a few huge media sources to a multitude of small ones. The tough challenge is - how do you measure all this new media? What is the value of it. The new term is Media value. Measuring it is the new challenge.

Marketing Impact Measurement - Whether it's a product launch, public relations push, or advertising campaign, you need a yardstick to measure the reaction. In today's world, Media is leveraged such that you may pay for your first set
of eyeballs, but the rest come as word-of-mouth. Media Value is a new way of attributing impact and measuring the success or failure of marketing initiatives. Your tracking studies can work, but this is better (and cheaper).

Brand awareness is the key. Where does your brand stand? Where do you stand compared to the competition? And importantly, is the perception changing positively or negatively? Knowing what people feel about brands is important. Or trying to get a brand onto the radar. Not only awareness, perception, sentiment. All these are key components.

It is good to have an early warning system. Something that can tell you if sentiment is changing for or against you or for or against a trend. It is also great to know and understand the value of that media.

Measuring marketing impact is the key. Social media can give valuable feedback on the success (or failure) of a media campaign. Having the public comments and weighing them can provide critical decision making data.

Marketers are turning to things like media value reports by General Sentiment to try to figure out the value of various social media mentions and to determine the trending - whether it is positive or negative.
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Jim Estill

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Social Media: Don’t Mistake The Journey For The Destination

Over the past few years, you’ve probably heard stories about drivers so focused on their GPS directions, they end up in a river. Whether true or made-up, like the one about lemmings following each other en masse off a cliff, I wonder if – in response to social media’s red hot popularity -- marketers may be headed somewhere they don’t intend.

Don’t get me wrong. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other sites may be effective communication channels to help reach your marketing objectives. I just wonder whether marketers are treating social media as an objective – “quick let’s get a Facebook fan page up!” – rather than understanding its usefulness and role as a tool.

Put another way, it’s important not to think of social media as the destination itself, but rather a tool to get us to our destination – in this case achieving our objectives. And, as with any potentially powerful tool, we need to learn more about how social media works, who’s using it and why before we’ll really know if it can help us get where we want to go.

Take how social media relates to the work I’m doing on WOM. Some hypothesize that influencers – because they like to talk – may be more active in the social media space. In fact, the research doesn’t bare that out:

 Influencers don’t have more accounts than the regular Joe
 They don’t spend more time on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter
 They still prefer to share information – which they may gather from email or social media sites – the old fashioned way, face to face

Charlene Li, formally an analyst at Forrester, and the co-author of Groundswell offers some other learnings and insights into the minds of social media participants and how they actually differ, dividing them into the following segments:

 Creators: create or upload content
 Critics: respond to content from others
 Collectors: organize content for themselves, others
 Joiners: connect in social networks like Facebook
 Spectators: read, listen but do not participate
 Inactives: neither create nor consume

These two quick snapshots alone, I think, demonstrate that developing a successful social media presence first requires understanding who it works for and why. Then you can figure out how best to use the new medium to promote, engage and dialogue with consumers so you can meet your marketing objectives – without getting all wet.

Do you agree marketers are jumping a little too quickly on the social media bandwagon?

EXTRA! EXTRA! We’ll be holding an information-packed webcast on May 19th to present key findings from our recent white paper on influencers, plus other research and case studies. Click to learn more or to register. You won’t want to miss it! P.S You can also follow us on Twitter - we'll be tweeting before, during and after the event - @icomwom - hope you can join us!
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Gillian MacPherson

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Building Brand Trust Online and in the Mind

Last week the topic of trust was raised in a Harvard Business Review post titled, “What trust brings to Amazon, Zappos and USAA.” The author, Peter Merholz, described how being bold, and proactively trusting your customers, can contribute to a company’s online success.

The article was very well written, and the examples were thought provoking, but for me there was something missing. Beyond examples, what evidence exists that proactively trusting your customers can contribute to online success?

What Neuroscience has shown

At Claremont Graduate University, the neuroconomist Prof. Paul Zac has been studying the topic of trust for a number of years. Looking at the role of trust in macro and micro economics, his studies have begun to focus on the brain chemical oxytocin, and how it can influence trust.

In 2005, Zac published studies showing that when a person sends a trust signal to another person, it causes a release of oxytocin in their brain, which can induce a social obligation to reciprocate that trust. Put simply, his research showed that trust leads to trust, and it provides strong support for the idea of proactively trusting your customers.

What Morphological Research has shown

Morphological research has also been used to study the phenomenon of trust. In fact, in a recent study of 1000 North Americans, Concerto Marketing Group set out to uncover the benefits and drivers of trust in businesses and brands (link to the study here if you are interested).

Through our research we managed to uncover six equally correlated drivers of brand trust. Two of these drivers have particular relevance to this discussion; Relationship and Practical Value. In order for people to trust a brand, it needs to provide some sort of Relationship. Furthermore, in order for that Relationship to be strong, it must deliver some sort of Practical Value.

Based on these two drivers, our research would also support the idea of proactively trusting your customer. When Amazon gives a customer the power to provide product reviews, or when USAA lets a customer deposit checks by email, they are delivering Practical Value, strengthening their Relationship, and ultimately building brand trust.

Building Brand Trust Online

For many companies and consumers, the online environment can embody the best and worst of humanity. It can provide facts and friendship on the one hand; on the other hand it can harbor lies and fraud.

Extending proactive trust to your customers is a powerful way to cut through this mess and build a strong brand. In fact, it would seem that Peter Merholz was on to something in his recent post; being bold and proactively trusting your customers can contribute to a company’s online success.
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by CMA on behalf of NIck Black

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Canadian Social Values: Dominant Themes in Canadian Culture – Part Three

Defining Value #3
“One difference between Americans and Canadians is that Americans are still waiting to win the lottery. Canadians live as if they have already won the lottery.” Michael Adams, Fire and Ice, 2003.

20% of Canadians cite Quality of Life as top source of pride in being Canadian. (Macleans Canada Day Survey 2006). Quality of Life is one of Canadians’ key defining values.

Quality of life, simply put, refers to how good life is. People throughout the centuries, and in various parts of the world, have defined quality in their lives in rather distinct ways.

Among developed countries, certain variables are consistent in defining quality of life – life expectancy, purchasing power, literacy and education, housing, employment, finances. Against these variables, in study after study, Canada has always landed in the top ranks. For example, in the 2009 Mercer Consulting annual Quality of Living Survey among 215 cities, Vancouver ranked 4th and Toronto ranked 15th. In all of the Americas, Canadian cities of Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary dominated the top spots.

Where does this come from?

• Canada is endowed with nature’s majesty, in lakes, mountains, fields in our backyard. Our physical closeness to nature likely inspires a more mellow approach to life and living.
• Since after the Great Depression, Canada instituted policies that would ensure that its people maintained certain standards of living - pensions, health care, protection from unemployment and other social support. Having a secure safety net gives people a certain reassurance that no matter what goes wrong, all will be well; in general, people have less to be anxious and stressed about. Unencumbered, people pursue a certain way of living that is more attuned to relationships, connections, rather than simply getting ahead in a rat race.

Points of Evidence
Macleans annual Canada Day poll offers up interesting proof points about Canadians’ distinct version of quality of life.

For Canadians, there is more to life than work: Canadians place A REWARDING CAREER behind Freedom; Family Life; Being Loved and Being Canadian on their list of things that they value the most. (Macleans Canada Day Poll 2006)

Asked which activities they enjoy most, Canadians cite: A nice meal with my partner; Having a few hours for myself. (Macleans Canada Day Poll 2006)

Canadians believe that Experiences, not Things, make one happy. When asked, what is the best thing that happened to you in the past year, milestones such as weddings, births, pregnancies, vacations, graduations rose to the top of the lists. Moving into a new house or getting a new car sat at the bottom of the list of best things. (Macleans Canada Day Poll 2006)
Canadians don’t care for keeping up with the Joneses. 29% of Canadians say it’s important that people admire the things they own, compared with 36% of Americans. (Fire and Ice, Michael Adams)

Marketing Reference
Lululemon
The brand believes in keeping healthy, exercising, and drinking eight glasses of water a day. They’re not just getting people to buy their clothes, but to embrace the lifestyle they promote. And that lifestyle, outlined in their manifesto, includes beliefs like, “Friends are more important than money.” Their mission: Lululemon athletic creates components for people to live longer, healthier and more fun lives. If we can produce products to keep people active and stress-free, we believe the world will become a much better place. Lululemon has successfully tapped into a Canadians’ unique view of what a good life looks like.

Molsons’ Made From Canada
The Made From Canada spot pays homage to Canadas’s natural beauty, and the uniquely Canadian impulse to enjoy it as much as we can. Copy: Fact is, its this land that shapes us. We know we have the best backyard in the world and we get out there every chance we get.
Lee Chapman, Strategic Planner, MacLaren
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Canadian Social Values: Dominant Themes in Canadian Culture - Part Two

Defining Value #2
We Canadians value an attitude of acceptance and tolerance. Over the course of our history, Canadians have embraced a liberal, open attitude, extending goodwill and acceptance to others who might be different.

Because of this pervading attitude of acceptance and tolerance, Canada is not just multi-cultural, but multi-everything. Note the diversity of beliefs, lifestyles, opinions, worldviews. Some would go so far as to say that this diversity is our greatest strength. (Macleans Canada Day Poll Report, 2006)

Diversity and pluralism are celebrated in Canada. Multiculturalism, in particular, has been noted as one of the most distinctive features of our society. More Canadians cite multiculturalism as central to the national identity - more than bilingualism or hockey. Canada’s top source of national pride is Multiculturalism, second only to Democracy. (Michael Adams, Unlikely Utopia, 2007)

Adams asserts further: “Canadians aren’t unique in living in a diverse society. Rather, Canadians are distinctive in the way that they have incorporated Canada’s policy of accommodating diversity into their sense of national identity.”

(I tend to disagree with the first part of the statement – that Canadians aren’t unique in living a diverse society. Canadian diversity IS unique and more intense. Take the United States: First nations and British colonial roots, but no French. Same goes for Australia. Canada counts among its peoples a first nations group, not one but two colonial forebears, and substantial waves of immigration from all over in recent years.)

The rest of his statement, however, rings true. Canadians have imbibed a strong attitude of acceptance and tolerance, so much that it defines and binds us as a nation.

Where does this come from?

How did we get here?

History: Canada was never a unitary entity. Canadians have never been one people in one place; we’ve always been a diverse people – Aboriginals, colonial British, colonial French, European immigrants – spread across a vast territory.

Our religion – or lack of it?

Religion, by its very nature, prescribes a certain code of conduct and belief. One’s religion helps a person make sense of the world, and pass judgment on what’s acceptable or not.
Canada is a secular nation. Compared to the United States, there are twice as many Canadians who say they have no religious affiliation. Church attendance has been on a steady decline, with almost 2 in 5 Canadians saying they never/almost never attend church. With less religiosity, Canadians are less likely to adhere to hard-and-fast, black-and-white judgments on right or wrong. This, in turn, makes for a more laissez-faire stance towards difference in beliefs/lifestyles.

Points of Evidence
Canadians are a tolerant and accepting people, who value and celebrate diversity. Festivals such as Caribana, Taste of the Danforth, Pride are the most obvious (and colourful) expressions of such.

Other data points support this value:
• By 2017, 1 in 2 people in Toronto and Vancouver will be visible minorities.
• 57% of Canadians live side-by-side within the five largest cities. Canadians – of whatever colour or stripe – are able to live amicably in close proximity to one another. Contrast this with other modes of settlement where people who are “different” confine themselves to either ghettoes or gated enclaves.
• 78% of Canadians believe immigration is good for the country (vs 64% of Americans).
• Canada was the fourth country in the world and the first country in the Americas to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide

A Marketing Reference
In one of the most iconic pieces of Canadian advertising, The Rant aka I Am Canadian from Molson’s, “Joe” actually lays out the policy, and the pervading belief of Canadians – I believe in diversity, not assimilation.

During the Olympics, Tim Horton’s aired a spot that drew directly from the immigrant narrative – the first things that newcomers to Canada experience are the cold, and Tim Hortons. The spot rose to the top as both “Most Memorable” and “Best Ad.” (Marketing Magazine, April 19, 2010)

Of late, Virgin and LCBO tipped their hat to the LGBT communities in their ads targeted to their mainstream audience, signaling that sexual orientation is a non-issue for these brands.

Lee Chapman, Strategic Planner, MacLaren
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association

Canadian Marketing Blog: Canadian Social Values: Dominant Themes in Canadian Culture

As Robin Whalen noted in her introduction to this series, it’s true that the more we can understand the deep-seated values that drive us as humans and consumers, the better chance we will ever have of really connecting with them. We, at MacLaren McCann, in managing communications for global brands and global platforms, feel that it is important to understand what specifically and uniquely shapes us - as Canadians. So, to that end, here is Part 1 in the series of Defining Dominant Canadian Social Values.

Defining Value #1
We Canadians value a unique balance between individual autonomy and collective responsibility. It is a very special attitude we uphold as Canadians, in that we believe in having the ability to self-determine the way we want to live, but importantly, we also expect and even defend the right for others to have that same privilege. So while one may choose differently from another, Canadians generally believe in each person’s right to make their unique personal choice. Said simply: Canadians respect difference.

Where does this come from?
Canada is a nation founded ultimately through cooperation, with a history of accommodation, and this is reflected in the founding principles of ‘peace, order and good government’ (outlined in more detail by Michael Adams in his book Fire and Ice). Through these historical roots, the wants and needs of various diverse Canadian groups were acknowledged and accommodated to create a workable collective.

Additionally and importantly, the Canadian ‘system’ is built with an emphasis on the provision of social support services. Canada features a public education system, a public health-care system, a public welfare system and with that, a corresponding tax system to fund it. This system functionally places responsibility on the community to be supportive of its residents.

And thus Canada has bred an orientation to life amongst its residents that believes the collective has a responsibility to the individual, and concurrently, the individual has a responsibility to the collective.

Points of Evidence
Respecting Difference:
- More than two thirds of Canadians say they relate to non-conformists, compared to just half of Americans (Michael Adams, Fire and Ice);
- 60% of Canadians approve of homosexual relations, where only 38% of Americans feel the same way. “We’re one of the world leaders there.” In fact, in 2005, Canada become the fourth country in the world to legalize gay marriage (Reginald Bibby in 2006 Maclean’s Canada Day Poll and 2009 Maclean’s Canada Day Poll).

And the Collective:
- A third of Canadians want a more active government (Michael Adams, Fire and Ice);
- And more Canadians feel a sense of social responsibility than Americans (Michael Adams, Fire and Ice).

A Marketing Reference
Speaking of ‘respecting difference’, recall as far back as 1995, when RuPaul was signed to a modeling contract for Canadian company, MAC cosmetics, making him the first drag queen supermodel?

Watch for the next post, Canadian Defining Social Value #2: Attitudes of Tolerance and Acceptance. We continue to look forward to hearing your comments and reactions.
Heidi McCulloch, V.P., Senior Strategic Planner, MacLaren
Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association