No Protection from Canadian Telemarketers

"Stop calling, stop calling. I don't wanna think
anymore," cry Tony Wanless and Lady Gaga.

The telephone police say they're doing a good job at stopping telemarketers from calling. We beg to differ.

At our house, we long ago learned not to answer the phone between 5 and 7 p.m. Or Saturday mornings. Or 2 p.m., which seems to be another common time for the telemarketers to harangue us about how we should sign up for more phone services, television services, shopping services, charitable donations, supposed market surveys, and membership clubs that will bring us huge savings on vacations or furniture we probably don't really want and certainly don't need.

It's a common ritual in Canada these days for anyone with a phone.

Continue reading »

Douglas Coupland Reimagines Roots

The SMPTE pattern is a crucial motif in Doug-
las Coupland's new take on Canadian identity.

Every now and then you need a brand champion – enter Douglas Coupland at Roots – to breath fresh life into your marketing outreach.

Like a piece of silver, brands can tarnish. They need a good polish every now and then to make sure they’re at their shiny best. Someone in your organization needs to recognize this, take the brand ball, and run with it.

Canadiana clothing retailer Roots is a prime example of a brand that let itself get dull. But, recently, it's shined up nicely.

Continue reading »

East Sooke, Vancouver Island

The Daily Photo: 3:00 p.m. A long exposure creates this beautiful ocean scene along the shores of East Sooke Regional Park on Vancouver Island. Many thanks to Snorri Gunnarsson.

BP's [re]Branding Challenge

Is the damage to BP's brand too grave, or can the
company revive its name and image?

Is the BP name tarnished for good, or can the company revive its brand after one of the worst oil spills in history?

It's been a hundred days since the Deepwater Horizon exploded. Today the oil cap is in place, Tony Hayward has been exiled to Russia, and we're rolling up our sleeves for a cleanup of mind-numbing magnitude.

While it appears BP has stemmed the flow and the spill won't get any worse, there are still many unknowns. One of those is the fate of BP's now infamous 'Beyond Petroleum' brand. Any brand would take a drubbing in a catastrophe like this. But BP has been hammered exponentially harder because of the company's greener-than-thou repositioning in 2000.

Continue reading »

Alex Fraser Bridge at Sunset

Daily Photo: 9:30 p.m. The picture is of the Alex Fraser Bridge, connects Richmond and New Westminster with North Delta in Metro Vancouver. The bridge was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world when it opened in 1986, and was the longest in North America until 2005, when it was displaced by the Cooper River Bridge, in Charleston, South Carolina. Many thanks to Jessica Luch.