What Québec Wants™

Life Uncomplicated

2013-05-21T07:24:30-04:00

Our What Québec Wants survey identified five Connectors. These Connectors greatly influence how Quebeckers relate to the world around them as people and as consumers. Brands that align their appeals with these connectors have a greater chance of establishing deep connections with their target consumers in Québec.

Life Uncomplicated is by far the most intense Connector. Simply put, Quebeckers have a deep need (and a deeper need than Canadians in the ROC) to take measures to simplify many aspects of their lives, from getting rid of non-essentials, to managing their time more effectively, to quickly and simply getting what they want.

One in two Canadians believe it is important to take measures to simplify their lives and manage their time more efficiently. This need to simplify their lives is significantly greater in among French Quebeckers.

It’s no wonder that the newsmagazine L’actualité recently published a report on the search for simplicity as a means to better living. French Quebeckers are more likely to strive to achieve a good balance between work and family life. They are also more likely to say it’s important to get rid of some of the non-essentials in their life.

Marketers who recognize that consumers and customers respond best to simple offers, simply communicated will benefit greatly in Québec.

These survey results suggest that French Quebeckers are significantly more likely to enthusiastically support brands that make choosing, buying and using a product or service simpler. This search for simplicity does not mean that Quebeckers are necessarily more stressed than Canadian in the ROC. In fact, the data suggests that they are less so. Perhaps many French Quebeckers are already taking measures to simplify their lives and are consequently managing their stress levels.

How can marketers tap into this need for simplicity? The short answer is to take some of the guess work out of the purchase decision.

French Quebeckers are significantly more likely to say that “reading is old-fashioned and there are quicker and easier ways to find out what they want to know.” In short, they’ll read the quick start guide and rarely get to the full user manual.

The Québec liquor board (SAQ) offers a convincing case for simplification. Its “pastilles de goût” or taste tags program embodies simplicity. It combines the love of wine and the need for simplicity. French Quebeckers looking for a quicker and easier way to find out about wines and to make themselves more knowledgeable and better educated about wine without much effort have found the perfect shortcut at the SAQ. You prefer an aromatic and robust red? Just look for the brown colour tag and voilà! No need to read the wine guides and attend classes.

Yelloweek - It’s bubbly week in Montréal.

2013-05-14T04:00:00-04:00

Its promoters call it YellowWeek. I call it a six-day long promotional and sampling program.

French Champagne producer Veuve Clicquot, the brand creating this event to promote itself, is dubbing it a “tribute to creativity” showcasing gastronomy, arts, fashion and lifestyle.

The website describes the essence of YellowWeek this way:

Veuve Clicquot created Yelloweek to showcase the work of Montréal artists and artisans who constantly push the limits of creativity in the name of beauty and refinement, just as Madame Clicquot did in her time. In 1805, at 27 years of age, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, to whom we owe the name and success of Veuve Clicquot champagne, took charge of the Maison following her husband’s death. She would become one of the first important female entrepreneurs of the 19th century and create a world-renowned luxury brand.

Equating artists pushing the limits of creativity and a widow who took over her late husband’s company involved in banking, wool trading, and Champagne production is a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, if it means the brand can be at the center of a series of events that gives it increased visibility with the right crowd, why not?

We are told that this “international première edition of Yelloweek” includes four sections and three special events.

Yellow FASHION will shine a light on the creations of four innovative designers on their way to international recognition. Birks store will also unveil for the first time the exclusive Birks Yellow Diamond Collection.
Yellow TABLE will feature an exquisite series of champagne pairing dinners at five of the most iconic restaurants in the city, matching the best of their cuisine to the best of Veuve Clicquot.
Yellow ART will introduce aficionados and the public to the stunning work of Montreal artists, who have begun to attract the attention of collectors from around the world.
Yellow PICNIC and Yellow NIGHT will embody the “zeste de folie” spirit of Veuve Clicquot with unforgettable afternoon and late-night parties.
Yellow By The GLASS will share the joy of champagne throughout the city.
Yellow CONTEST is an opportunity to share happiness at home.
Yellow BICYCLE will catch everyone attention in the city.

It’s basically an event-based promotional and sampling program. And it joins other similar programs by Veuve Clicquot’s SEASONS program that includes 'seasonal Canadian moments' such as Clicquot in the Snow (in Alberta and British Columbia), Veuve Clicquot Polo (Alberta) and Yelloween (in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia). It also generates free media for the brand.

I doubt that Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin celebrated Halloween in the name of 'beauty and refinement’ but two centuries later, it looks like she organized a nice party at Brassii in Toronto.

Quebeckers and Champagne

According to PMB 2013 data, 13% of Quebec residents drank 1-2 glasses of Champagne/sparkling wine in the past 6 months compared to 7% of Canadians in the ROC. 15% of Quebeckers drank more than six glasses in the past 6 months compared to 9% of Canadians in the ROC.

Nutrition Inc. - Under the influence of Christine Avanti and Isabelle Huot.

2013-05-10T16:30:00-04:00

Meet celebrity nutritionist Christine Avanti.

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.

Cheers to that.

----

Here's a related findings from our What Québec Wants syndicated study:

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.

Dr. Huot still has her work cut out.

Dr. Pepper in Québec - It’s just liquor.

2013-05-08T12:34:07-04:00

Thirty years ago when I started my career at Y&R, the New York office had recently created a campaign for the iconic soft drink. It had an original song that stuck: “I drink Dr. Pepper. It’s the perfect taste for me. It’s made for peppers everywhere I go. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too? Us Peppers are an interesting breed and original taste is what we need.”

The wardrobe, the hair, the moves are dated but I bet the underlying idea is still relevant and differentiating today. In fact, the brand’s website today has text that seems to have been written based on the same brief: Dr. Pepper - Always One of a Kind. Step Inside One of a Kind - They cover every walk of life, but never walk alike. They’re 1/1. Just as Dr Pepper is one of a kind, Dr. Pepper is celebrating individuals who define paths by treading their own.

It seems that being a Pepper is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.

Unless the Peppers are in Québec where referring to someone by the name of a carbonated beverage can be a slur - as in “He’s a Pepsi.”

Howard Richler tells it this way in the February 4, 2010 issue of Maisonneuve.

Among the plethora of ethnic insults that traffic in food—Germans as “krauts,” say, or Irish people as “potato eaters”—“pepsi” deserves special mention. It’s the only slur I know that is based on a beverage. The lexicography team for the Canadian Oxford Dictionary tell me the epithet “pepsi” derives from the belief, first held by Quebec anglos in the late forties, that their French-speaking counterparts swilled Pepsi because they were too poor to afford Coke (which was marginally more expensive). While Pepsi’s early marketing did promote itself as the more economical alternative—“Twice as much for a nickel, too / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you”—impecunious Québécois of yore were probably imbibing Kik, which was the cheapest postwar cola available.

What is less known however is how French Quebeckers came to be referred to as “peppers”. According to Richler:

“In the early seventies, the term (Pepsi) became more widely known both by francophones and anglophones living outside of Quebec. Back home, “pepsi” morphed among the Montreal anglo cognoscenti into “pepper”—an insult partially derived from another pop product, Dr. Pepper, back then available seemingly only in dépanneurs.

Don’t be a Pepper, just drink it.

Canada Dry Mott’s just unveiled a new campaign for Dr. Pepper developed specifically for Québec. Created by DentsuBos, it aims to play up the uniqueness of the product in a way that will resonate with Québec consumers. Rather than invite the target to be a Pepper, it brings to life the “doctor” and uses humour to refer to its ‘therapeutic benefits’ linked to refreshment. Posters use headlines such as “Put on some ice”, “Cures thirst”, “Open wide and say aaahhh”, “One doctor per family”.

The TV spot takes the same approach.

I guess that’s what you do when the strategy is simply about brand recognition and refreshment.

Perhaps the doctor reference is a subtle reminder of the brand name’s origins. Dr. Pepper's website tells this story: a pharmacist named Charles Alderton created Dr Pepper in 1885. Alderton worked at a drugstore in Waco, Texas owned by Wade Morrison. Legend has it that Morrison named it "Dr. Pepper" after the father of a young girl he was once in love with.

Surprisingly, there’s almost nothing about the original taste and recipe for this concoction dating back to 1885. If there’s a USP, that would be it.

Dr. Pepper - It’s just liquor

The campaign’s signature adds a uniquely Québécois tone to the narrative: Dr. Pepper. C’est juste de la liqueur.

The word ‘liqueur’ has remained part of the vernacular in Québec. Just as it does in English, it refers to a sweetened alcoholic beverage flavoured with fruit, cream, herbs, spices, flowers or nuts. However, in Québec, it is also used to refer to soft drinks instead of the more proper ‘boissons gazeuses’. In fact, liqueur has also stuck in another context; you still hear (older) folks talk about 'la commission des liqueurs' - from "liquor commission".

Brand building success in Québec requires knowing when to adopt, adapt or create for that market. Canada Dry Mott’s chose to create based on what appears to be a different strategy. Hopefully it will generate a solid ROI for the brand and its owners.

Celebrity endorsements in Québec

2013-04-20T10:09:39-04:00

An excerpt from an article by Jeff Heinrich published in The Montreal Gazette.

“In English Canada, where most of the decision-makers are for national brands, there’s a default position when it comes to Quebec that you need a local spokesperson, a local celebrity. There’s some truth to that, but it’s a bit overblown,” said Eric Blais, president of Toronto ad agency Headspace Marketing, which helps advertisers penetrate the market here.

“Quebecers will respond to global and North American and Canadian campaigns if they’re well-crafted and based on a solid strategy, whether or not they see one of their own celebrities in it,” Blais said. “It doesn’t make a bad strategy more effective just because you wrote a cheque to (Quebec comedian and Honda spokesperson) Martin Matte, or someone like that.”

More important is the believability factor, Blais added. Does the celebrity really use the product? And can they say so in language that hits home with the consumer?

In an online survey of 3,000 Canadians last November, Headspace found nearly one in two — 46 per cent — don’t trust spokespeople paid by companies. And despite the extensive use of celebrity spokespeople in French Quebec, there’s no significant difference between here and the rest of Canada on the trust issue. What does count, however, is how sincere the company and its spokesperson sound.

“Quebecers aren’t in awe of celebrities,” Blais said. “What they want is a strong signal that ‘This is for us.’ It’s the ‘chez nous’ thing.”

A unique aspect of Montréal’s poster landscape

2013-04-19T13:33:26-04:00

We like to say that successful brand building in Québec has a lot to do with knowing when to adopt, adapt or create for the market.

Here’s a creative adaptation we’ve done of a great campaign for Emergen-C developed by Juniper Park. A simple, arresting message enhanced by a unique-to-Montréal outdoor poster/mural property.

Here’s how Astral describes these ‘artistic murals’.

These prestigious sites, seen daily by thousands of people driving the downtown core of Montréal, will set you apart from traditional OOH advertising.

These strategically located sites, offering large format artistic murals paired with a regular poster, will allow you to reach your target group. The poster element of this combination allows for branding and is enhanced by an artistic mural which allows for creativity and unique presence like no other in the city!

The artistic mural portion must be creative execution only and may not contain any logo, branding or character linked to a brand. These elements may only be seen on the regular posters.

This the English version of the poster:

Oprah’s cup of (Montreal) tea

2013-04-13T09:32:41-04:00

It’s called the Oprah effect. That’s how Time Magazine described it:

Do you have a product to sell, a book to publicize, a new diet to promote? Or perhaps you have aspirations to become the next President of the United States. You could spend millions in marketing, promotion or campaigning... or you could turn your attention to afternoon television. No matter what you're selling, there's no greater single guarantee of success than getting yourself booked on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Oprah was in Montreal this week. According to a story in Le Journal de Montréal, the folks at the Fairmont
Hotel where she was staying contacted the representatives from David’s Tea asking for a gift bag with a selection of teas. She liked it so much, she tweeted a photo of herself with her newfound ‘best thing’. And now it’s talked about in the press generating much free media for the tea chain.

What else did the folks at the Fairmont pack into her room?

Bilingual magazine. Not so bilingual ads.

2013-04-09T18:07:45-04:00

Today's issue of The Globe and Mail was delivered with CHIC, the magazine for Hôtels Boutique Le Germain and alt Hotels.

Like most magazines for airlines and hotels, its editorial is bilingual. Consequently the ads are also, for the most part, bilingual. And this often creates challenges for advertisers.

The magazine is filled with ads that adopted the obvious ‘split’ solution; a portion of the space for French and an equal portion for English.

That’s the case for Sun Life, Allstream and Deloitte among others. Note how French precedes English.

Others adopt the same approach but the English version precedes the French version.

Lacoste, the global apparel brand with French roots, chose to go English only.

Nespresso went with a French only headline and an asterisk to an English tagline buried under its URL.

The one that is most puzzling is for SWISS. The ad is in French with a smart headline that reads ‘Unfortunately. We have already arrived.”. The English slogan “Our sign is a promise” precedes the logo in what must be a complete brand visual signature. SWISS, like Nestle, another Swiss, also chose to use an asterisk to lead to the tiny line * Notre emblème est notre promesse.

It’s not easy being bilingual. Thank goodness for asterisks.

Organic products perceived to be healthier and tastier.

2013-04-03T07:29:14-04:00

Interesting article by Susan Krashinsky in the Globe & Mail today about the findings from a study to be published in the July issue of Food Quality and Preference.

On a related note, les Aliments du Québec recently unveiled a new logo for local organic products. It initially will be stamped on 277 products appearing on grocery shelves next month.

For more on Aliments du Québec, read this previous post.

April Fools’ Day and the April Fish in Québec

2013-04-01T08:43:58-04:00

Those who are fooled on April 1 in Québec are called the “Poisson d’avril” (the April Fish).

In France, a common prank (especially among school-aged children) is to place a paper fish on the back of an unsuspecting person. When the paper fish is discovered, the victim is declared a “Poisson d’Avril.”

In fact, the French claim that April Fools Day originated in France. For more on this, read the history of April Fools' day (according to the French) going back to 1564 and King Charles XIV.