Some problems even a cuter penguin won’t fix
The best Canadian app never released must surely be The ConglomerMate dating service.
Last spring, its creators cobbled together a 90-second spot, which begins in a romantic restaurant, where a nerdy young man, searching desperately for some point of connection, tells his date: “Rogers was making me so mad I switched to Bell.”
The words empower him on an almost primordial sexual level. But then it turns. There’s an awkward pause on the other side of the table. The woman stares—like I imagine Della stares at her new combs in the Gifts of the Magi—and finally blurts, “I’m mad at Bell and I just switched to Rogers.”
The hook: “If you’re in bed with the wrong communication giant, you’ll never get in bed with each other. Only ConglomerMate makes sure you’re matched up with someone in the same phase as you are.”
The underlying message: our dissatisfaction with telecom providers has become so profound that it sparks the sort of bond young couples once forged around Elvis and the movie Casablanca. The deeper poignancy of the ad, of course, is that it’s false. It aired during the Rick Mercer Report. It’s a lampoon of an industry that has transformed false advertising into high absurdist art.
Fast forward to September. Canada’s Competition Bureau sued the Big Three, which represents over 95% of the country’s wireless market, to stop misleading advertising that promotes premium text-based services whose fees were not adequately disclosed. The suit is seeking $10 million from each of Bell, Rogers and Telus.
If Telus felt slighted that it hadn’t made Rick Mercer’s Bell-Rogers anger continuum, it certainly didn’t take it lying down. In December, it filed a lawsuit against Mobilicity for false advertising, alleging that the newcomer’s no-contract “what you see isn’t always what you get” advertising campaign had caused “irreparable harm.” Horrors – fifteen years of critter ads undone by the fine print of a competitor that can’t have 2% of the market.
The fact that Mobilicity hadn’t even mentioned Telus in their ad led Mobilicity chief operating officer Stewart Lyons to label the move an “intimidation tactic.”
The lack of love was in evidence a week earlier as well, when Telus made it to the front page of the internet after a Reddit user discovered that download limits would be cut this February. All manner of riffs on the slogan “The Future Is Friendly” ensued. Competing comment threads emerged, where users attacked each other over which member of the Big Three they liked less.
A user named aardvarkious put a finger on the consensus: “Telus is horrible. But I don’t think they are any more horrible than Rogers and Bell.”
So how does Telus handle the lack of love? Unfortunately, there’s a point where you just can’t find a cuter species of penguin. Many Canadians believe their standards of choice, service and price lag behind what the developing world currently enjoy. They will point to behaviour that runs from Bell having to pay a $10 million fine for advertising prices that were never available, to Telus infamously blocking access to pro-union websites through their internet service during labour disputes.
Canadian telecom is a different critter than, say, the gun lobby or tobacco industry, where there tends to be a clean love line in the sand between users and nonusers.
Smokers and gun enthusiasts have – and still do – evangelize about Glocks and Marlboros. Meanwhile, non-smokers and the anti-gun crowd see the devil at work. In the case of telco consumers, the greatest thrill is often dumping your telco mate for yet another troubled relationship.
Don’t expect this stormy relationship between consumers and telcos to end soon. In December, former astronaut Marc Garneau placed the Big Three near the centre of his Liberal Party Leadership bid.
He’s going to run against their brands the way Conservatives run against pedophiles and crack addicts. And the next chapter in this stormy relationship between consumers and their telcos comes in the spring when Telecom Act amendments are set to open up competition.
Last year, Telus celebrated its 15th year of the cute critter campaign – a strategy that came pre-packed in their purchase of Clearnet – by asking users to vote on their next cute animal actor.
At least when Stephen Harper returns from China with a deal that’s going to piss off both his base and his opponents, he brings home an actual panda.
Chris Koentges is an award-winning journalist based in Vancouver with work in publications ranging from The Atlantic to The Walrus to Reader’s Digest. For annotations to this column, follow @endicity.
