“This country’s real handicap is that we don’t celebrate or study our greatest successes; instead, we shrug them off as lucky breaks or freaks of nature.” So write Alan Middleton and Jeannette Hanna in their new book Ikonica: A Field Guide to Canada’s Brandscape. Middleton, a marketing professor at York University and executive director of the Schulich Executive Education Centre and Hanna, vice-president of brand strategy at Cundari SFP, take issue with those who think Canada has no great brands and that we can’t compete internationally.
Why is it important to release a book on strong Canadian brands now?
Hanna: I’ve been struck by how our traditional brand development model seemed out of step with the reality organizations are facing. Most of our brand models come out of packaged goods companies in the U.S., but our economy is largely service-based. Also, everyone thinks there are no great Canadian brands, but there are and we tend not to value them. There’s this Canadian attitude that other places are great at [branding] and we’re lousy. Andrea Mandel-Campbell wrote Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson and basically trashed the ability of Canadians to compete internationally. I started this conversation with Alan by saying “Isn’t it weird that there are these disconnects here on Canadian strengths versus the U.S. models? Maybe we should go find out what’s really happening.”
Middleton: The other thing that brought me into it is a frustration level with practitioners who talk about brands but clearly don’t know what made them successful or unsuccessful. So many people have talked about brands over the years you’d think this was something we’d nailed. The other motivation for me is an abiding dislike of Naomi Klein [author of No Logo], who totally misunderstands brands, except her own. She’s made a lot of money not understanding brands.
What doesn’t Klein understand?
Middleton: She regards brands as modern, as opposed to deeply rooted in human history; as a part of capitalist manipulation and as part of a worrying tendency towards consumerism that is new and somehow “21st century.” None of those things are true.
You mentioned that the U.S. branding model is based on CPG. Can you elaborate on why this doesn’t work anymore?
Hanna: We are in a 21st century business ecology where things like transparency, corporate social responsibility, your ability to mobilize communities of interest and have a dialogue have changed the rules about how brands must operate. The realities corporations are dealing with are quite different than they were even 20 years ago [but] most of the models haven’t changed significantly in that time.
Middleton: The old-style brand thinking was product-specific, image-based attributes driven by advertising that reached people in their homes through mass marketing. The new reality is corporations are under much more pressure to consider their value systems externally and how they integrate with the community. Employees are a critical component of how brands are viewed by their customers. In a service industry, brand is partly the behaviour of the employees, how they are motivated and how they do their job. [That was] not true when you were selling Tide in a box.
Are there other elements of the current model that are changing?
Middleton: Part of the reason why Americans dominated the establishment of brands is one of their strengths: icon and myth building… They taught us that was the way to build brands-develop the myth and the promise, then deliver something behind it that’s acceptable to a bunch of target groups. Because of the changes in our sophisticated consumer society and in technology, the model that will evolve will be much more “show me.” I need to touch and feel what the brand does for me before you tell me about it. Canada has been better at doing that.
You mentioned marketing to employees and internal branding. Do the rules of consumer branding apply here?
Middleton: Absolutely. This is the most important target group in any company, particularly in any service company, because the brand is experienced largely through employees. It’s obvious, but people forget how many different people in an organization customers deal with. It’s not just the salesperson, it’s the accounting department and the marketing department. But you can’t just treat your employees as targets of one-way communication. They are going to be part of the creation of the brand culture. Ask what they think. Ask what customers tell them.
Hanna: WestJet has a culture where its values are very clear. It’s a very communitarian culture. If the CEO is flying on WestJet, he stays behind and cleans up the plane like everyone else. They don’t have cleanup crews. The pilots, stewards and whoever else all clean up the plane together. [WestJet founder] Clive Beddoe says this creates a sense of “we’re all in this together,” and saves $12 million a year in not having separate cleaning crews. They get it done faster and are always in touch with the flying experience. Also, when they get a pay bonus for something, it’s celebrated, not some anonymous sum on a paycheque. They have a big party. They give the same bonuses Air Canada does, but the perceived value of it is much higher because it’s a personal interaction between the executives and the individual WestJetters.
Do the successful brand stewards you interviewed for Ikonica have a common perspective on culture?
Hanna: The common thread was intuitively understanding the power of culture to keep them on track. The brands that have had the longest sustainability and keep closest to their customers link that closely to keeping a robust internal culture that has focus and meaning.
Middleton: Take one of the most respected brands in Canada, Tim Hortons. In the early days, did Tim’s know it was going to become a Canadian community icon? No, but think where they’re rooted: a hockey player and a policeman. That’s about community. They watched McDonald’s and applied its systems of food service, but one of the things that Tim’s somehow did better because of its Canadianness was engage the community. They eventually grabbed on to that.
The power of an American brand is usually proven by its international success. Isn’t that true for our brands?
Middleton: We’ve had an economy that, until recently, spent all its time looking inside the 49th parallel. Until NAFTA, it had high walls to protect it. Peeking outside was risky, so businesses tended to stay in… it was a society that was so focused on protecting the environment internally. Now that’s changing.
Hanna: One of the things we talked about in the book is that, ironically, the great Canadian international success stories are chameleons. McCain is one of the largest food producers in the world, but in England they’re seen as an English brand. In India they’re an Indian brand. That ability to be chameleon-like is the secret to their success. Where American companies bring their Americaness with them, Canadians have the ability to embed themselves.
Let’s close by talking about beer, a major component of Canada’s national brand. All our major breweries are now foreign-owned and Budweiser, arguably the most American of beers, is the number one seller in Canada. What happened there?
Middleton: As they got purchased and became part of larger organizations, [the breweries] became just a cash flow. Beer is an incredibly profitable packaged good. On a margin basis, Canada has the most profitable beers in the world. The owners are treating [Molson and Labatt] like cash cows, so they’ve walked away from any real innovation or significant investment in this market. And because you’ve now got managers looking at things from a global perspective, the connections those brands had in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s have gone to what I’d call weak universal iconic symbols. If I see Molson do more tits-and-ass advertising thinking that’s really going to work for any of their brands… (pauses) they’ve got to be joking. It does lots for 19- and 20-year-old males, but it does nothing for the overall brand connection.
Hanna: They walked away from their roots. You can’t get much deeper into the history of Canada than Molson. They abdicated any engagement in understanding their community connections. They’re feeling the effects of that now. They don’t have any authenticity here anymore.
Middleton: However, foreign brands can find Canadian connectivity, too.
So we’re buying into the Budweiser story?
Hanna: If you have international brands that consumers feel are more authentic, they’ll buy them. It doesn’t feel like Molson and others have any authenticity to them anymore. They feel manufactured.
What Ikonica says about…
Canadian Tire
“No other brand in so finely attuned to Canada’s obsession with the rituals of spring, summer, fall and winter. First bikes, new barbecues, camping gear, garden tools, leafblowers, snow shovels, skates and holiday lights. Canadian Tire generates new items for our ‘must-have’ shopping list with a steady stream of clever product ideas”
Roots
“It’s ironic…that it would be two U.S. expats who would raise Canadiana itself into an international fashion ikon. Roots co-founders Michael Budman and Don Green have mined the popular myth of True North internationally better than any company since Hudson’s Bay by tapping the rich ethos of vintage camp/cottage experiences”
Scotiabank
“Scotiabank’s ‘You’re richer than you think’ positioning has opened up new ways of defining personal wealth beyond economic status. From its involvement in major public arts…to film and hockey sponsorships, Scotiabank is reshaping its community engagement in provocative ways”
Four Seasons
While both [Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton] compete in the ber-luxury category, the Ritz experience tends to be more traditional trappings of the grand hotel, an extrinsic show of hot-and-cold running marble and gilt. The genius ‘luxe’ of Four Seasons…is a service ethos that’s steeped in experiences of personal well-being, not just things”
