It was Rona’s previous Olympic-themed marketing campaign that provided the measuring stick for the company’s newest marketing efforts around the London Games.
The “Made in Canada” Vancouver Games campaign won both Best of Show and a gold award at the 2011 Sponsorship Marketing Awards. That 14-spot campaign showcased how Olympic venues were made in Canada using Rona materials, and included a spot featuring a retractable tape measure zipping back from Newfoundland to British Columbia as one of its central images.
“Our challenge was ‘How do we build on – and top – Vancouver?’” Karim Salabi, executive vice-president of marketing at Rona, told Marketing from London just prior to boarding a bus bound for the Games’ opening ceremonies.
The campaign is being built around a 90-second video, as well as print, social media outreach and guerrilla marketing. The video launched exclusively on Rona’s YouTube channel, part of a heavier emphasis on online by the company and its media agency, Carat Canada, for this year’s Games – the fourth the company has sponsored.
The video opens on a man clad in a plaid shirt and wearing a tool belt running through the streets of Vancouver. As the spot progresses, the man passes off a screwdriver “baton” to another man posed like a relay runner waiting for the hand-off. The relay continues across the country – taking in the Prairies, Niagara Falls, Toronto and Montreal – with participants demonstrating their ability in several Olympic events, including high-jump, cycling, diving and even race walking.
When the final runner hands off the screwdriver to a man working on a fishing boat, he replies, “Thanks. Got a hammer?” The runner grimaces before turning and sprinting away, followed by the super “Nobody said doing it right was easy.”
An accompanying print ad depicts a work glove-clad hand waving a Canadian flag, accompanied by the message “A win for Canada is a win for all of us.”
Rona’s agency, Montreal’s Sid Lee, presented seven creative concepts as a potential follow-up to “Made in Canada,” with the company ultimately selecting “A Win For Us” as its newest Olympic marketing campaign.
“This is one of those moments where you want to celebrate what being Canadian is all about and where people feel amazing about our athletes and our country,” said Salabi. “We picked the spot that best communicated that.
“Ultimately it’s about celebrating everything Canadian,” he added. “I won’t hide the fact that two of our biggest competitors are American, and Canadians are passionate about supporting each other, which includes Canadian retailers. As a Canadian retailer, we want to support Canadian amateur sports, the different communities we’re involved in, different causes et cetera.”
A dedicated section of the Rona website – also accessible through the URL AWinForUs.ca – highlights Rona’s stated $4.5 billion annual contribution to the Canadian economy, its Canadian workforce of 30,000 and the fact that 84% of its suppliers are Canadian.
Rona also recently launched its virtual “Plant Your Feet” relay inviting Canadians to run or walk in support of Team Canada. The company has pledged to plant one for every kilometre that is walked or ran and registered at GoCanada2012.rona.ca.
The company’s initial objective was to have Canadians register kilometres equal to the distance between Vancouver to Halifax, only to achieve that objective within 72 hours of the program launch, said Salabi. It has seen been revised to the distance of the equator, an estimated 40,000 kilometres (as of 1 p.m. Friday, it had achieved 62% of its target, with 24,839 kilometres).
