Tag Archives for Brand Positioning

Marketing Commentary – FairforCanada.ca Radio Campaign (a review of weak marketing arguments)

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I listen to the radio while I drive to and from work, and the past week I kept hearing these radios ads for the FairforCanada.ca campaign. 

The gist: A large mobile giant is looking to start operations here, resulting in increased competition in the telecommunications industry (which in my opinion, is fantastic because I am a believer of survival of the fittest).

The radio ads that are part of this campaign highlight:

  1. How it’s not fair that the incoming competition gets to leverage off years of investment that the existing Canadian companies have built for over 2 decades.
  2. The other argument is that there may be the possibility that small towns may be “forgotten” – not sure what that means given if there is already reception there, there will always be reception there(?)

Not sure if there are other ads part of this campaign but with these two reasons I have already heard enough. 

Here’s what I get from listening to these ads – I hear a big baby whining about how life’s not fair. Newsflash: THE WORLD ISN’T FAIR.

The two highlighted campaign points are weak marketing arguments. 

  1. Infrastructure: So when you build an airport, built with taxpayers’ money, and then more airlines start landing their planes there – is that not fair? How about when we invest to build roads and more cars use it? Is that not fair? How about companies who invest in building tech parks and then smaller developers and vendors start building around the fringe of it to attract business to themselves? Is that not fair? I think you see where I’m going with this. It’s just silly.
  2. Forgetting about small towns? Again…someone enlighten me as to why a large company coming in will mean no service for the small towns. 

I think this campaign may be a two-part rollout. I heard previous radio ads where they use 30-seconds to argue how “CHEAP” Canadian voice and data plans are in comparison to US companies. I don’t know whether they compared the exact same plans, because from what I’m paying right now it appears that Canada voice and data plans are outrageously expensive in comparison. Having conducted market research for corporations in the past, I understand how numbers could be manipulated prior to being used for marketing purposes – this radio ad also infuriated me. It didn’t help at the time that I was (and probably still am) being charged by Rogers a ridiculous amount for 500MB of monthly data. 

Let me convince you with numbers. Here’s what I could be getting in the US: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans/overview/

Basically what I have as part of my plan right now (I am paying well over $100) I could get in the US for $35 (and that’s 2.5GB of data vs. the meager 500MB I am stuck with).

Now THAT is not fair.