Non-personalized can work too

Often you hear that everything should be as personalized as possible to make customers feel like you are talking directly with them. But that might not always be the case.

99.3 CFOX is a local rock station in Vancouver and easily has the wittiest and sharpest morning show in the province, if not the nation. They have established a brand for the Jeff O'Neill Show that never veers from its true character. They know when they will get in trouble from the lawyers, execs, and government agencies and they will do whatever they feel like anyways.

So, what would you expect from them when you submit an email comment to the show? A standard autoresponse personalized with your name? Nope...something more like this.

A well thought out and pretty hilarious way of telling people that you got their email and you are interested in what they wrote. Works with their brand and leaves a smile on their consumers faces. I wonder how many times this has been forwarded to people's friends.

Re-gifting your terrible sports team

There are a lot of cliches in sports and the athletic world...

"Give it 120%"

"This sport is 20% physical and 80% mental"

"We've just got to show up and play our game"

But far and away the best one and the most marketing relatable one is

"These guys now get the chance to play the role of spoilers"

Translation, these guys have sucked all year and we don't want attendance/viewership to fall off so tune in or show up to see them suck some more.

But it is still an artful and ingenius way to re-gift a sports team, let's hypothetically call them the Soronto Purple Jays, that has no aspirations of a playoff appearance yet still has a month and a half of games to play. Thats when the communications department kicks in and your messaging immediately changes from "Watch as the Purple Jays battle it out for a playoff spot in the tough NL East" to "Watch the young guns play as they look to ruin other teams playoff runs".

A very crafty way of attempting to keep people interested after your 15th year in a row of struggling through a long season.

Of course there is another option for a sports team........learn how to draft and sign players so you actually have a good team, but where's the fun in that?

Cold reception, but worth millions

Now my blog thusfar has been loaded with entries regarding General Motors and people are probably tired of reading them (those 2 that actually read this blog) (sorry thats an exageration, the 1 that reads this blog). Well i'm going to try to turn to a new topic that will dominate the blog.
Beer.

And what better way to go than probably one of the most covered news stories in all of Canada.......a beer billboard.

Yes, thats right. The wildfires and gangshootings in British Columbia have taken a backseat to a national crisis involving a Coors Light billboard. For full disclosure I am a coors light drinker and avid silver bullet fan. I am also a life west-coaster and find this whole matter hilarious.

Have a look and see if you can see whats making this newsworthy....



















If you guessed "Someone from Toronto saw it and took it personally" you are correct!

Yes, as soon as the complaints started pouring in, one of the complainees was smart enough to go to the papers and give Coors Light millions of dollars worth of free advertising because this story is literally in every paper, every blog, every news show i've seen yesterday and today. Not only that but there is a serious dislike for Toronto in general in British Columbia and many other provinces throughout Canada, so all this news is getting them serious street cred among the population.

The best part I think is that Coors Light is a Molson brand who is headquartered in Ontario and the creative was also done by a Toronto firm. Lets just say that this is brilliant execution in my mind and I don't think Coors Light is disappointed at all by the result.

I look forward to the response from a Toronto based beer company that actually has the balls to fire back at this ad. It won't be Sleeman's or another national brand that could turn BC residents off its beer, but i'm guessing a micro brew or a smaller company will have an answer.

I also think that Coors Light should turn this into a social media opportunity and have some contests for "What is the coolest Colder than slogan you have".

Here's my entry "Colder than your girlfriends stare when you crack your 6th coors light post game"