izzy07

Hi Everyone,

I am a student at the Schulich School of Business (York University) and as part of my program, I am working on a group project called Branding Canada, which will seek to communicate Canadian values and culture by promoting Canada's innovative and high quality products and services in foreign markets.

As London, U.K. has been selected as the first market to launch in, we would greatly appreciate it if you could please share your thoughts on what you think Canada's defining attributes are and on things you think we should put in a Canada brand.

Thank you in advance: we value your input.

Sincerely,
izzy07

wizzard

If you are trying to brand Canada in a way to appeal to the UK then you need to focus on the things taht appeal to most people and the things that Canada has that the UK doesn't. You need to concentrate on things like wide open spaces and stunning scenery, throw in mountains, lakes and forests etc. Also you need to reassure people that it has vibrant urban centres so you need to show some stuff like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver at night and in the day with stuff happening and then you need to hook them with family stuff by showing some sort of cliche suburban town with one of those big double garage houses and like a kid riding a bike down the street under clear blue skies and stuff. That kind of north american suburban family cliche that is a million miles away from the UK (even if it's a million miles away from everyday life in Canada). Sell it as a huge diverse country of wide open space and vibrant cities held together by storng social values and family and education and friendly people and all that stuff.

Purley

And in some places - where I live for instance and also lots of other places too - except the big cities - NO TRAFFIC. No bloody roundabouts either. Driving on the highway is mostly quite relaxing, whereas in England I found it was enough to give a person a nervous breakdown.

I think maybe the lack of crowds of people is another of Canada's attributes. Lack of people in cars too! I have driven around quite a bit of western Canada and I have never found the crowded streets and highways like in England. Even in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, the traffic is nowhere near as bad as in the South of England. In my opinion of course!

aahtuk

"except the big cities" was quite damn right, as driving anywhere in GTA pretty much sucks, not to mention rush hour during which driving equals to moving at 20km/h at best (that's including "super highways"). I am quite sick of the rush traffic to say the least and dream about having 5 km to work. Now I have 80 and it is a major pain in the ass, so don't know if you can market that too much. In UK, outside of the city, traffic is probably low as well. Problem begins when you have to commute to the city to work...

hot wasabi peas

What about this:

zebedee

lol wasabi ... someone was going to do it i guess (great book tho)

my two cents on this ... what everyone else has said , wide open spaces , no bloody roundabouts , lakes , lack of crowds , areas of countryside you havent polluted yet ... or just go for --->

"canada: its not england!"

Tom Masters

I think wizzard summed it up really well. When Brits think of Canada, they think of the climate, geography, family values and friendly people. I have to admit though, I am a bit confused as to what "Canada's innovative and high quality products and services" are though? Innovative isn't a word I would use when describing Canada.

Chris

dbd33

Canada : Second Choice.

A competition to complete the sentence, "As Canadian as ..." was famously won by "as possible under the circumstances". In the same spirit, this weekend a friend's son whined about the bugs. "Canadian is not a very good nationality for him" I said, knowing he has two other passports "it's not good for any of us" said his mother "it's just everyone's nationality by default". This is the key to the concept of Canada, it's where you go when things didn't work out at home.

Canada is the unbranded country, it has no strong cultural or commercial identity because Canadians have no need of, nor desire for, unity. Newfoundlanders disparage the population of the rest of the country as mainlanders, they go to the mainland to work but don't differentiate Calgary from Dallas, it's all just mainland. The Quebecois have no need to speak to anyone in English, or even in proper French, and the primarily redneck rural population west of Ontario speak only English. The essence of being Canadian is that the long standing sources of friction haven't amounted to anything because no one is really driven to get anything very much done, the winter's too long and too cold and the summer's not to be wasted.

The three cities contain people from the four corners of the earth, most of whom are hyphenated Canadians and who are primarily interested in their home countries. We may liken the GTA to one of those oil camps in Saudi, where there are lots of different nationalities but few people who think of themselves as Saudi Arabians. The GTA is, of course, itself alien to most people in Canada. Canadians are even divided on whether or not traffic is a problem ; on the highway I rarely achieve the speed of Kennedy at the time of his assassination but I try to accept 9 mph as being the slower pace of life in a backwater.

Canada's lack of brand should exploit the idea that Canadians don't really know what they want to do with their country and so are open to foreigners coming and arranging it for them. As an example one might use the York University campus, it's not a good design for a winter climate but then it was designed for a desert and built here because, well, because the design was from abroad, and so the Canadians thought it must be good.

So, a lack of attributes is what defines Canada, the unbrand campaign logo might be a small boat, called "Superiority", drifting. There would be two people aboard, people of different ethnicity and sexual orientation sharing a joint and a case of Budweiser.

zebedee

If every country had that as a logo .... actually no , a flag! the world would be a better place (albiet a little lazier and with an economy based on snack foods)

Karabasov

These are some examples from the long list of historical evidence that Canada has been innovative:

• The world’s first wireless message was received by G. Marconi in 1910 in St. John’s, Newfoundland
• Gideon Sundback designed the modern zipper in 1913
• Alexander Graham Bell conceived the idea of telephone in Brantford in 1874
• With the launching of ANIK A1 in 1972, Canada became the first country in the world to have a commercial geostationary communications satellite network
• Canada’s CL215 is the world’s first (and best) forest fire water bomber
• Canadian Dr. Joseph MacInnis was the first person to dive under the North Pole and the first to dive to the wreck of the Titanic
• The longest covered bridge in the world is located in Hartland (NB), northwest of Frederiction
• The world’s longest uninterrupted span bridge is The Confederation Bridge, which spans Northumberland Strait, connecting Borden-Carleton (PE) and Journimain Island (NB)
• The world’s first completely covered indoor shopping mall is the Park Royal Mall in West Vancouver (BC)
• The West Edmonton Mall (AB), covering 48 city blocks, is the world’s largest retail shopping and entertainment complex. It consists of over eighty stores, contains the world’s largest indoor amusement park and the highest indoor bungee jump in the world

How about RIM’s Blackberry (http://rim.com/) for a current example?

By the way, does anyone know why Roots (Canadian Fashion Retailer) backed out from UK market after only few month in 2004?

dbd33

• The world’s first completely covered indoor shopping mall is the Park Royal Mall in West Vancouver (BC)
• The West Edmonton Mall (AB), covering 48 city blocks, is the world’s largest retail shopping and entertainment complex. It consists of over eighty stores, contains the world’s largest indoor amusement park and the highest indoor bungee jump in the world

<sobs>

MCC

What about it has 4 proper seasons (in most of the country anyway)!!! You can show one place that has both winter and summer activities (ie a water park which is well, a water park in the summer and where you slide on the snow in the winter, a track where people roller blade in the summer and ice skate in the winter, etc).

MCC

Tom Masters

Welcome to the forum Karabasov unless you've been here before of course.

OK OK, I knew someone would jump on that and I'll admit that there are a few examples in there!

Not too sure that large bridges and large shopping malls can be described as innovative - just bigger versions of what already exists.

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scot who passed through Ontario before settling in Boston though so I don't think that one counts unless you're clutching at straws?

Before you start hunting for lots of examples of innovative Canadians, I wasn't trying to say that there aren't innovative people in Canada. It's just that there don't seem to be many of them. I'm sure most leave the others to their over beaurocratic systems and go elsewhere.

Chris

snowbunny

Canada: Come Exploit Us?

or

Canada: Modest But Mighty

flashman

How about "Canada - a work in progress". After all a country where both English and French live in relative harmony is quite an accomplishment. Since it also provides a model to welcome other cultures. Canada is young and has not (and hopefully never will) reach the stage of being the arrogant world know it all.

The Aga Khan put it this way - "a model for the world."

"Canada is today the most successful pluralist society on the face of our globe, without any doubt in my mind. . . . That is something unique to Canada. It is an amazing global human asset," he said.

"You have created a pluralist society where minorities, generally speaking, are welcome," he continued. "They feel comfortable. They assimilate the Canadian psyche. They are allowed to move forward within civil society in an equitable manner. Their children are educated. And I'm not the one who is making the judgment. Look at the international evaluation of Canada as a country and the way it functions."

"Canada has succeeded in an area where the developing world has one of its greatest needs: How do you build pluralist civil society in the developing world? Look at Africa. Look at Asia. What is one of the characteristics? The inability of different groups of people to live together in peace in a constructive environment to build civil society."

http://ismaili.net/timeline/2002/20020202a.html

It is still underdeveloped with lots of space and there's much to do and there's the challenge for the adventurous..