Bank of Montreal #RemembranceDay campaign does an about-face

A couple of days ago, I spotted this ad on Facebook:

Nice, eh? Except not really. It's a big bank, and they made a $1.2-billion profit in the third quarter of 2015. And they're buying social media engagement for $1 a pop?

I complained on Twitter, as did many other Canadians, but someone much more famous than most of us really got their attention:

@BMO u should add **up to a MAX of $50,000... of the $4.333 billion PROFIT u made in 2014. Charity or advertising? philanthropy or profit?

— Sarah Silverman (@SaraSilverman) November 7, 2015

@SaraSilverman 1/2 Hi Sara, we're encouraging our community to #TakePause from their social media activities and reflect -

— BMO (@BMO) November 7, 2015

It should be noted that this Sarah Silverman is a parody account. But it — and presumably the complaints of many other Canadians — seems to have convinced BMO to revise their message earlier today:

Can you spot the difference? The full donation amount is mentioned, and it is not contingent on the number of engagements or shares. The link still goes to their Thunderclap site. Here's how the promotion is worded now:

Remembrance Day is about taking pause to remember those selfless men and women who’ve put their lives on the line for our freedom. 

On November 11 at 11am, join us in a moment of social silence to honour these brave men and women. That means no status updates. No re-tweeting. No nothing. 

On behalf of all those who participate, BMO will be giving $50,000 to The Royal Canadian Legion Dominion Command Poppy Trust Fund. 

Participants have until November 11 at 10:59 a.m. local time to sign up. 

BMO proudly supports Canada’s veterans through the annual Royal Canadian Legion Poppy Campaign and our long-standing commitment to the Canadian Defence Community.

Their hearts may seem to be in the right place, but keep in mind that this is branded engagement piggybacking on a solemn national day of remembrance for Canada's war dead. No longer holding people's emotions for a $1-per-engagement ransom is a start, but don't fool yourselves: this is private sector marketing trying to earn social media reach on the cheap. Its shareholders wouldn't have it any other way, no matter how they — or the employees of the bank – feel about our soldiers and veterans. (I'm sure they are as good-hearted as the rest of us; but like any corporation the bank's job is to increase share value at all costs.)

Regardless, their YouTube video for the campaign is excellent:



Take a quiet minute tomorrow to remember. Not because it makes you look good on Facebook or Twitter. Not because a brand told you to. And not even to get them to make a token donation to a good cause.

Do it because it's right.

This is the ad that's appearing now:

That's better.

Remembrance Day is not a marketing angle

Today, November 11, is a day when we stop for a moment and remember all the men and women who gave their lives in combat for what they thought would be a better world.

I take this moment pretty seriously. Rather than getting swept up in the more sentimental trappings of the public observation, I simply try to imagine myself, my son, my wife, or other loved ones in the tranches. Killing. Suffering. Dying.

But everyone has their own way to remember, and that's fine. Unless you try to use the day to sell people something:

I'm actually a big fan of Mill St's beers. But I may have to reconsider that if they don't soon acknowledge that this was a tasteless move by their Ottawa Twitter person, apologize, and try to make it right.

Developing...

Update: 

(Ignore the timestamps, they're just from when I screencapped the Tweets)

Weak, but at least it's responsive.

Veterans fighting over the flower of peace

CBC reports that The Royal Canadian Legion is threatening legal action against another Canadian veteran group for using a red poppy as part of their logo.

The Legion, don't you know, trademarked the red plastic lapel poppy as a symbol of remembering Canada's war dead. They're the ones you're supporting when you pick one up at the liquor store.

Last year, the Legion threatened action against another group, who had designed a white poppy to represent peace.

This year's legal letter, from the IP firm Ridout and Maybee LLP to Canadian Veteran Freedom Riders (CVFR), says "We must insist that the CVFR and all of its members immediately cease all use of trademarks or other indicia incorporating the Legion's protected mark 'poppy design' and any of the Legion poppy trademarks."

Apparently, according to the Trademarks Act, every group must legitimately apply to the Legion use the poppy in any way.

A spokesman for the Legion said, "The poppy's a strong symbol, so when you see the poppy you automatically think it's for veterans and remembrance. Therefore, it must be legitimate all the time."
He added that if one organization is allowed to use the poppy, the flood gates would open for other groups.

The veteran bikers are not amused. "It's a slap in the face," said Capt. Michael Blow. "I'm a veteran, I wear that poppy for remembrance, I don't wear it for profit."

What on earth is wrong with the Royal Canadian Legion? They are acting like a soulless commercial brand protecting their stranglehold on a symbol. The moral "owner" of the poppy as a symbol for the war dead was Canadian soldier/poet John McCrae, who wrote "In Flanders Fields", but he died in the war (of disease, like many others). Following the publishing of his poem, the red poppy became the symbol of honouring war dead — and hoping for no more war — throughout the Commonwealth. The symbol, in essence, belongs to all of us. But it especially belongs to every Canadian who has served his or her country.

Good thing the Legion didn't take out a predatory trademark on the maple leaf, the beaver or the toque. Because then we'd have to ask permission to use any of our national symbols.

A post from the past

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm quite the bleeding-heart pacifist. But around November 11, I am humbled by thoughts of the incredible loyalty and commitment it takes for men and women to enter the military and serve their country in combat. To kill strangers, and to watch friends die.


So today, I am not the one who should be blogging about what Remembrance Day really means. I've never been to war.

(Thanks to cousin Lyle for the photos)

This post was written by someone who was. My Great-Uncle Jack, writing from behind the lines of the French front on April 2, 1918, to his father (my great-grandfather):

Dear Dad —


I am afraid I may not be able to write very often for a while however I will do my best. Easter Sunday and Monday passed in a perfect blaze of work, tonight things have slackened up and I am snatching the opportunity.

There was a good imitation of a Canadian sunset and I got thoroughly homesick by reason of the short walk I took, watching it.

My work has been very varied lately and there has come into it a little danger I had not expected. The Hun is getting busy — but you probably know more about the situation from the news-papers than I do.

Night before last I had a job which as an artilleryman I never expected — on a Lewis gun popping away at one of his night fliers. We fired about 400 rounds into him and he dropped about 38 eggs, luckily he missed our pit but put a dud through the office roof. He got away safe. 

Yesterday I had a thrilling ride in a sidecar — I had to get as quickly as possible down to another place and do a job for them. On the way back, rushing as fast as possible, out went our lights and we had to finish our trip without them, no safe job with the traffic there is.


Today I saw a very spectacular stunt pulled off — a Hun attacking one of our balloons.


So things are lively —


Love to all   Jack

Uncle Jack survived the "Great" War, and finished his studies in Canada to become an engineer. He returned to military service as a middle-aged man and a Major in World War II, earning an MBE for his work — which we think was in intelligence.

Thanks, Uncle Jack.

The first casuality in wargame marketing is respect

The big news this week in gaming circles is the release of "Call of Duty: Black Ops", the newest first-person-shooter war game for Xbox and PS3.

Normally, I wouldn't even notice this kind of thing, but along with the release came this ad:



Cute, eh? "There's a soldier in all of us."

Now, I won't get into any blah-blah-blah about violent video games and the downfall of civilization. Nor will I put down a pop subculture that I don't really understand.

Instead, I'd like to ask the marketing department at Treyarch: Did it have to come out this week?

Tomorrow is a day when we are supposed to mourn and honour the war dead, and hope (or pray) that we will never have to fight another big war. In Canada and the Commonwealth, we call it Remebrance Day. In the States, it is Veteran's Day.

Look, I get the appeal of these games, and the opportunities they give people to get a lot of aggression out of their systems. And I don't mind that they're out there. But to launch a massive marketing campaign that characterizes war as fun for everyone, just before we observe our moment of silence for the honoured dead, is simply tasteless and disrespectful. The war dead, the veterans and their family and friends deserve better.

Because this is a time when we should remind ourselves — if even for one minute — that war does not look like this:

It looks like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

FU, COD...

What are we fighting for?

Reader Mike brought to my attention last week the brewing controversy over white poppies this Remembrance Day.

For those outside of Canada and the UK, Remembrance Day is our day of memoriam for war dead. Originally mourning those lost in World War One, it has since expanded to become a day of remembrance and thanks to veterans of all conflicts. As a show of support, most people purchase a red plastic poppy from the Royal Canadian Legion, and wear it on the days leading up to the ceremonies on November 11.

image from cbc.ca

Commemorating the ceasing of "That War to End All Wars" on November 11, 1918, this day has always had two public purposes: honouring sacrifice and hoping for peace.

The two have not always been easy allies. Too much focus on epic heroism, and you risk romanticizing war. But at the same time, anti-war rhetoric is sometimes perceived as an insult to veterans, and what they believed in strongly enough to kill and die for. Go to any school Remembrance Day ceremony, and you'll see the balancing act.

Entering into this fray is the White Poppy Campaign. Although it's hardly new.

image from vowpeace.org

According to the emblem's proponents, Voice of Women (VOW) for Peace:

"Back in 1933, the Women's Co-operative Guild in England chose to wear white poppies to symbolize their commitment to work for peace and end their acquiescence to militarism. The Guild stressed that the white poppy was in no way intended as an insult to those who died in the First World War, but that it was a 'pledge to peace that war must not happen again'. Indeed, many of the women had lost husbands, brothers, sons and lovers."

This year, VOW plan to distribute the white poppies in Ottawa for the national memorial event, and lay a white poppy wreath on the War Memorial. They've been doing it for two years. But this time, it has sparked a war of words.

"The red Legion poppy, in my opinion, represents the nostalgia and romanticizing of war," said Ian Harvey, an activist in the Ottawa White Poppy Coalition. "We should remember that you don't have to go to war to get peace."

But Jim Ross, president of the Legion's P.E.I. provincial command and a former lieutenant-commander in the Canadian Navy, said the Legion owns the rights to the poppy symbol, and the national office will most likely ask many of the various activist groups to stop the white-poppy campaign.

"The red poppies are not political statements and the Legion doesn't have any political positions. The poppies are simply a symbol of remembrance. Nothing more," Mr. Ross said. "It seems to me that the people who usually distribute these [white] poppies and do these sort of things have never spent a day in their life in the service of their country."

Now the Legion is threatening court action to prevent white poppies from turning up at the event, based on intellectual property law.

But who really owns the poppy symbol? You can ask them, but they won't answer.

The whole thing started with Canadian soldier/poet John McCrae's verse to a fallen comrade in the First World War:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

The symbol was taken up after the war as a memorial, and spread throughout the commonwealth. But while the poem is clear in its call to arms, the mood after Armistice was very much the opposite. The war had been so horrible that a demand for pacifism and isolationism guided many countries' foreign policies for the next two decades. Even as Germany rearmed and invaded neighbouring countries under a terrifying new leadership, England appeased and America stayed out of it as long as possible.

War led to committed pacifism. Committed pacifism led to war. And where are we now?

Oh yeah, red and white poppies. Considering that the best we can do to prevent war is to improve communications, really listen to each other, and try not to draw up sides and start blindly hating on our enemies, I really hope that both sides of this conflict will tone down the rhetoric and respect each other's points of view. Nobody wants to prevent war more than a person who has lived through conflict. Unless it's the parent of a child who will hopefully never see it.

This is Canada. We have room for all kinds of poppies here.

Can't we all just try to get along?

My sincere thanks to all those who have served, and all those who work for peace.

Thinking of you

Today's the day that we stop for a minute to forget deadlines and office politics, and think about something real. So we step out of our comfortable cublicles and living rooms to remind ourselves that war is not a movie, a video game, or even a memory. It is about real soldiers killing each other, real civilians dying, and real families left behind — generation after generation.

There are several things you can do to help:

Join the conversation at Canada Remembers on Facebook

Help children affected by war at War Child

Find out what you can do for our military people at Canadian Forces Personnel and Family Support Services

And to those who have served, thank you.