Bell sets a grease trap for students with delicious #poutine

Bell poutine may not appear exactly as pictured

Since you can't give free beer to students to get them interested in your brand, Bell Canada is delivering the next best thing:

Hey @uOttawa students, we're offering free poutine today. Find our truck on campus between 10:30am and 3:30pm. pic.twitter.com/c0Y8Oc61i3
— Bell (@Bell) September 12, 2014

Okay, so this is not exactly helping students achieve a healthy lifestyle on campus. But I certainly ate my share when I went to Queen's U in Kingston.

Offering swag to students is an old marketing trick, but at least this one is for a service that they actually need. (As opposed to giant home theatre rentals or credit they won't be able to pay back.) And I'm sure they'll work off the calories come exam time.

Someone please let me know if there's a PETA protest.

Advertising people are abnormal

They say the worst mistake a marketer can make is to think he or she is just like the target audience. That's mostly because we can't look at ads without deconstructing them, we think that social media buzz is way more important than it really is, and we value breakthrough ideas over easy results.

Here are some other weird things about my people, via Lowe Roche in Toronto:



In this case, ad people are the target audience, landing this agency video on Adfreak where we'll all see it. Some of the stats hit pretty close to home.

It's just too bad they screwed up their poutine:

Shredded cheese? Abomination.

The photo montage for "Canadian cuisine" on Wikipedia is kind of embarrassing

"A small sampling of Canadian foods. Top to bottom, left to right: Montreal-style smoked meat, Maple syrup, Peameal bacon, Butter tart, Poutine, Nanaimo bar"

Yep, that's what we eat. That, and Vachon cakes.

Not really. The problem is that most of our cuisine west of Montreal is not greatly differentiated from the American food on the other side of the border, so we're stuck referencing things our southern cousins would consider quirky. And, of course, we love our "ethnic" food that the later immigrants brought.

Fortunately, Quebec and Atlantic Canada have more distinctive culinary traditions. (So does Aboriginal culture in the north and elsewhere, but it hasn't found much of a mass market outside of the ingredient contributions of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, squashes, etc.)

Don't give up on Ontario and the rest of the provinces, though. We just need more history to happen.

Cultural differences in North American fast food burger marketing

Pulled pork on a hamburger is kind of a thing now, according to Burger Business. So it's no surprise that fast food chains are hopping on the bandwagon.

The best-known of the offerings right now is Hardee's/Carl's Jr., mostly because they advertise their products like this:



Slightly higher, in Canada, our homegrown national burger chain, Harvey's, is just... well...

Okay, they may be naively featuring the actual food as the star rather than gratuitous T&A. But this is Canada. We have our own ways of making people drool...

Yeah, that's right. We poutinized the mofo. Take THAT, America!

Wendy's Canada "poutitions" parliament to recognize our national dish

Update: Wendy's e-mailed me with the following:

"Thank you for mentioning the Wendy’s Poutition in your latest blog post. We just wanted to clarify that we have yet to reach our goal of 100,000  signatures (we’re at 2,465 as of today)."

Which confused the hell out of me, because the "progress" graphic said they had reached their goal. (Turns out its the default screen you get if you try to look at the "poutition" without "liking" the page first.)

Anyway, if you want to pitch for poutine, you still have a chance...

That's right. The goopy, seems-like-a-great-idea-after-last-call, mix of fries gravy and curd cheese that Quebec gave Canadians everywhere: Poutine.

In a pretty clever Facebook promotion, Wendy's Canada is asking Canadians to "like" its page and sign the "poutition". If they get 100,000 clicktivists, they say they'll officially submit it to Parliament for consideration.

And they've apparently made it.

I assume the Opposition NDP will support the motion, seeing as they have so much support in poutine's homeland of Quebec. And the majority Conservatives, who were mostly shut out of seats in Quebec, and are still looking to make in-roads to the major Ontario urban centres where poutine is popular, will find this issue worth considering. (The third-party Liberals, in honour of long-serving Prime Minister Jean Poutine, will likely vote on party lines.)

The idea of making a classic Quebec comfort food Canada's "national" dish is likely to cause some controversy, however. First of all because it is already a "national" dish in the nation-within-a-nation that is Quebec. Second, many Westerners have yet to be converted to the ultimate junk food.

But I think it's a nice way to acknowledge that most great Canadian cultural icons come from Quebec: jazz legend Oscar Peterson, Oscar-winning Director Denys Arcand, Captain of the Goddamn Starship Enterprise William Shatner, Celine D-...  Did I mention the Captain of the Goddamn Starship Enterprise?

Even Wendy's has seen fit to make this an opportunity for the "Rest of Canada" to make Quebec feel more loved, even going so far as to parody the federalist slogan "My Canada Includes Quebec".

Happy Canada Day!

It's a day off, so here are a bunch of YouTube videos that give insights into Canadianness:

























Please feel free to add links to other videos in the comments below, eh?