Roll Up the Rim To Win, that uniquely Canadian season between winter and spring, was given added poignancy this year with the tearjerking Winter Olympics commercial affirming that Tim Hortons is now an integral part of the immigrant experience — even if The Globe and Mail assigned a crack reporter to reveal that the spot wasn’t really based on a true story, and that the actor doesn’t really speak the South African language of Xhosa. Today, they compensate for that dispiriting report with a piece on the company’s idiosyncratic approach to its homeland market, even if there’s always a semiotics professor ready to explain how the commercial is actually offensive to newcomers, whose integration into society can’t be bought along with a double-double. But with even more ink spilled over McDonald’s competing with an all-day free coffee giveaway, the sheer volume of self-deprecating social media quips about losing coffee cups must warm the cruller-shaped hearts of Tim Hortons executives, hosting their investors at a conference this morning. Don Schroeder, the company president and CEO, insists they haven’t run out of runway in the Canadian market — a dominance they intend to combine with increased saturation in the United States, with marketing techniques “making us seem bigger than we actually are.” While selling 77 per cent of the out-of-home coffee cups in Canada, their average transaction is still lower than they want it to be: $3.23, compared to $3.95 at Starbucks, and $5.46 at McD’s. What they now have is a more refined “daypart strategy” — like, to get more people going to Tim Hortons for Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, or considering the donut shop for dinner. Also, they have finally perfected the baked-in cheese bagel, after 12 years of trying — the problem with past prototypes: they would catch fire in the toasting machines.

Rocco Rossi ignited his campaign on Wednesday with his speech to the Toronto Board of Trade, taking shots at rival mayoral candidate George Smitherman for keeping a low profile and flip-flopping on the view of selling off city assets, and generally fighting fury with fury. Ten years ago this week, though, Rossi was pitching a different product: the StellaCam. Installed in bars in Brussels, Manhattan and Vancouver, the trial involved setting up webcams that would allow shut-in web surfers to buy the person on the other side a Stella Artois, using a coupon dispensed through a machine, and type-chat for 15 minutes. Total cost of the experience: $10, including the unshared drink. “Where else does the guy in Timmins have an opportunity to meet a beautiful woman in New York?” Rossi rhetorically asked in the National Post on March 10, 2000 — incidentally, the day that the NASDAQ peaked at its all-time high, precipitating the colossal crash of the dot-com industry. Beer.com, the portal he was tapped to run, was a well-funded latecomer: Interbrew, then the Belgian owner of Labatt, teamed with Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Heineken to create a website about the stuff that people who liked beer might like to look at in those dial-up days. Rossi was recruited from Torstar, where his role in starting Toronto.com established what counted for an industry reputation at the time — the ability to concoct an entire website with nothing to work with but a coveted domain name. And, on October 12, 1999, he was confident enough in the content on Beer.com to throw a launch party, with beer caps spelling out the website address on the artificial field of SkyDome. Continue Reading

The Art of Marketing, a one-day $399 six-speaker conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — promoted in the above video — had at least a few of its 1,200 attendees tweeting like it’s 2009, despite no Wi-Fi on the premises. But this bunch just wants to be inspired — a decade ago, companies had to turn to former college football coaches to deliver those 21st century pep talks. Now, enough geeks have perfected their spiels to offer advice on selling absolutely anything! And, just like the horoscopes in the newspaper, the platitudes are kept general enough to apply to everyone. There is no room for error when virtually nothing said is capable of stirring argument. Continue Reading

A reading of “The New General Store” — a paean to Shoppers Drug Mart by Maryam Sanati in the March 2010 issue of Toronto Life — leaves one wishing that, if not for more critical examinations of retailing, at least a sense of humour about advertiser-appeasing editorial content. But now that the ubiquitous chain continues to roll out its pseudo-high-end cosmetics spin-off, Murale, there’s no escaping the clout of the Shoppers Optimum card. Snark is reserved only for its long-suffering competitor, Pharma Plus (“stacks of paper towel and Coke clog the aisles as if deliberately to impede strollers and the elderly”) and the unnamed struggling independent (“feels like the last stubbornly surviving family member of a long-deceased clan”). Well, the company’s fourth quarter results, albeit issued last week after Toronto Life went to press, reference a story left untold: “Strong sales in over-the-counter medications and related categories can be attributed to customer and patient awareness of the H1N1 virus, coupled with in-store programs that focused on education, prevention and wellness.” When you’ve got factors like that on your side, there’s no limit to how many discounts you can offer on toothpaste and paper towels, and still come out ahead — particularly when freezing wages of store staff at the height of a recession. Continue Reading