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This week saw the news of the Sears bankruptcy filing, amongst falling sales and rising debt. Their Canadian division closed in January of this year, and it always felt the parent company wouldn’t be far behind. Failure to adapt to the changing ways customers preferred to buy – online, mobile research, frictionless shopping – asRead more

Week after week, it seems we’re bombarded with poor customer experience examples when it comes to airline companies. From dragging passengers off planes to charging to change the flight of a family whose 3 year old son’s appendix burst, the horror stories are endless. But do these stories make any difference? With flights cheaper thanRead more

When brands want to stand apart from the competition, they often turn to edgy advertising to push the boundaries. This can work well, and the benefits can outweigh the risks. But when the message behind the campaign is shared without context, no amount of marketing or brand explanations can overcome the negativity. In this week’sRead more

Customer experience and brand advocacy go hand in hand. Get the customer experience right, and your brand advocates will grow, both internally and externally. Yet as the ways brands interact with customers adapts and changes, and technology plays as big a part as the human interaction, how is customer experience evolving? Is it, or areRead more

Long viewed as one of the most-loved stalwarts of the Canadian marketplace, coffee chain Tim Hortons has had a startling fall from grace when it comes to the trust they enjoy from consumers. Almost mirroring the fall that smartphone maker BlackBerry experienced, even the brand loyalty that Tim Hortons almost exclusively enjoyed couldn’t stop theRead more

We’ve all seen them, and probably have a few favourites – evergreen marketing campaigns that seem to last across generations. But do they? Or do they eventually run out of steam? What happens when a message that once stood as the poster child for great marketing suddenly becomes stale and out of date? Or, evenRead more

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years, Colin Kaepernick and his stand against racial injustice in the U.S. has been at the forefront of both political and sports news. Now, with global sports brand Nike choosing Kaepernick as the face of their 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign, both KaepernickRead more

When you’re a huge brand like Calvin Klein, you pretty much have your fingers on the pulse of your fans/customers. After all, you don’t get to be an international success story by employing bad marketing ideas. However, a recent marketing campaign from Calvin Klein showed that even the biggest brands still get it wrong. WhenRead more

Sounds great, right? Pay just a buck a beer? After all, who wouldn’t want to enjoy a beer for less than it takes to buy a coffee? Well, that’s exactly what Ontario beer drinkers have been promised by the new Premier, Doug Ford, following a campaign promise he ran on. But is the offer asRead more

In episode six of the Marketing on Tap podcast, we ask the question – have social media influencers worn out their welcome? With recent examples of luxury resorts throwing up their arms in frustration at would-be social influencers asking for free stays worth thousands of dollars, to a “retired influencer”, Josh Ostrovsky, telling wannabe influencersRead more