Blog

Unless you live on the moon, you can’t have missed the new Gillette ad and the brand’s accompanying campaign to rethink their “best a man can get” slogan. Picking up on the #MeToo movement, Gillette wants men to think on how they represent themselves in the world, and what it actually takes to be a “good man”.Read more

When Dolce and Gabbana released a racist Chinese ad, it was just the latest in a long line of marketing gone wrong when it comes to the fashion world. From LuluLemon saying their customers were too big for their products, to Topman describing their customers as football hooligans and criminals, it seems the fashion worldRead more

When it comes to disrupting an industry with innovative products and marketing, the ice cream industry may not be high up on your list of usual suspects. Yet that’s exactly what’s happened as giants like Häagen-Dazs found out when small, agile newcomers started eating into their profits with lifestyle-themed ice cream. In this week’s episodeRead more

How do you turn social media haters into brand advocates? KFC did exactly that when they took a customer’s negative tweet about their fries and turned it into a win for the brand nationally. It’s a great example of brands that take social media haters at more than face value, and not only improve their servicesRead more

Recently in the UK, fish and chip shop chain Harry Ramsden’s partnered with Uber Eats to run a promotion around the new Call of Duty: Black Ops video game. Customers who bought a fish and chips meal from one of three participating outlets would receive a free copy of the game. With Call of Duty:Read more

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

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