An employee works inside a Rogers Wireless retail store in Vancouver, B.C..DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
For two years, Rogers Wireless has advertised itself as offering the most reliable cellphone service across Canada. Now, during the most crucial and lucrative shopping month of the year, the company may be the most invisible.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has caught Rogers Communications Inc. flat-footed, ordering the company to remove all advertising elements in its current holiday season campaign that claim Rogers operates the most reliable network. The court acted after a suit under the Competition Act filed by Telus Corp. argued that since the Vancouver-based phone company had opened its new high-speed network on Nov. 12, Rogers no longer possessed a network advantage.
Mr. Justice Christopher J. Grauer made the order verbally on Friday. The written order has yet to be filed with the court.
Rogers has until Dec. 18 to fully comply, but Monday it began following the court order, removing the most-reliable claim from its website. It must begin removing billboards and other advertising materials by Thursday, costing the company millions of dollars in wasted advertising production costs and potentially many more in lost revenue as it tries to adjust its commercials on the fly.
In a motion filed with the British Columbia Court of Appeals scheduled to be heard Wednesday, Rogers says that trashing the ads would cost more than $3-million for a campaign that was already budgeted at more than $10-million. Quoting a statement it made in court, Rogers adds that it has "at present, nothing to replace [the current campaign]with at this crucial time of the year."
Telus responded that Rogers had known for months it would be launching a next-generation 3G-plus data network that enables high-speed Internet surfing on devices like the iPhone.
"A lack of planning is no excuse for being able to make false claims in the marketplace," said Shawn Hall, a Telus spokesman. "The fact that they failed to catch up to the reality that any network advantage they had is gone, is nobody's fault but theirs, and they shouldn't be crying disadvantage in the courts while their ads were putting us at a competitive disadvantage."
In its appeal motion, Rogers argues that Telus had said it would launch its new network next year, and was preparing new advertising for that eventuality. Telus shares the new network with Bell Canada, which kicked off a campaign last month boasting that its service operates on the "largest, fastest, and most reliable network."
Rogers insists it will not be left without a commercial presence as consumers race to buy the latest gadgets for Christmas. "We will have ads in market," said Terrie Tweddle of Rogers, though she declined to provide specifics. "Our network messaging has evolved over the years and it will continue to evolve." The company is still hoping the court will grant the appeal, which would permit it to continue its campaign until it is scheduled to end Dec. 28.
Rogers will argue that its two-year track record allows it to claim it has the most reliable network while Telus and Bell have no such track record.
Having blunted its rival's advantage, Telus is now trumpeting a point of distinction Rogers cannot match. During Sunday's Grey Cup broadcast it aired its first ad in a new campaign. Deploying a hippopotamus it used in television spots two years ago, it urged consumers to "Go Big," proclaiming it has the largest high-speed network.
Simon Houpt