Welcome home Tim Hortons ad
It almost didn't feel like a commercial. Three weeks ago, during the television broadcast of the Vancouver 2010 Opening Ceremonies, Tim Hortons launched a 90-second spot that played like a modern Canadian heritage vignette: A father, apparently a recent immigrant from a southern African nation, has a tearful airport reunion with his wife and two young daughters.
The product placement was masterful. As the fellow hands his wife a Tim Hortons coffee, he says, with a hint of boast in his voice, "Welcome to Canada," but her attention is drawn to the bags full of winter clothing he has brought along to outfit the family. She barely notices the gesture.
The ad struck a chord across the country and threw Tim Hortons into the national dialogue as people debated its use of the immigrant experience to sell coffee and carbohydrates.
"This ad stands out as a very polished piece," said Robert Seiler, the emeritus professor of communications studies at the University of Calgary, who wrote a 2002 semiotic analysis of Molson's iconic I Am Canadian "Rant" for the American Review of Canadian Studies.
Still, he suggested the Tim Hortons spot bordered on intellectual dishonesty. "It misrepresents our treatment of immigrants," he said, noting the extraordinary hurdles most newcomers face before they are absorbed into Canadian society. "Immigrants and people who have worked with immigrants will reject the self-congratulatory story conveyed here."
Even with the criticism, and the online comments about emotional manipulation, the discussion proves that Tims operates at the intersection of commerce and culture that few other companies can hope to approach. The company was parodied on the Air Farce . Fans make videos about their devotion to the chain. Four years ago, newspaper columnists weighed in on the meaning of another popular commercial in which a Chinese immigrant father who tried to quash his son's desire to play hockey turns out to have been a secret supporter all along.
Which is why encountering Tims in the U.S., where the company is in the middle of a robust expansion, can be an unsettling, oddly sterile experience.
For even as the company was tugging Canadian hearts throughout the Olympics, south of the border Tims had a spot on the air promoting a breakfast wrap that could be bought for only $1.89. That followed previous commercials for a blueberry bonanza (blueberry muffins, blueberry glaze doughnuts, blueberry bloom doughnuts), a coffee-and-sandwich deal, and a fresh sandwich with three deli meats. Nowhere are there spots aiming to make a higher, emotional connection with customers.
The push by Tims outside its natural geographic borders is a case study in both the delicate nature of brands and the need to build them from the ground up, where products and services are experienced by people who are individuals first and consumers second.
Numerous Canadian companies have sought to use their success at home as a springboard into other territories. But with few exceptions, those who have made it abroad have done so after conducting a nationalistic cleansing of the brand, ensuring the red and white is rarely seen.
The Canadian roots of Research in Motion are nowhere to be seen, even inside of Canada, helping to ensure that a majority of U.S. consumers believe BlackBerry is an American invention. As it has gained distribution throughout the world, Lush Cosmetics has similarly played down its Canadian birthplace. (When the stores set down in New York a few years ago, consumers initially thought the chain was either British or Australian.) A bold effort by Roots to expand into the U.S. carrying the Canadian flag on its back ended in retreat. The company now has only four stores south of the border, though it has almost 30 stores scattered throughout Taiwan, where Brand Canada has an exoticism it could never achieve in the U.S.
But nowhere is the difference as stark as in Tims advertising. Even the signs outside the stores are different where, in the U.S., they feel the need to note the company sells "Coffee and baked goods."
"You have to make a connection with a new market. Because there is no emotional connection," says Paul Wales, the creative director at J. Walter Thompson Canada who is responsible for developing the Tim Hortons campaigns on both sides of the border. So it's like: 'What are you offering me?' You have to be clearer."
"We built up over 40 years a connection with Tim Hortons in this country. Up here it's like a ritual, go to Tims, people go more than once a day," he adds.
The cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken has noted that Tims occupies a unique place in Canadian society that allows everyone on the socio-economic spectrum, from CEOs to the unemployed, to feel comfortable carrying one of the company's coffee cups. There is no analogue in the more stratified American market.
So, in the U.S., the company is trying to brand itself as the place offering the freshest value-priced food and coffee available in the quick-service restaurant (QSR) category.
"It's a bit of a formula for the ads," admits Mr. Wales. "How we shoot something: Let's make sure we portray it in the best light, whether it's a muffin breaking open, or whatever - but also round it off with a value story."
He also notes a different tone is necessary in the U.S. "In Canada, we might see [the U.S. spots]as a little bit more boastful type of advertising, whereas in the United States, you've got to have confidence. Your brand or company - Americans like to know you stand for something. 'Hey, just keep showing us - quality meets value. Great. Prove it to me every time, and don't be shy about it.'" "In the States, they talk in those terms," he adds. "People look for companies that have a point of view."
Last summer, the company made a big splash when it took over 12 stores in New York City after Dunkin Donuts, its Massachusetts-based archrival, pulled out of an agreement with a local landlord. "New York gave us an amazing amount of media exposure and presence, and I think that was well worth the effort," said Bill Moir, the chief marketing officer of Tim Hortons. "You need those kinds of things in the U.S. It created buzz and lots of activity."
In the past few months, though, the store on Manhattan's Upper West Side was closed, a victim of what some New Yorkers said was a lack of a unique identity in the crowded marketplace. But the company has taken steps to repeat its success in Canada. In an echo of its placement of a store serving members of the Canadian armed forces in Kandahar, Tims recently opened stores at Fort Knox and the naval base at Norfolk, Va.
In the end, if Tims is to be a success in the U.S., it will be because it built its brand from the ground up, insinuating its way into American society one step at a time. Company executives are fond of saying Tims is a 45-year overnight success story. "It's kind of like the rock band or country singer who travels to all those small markets," said Mr. Moir, "and then, after years, becomes a star."
An earlier online version of this story and the original newspaper version incorrectly referred to an analysis by Robert Seiler as appearing in the American Journal of Canadian Studies. This online version has been corrected.
Simon Houpt