FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved

Viewpoint by Hamish MacAulay "Revenue Canada, the Canadian way to save for your future," should be the new, well-massaged slogan for the tax collection agency. In an era where every company has its logo, slogan, and warm and fuzzy, a-part-of-your-life advertising campaign, it is time Ottawa pulled out the stops on marketing and created a new sense of ownership and nationalism for Canadians. Call it advertising, call it marketing, call it hawking – every business on the planet has to do it to survive. Advertising styles range from the obnoxious to the inane. Lifestyle advertising is now popular for large corporations, such as car companies or financial institutions, that are trying to sell vast amounts of undifferentiated or amorphous product. This type of advertising uses crafted images and soft-spoken rhetoric about family, love or pride to create an emotional or cultural connection between the audience and the company. It has nothing to do with the qualities of the product, instead, it takes on anthropomorphic tones as it tries to imbue the company or its products with the statistically-determined human qualities of the target audience. Lifestyle advertising may dominate business marketing in the ’90s, but governments invented it. They have been using its methods for as long as there has been nationalism, flags and anthems. Every business aspires to have its customers’ children swear a pledge of allegiance every morning. The Canadian government has not used this advantage. Government agencies advertise their services, and the federal government uses Heritage Moments to create nationalist feelings, yet, compared to corporations of equivalent size, the Canadian government spends an insignificant amount on marketing. The feds have their moments – in a brief and transparent effort to create warm federal feelings in Quebec before the last referendum, the feds ran a series of ads promoting all sorts of government services from new drug testing to customs. It is time, however, for Ottawa to recreate itself through marketing. The campaign would need two parts. The first would make Canadians happier and more excited about the services the federal government provides. Each and every program or service would have its own advertising that would do more than simply tell people about the program. Employment Insurance would use images of happy families waiting for dad or mom to fill out that month’s stubs before tripping off to the local food bank: "At EI, making minimum wage look attractive is job number one." The justice system would use dramatic images of elated or upset families and prisoners and claim: "We don’t make the headlines, we make the headlines more exciting." Starting with footage from the Manitoba Flood and the Toronto Snowfall, the military’s ads would end with fresh-faced military personnel stating: "I’m from the Canadian Armed Forces and I’m here to help." In the beginning, this part of the campaign would generate the same negative feelings that the new lifestyle-oozing Canada Post ads have, but over time our love for the federal government will grow. Eventually, no one will be able to criticize or dismiss any of the government’s programs and services. The second part of the campaign, Nationbuilding, will be easier. The government would simply have to expand and improve its current culture and heritage programs a hundredfold so that Canadians are inundated with flags, Heritage Moments, Canadian content and the CBC. Corporations spend incomprehensible amounts of money on marketing that the consumer eventually has to pay for through higher prices. That, however, is okay because it is the true path of the free market. With government expected to operate as a business these days, it should also be spending obscene amounts of money convincing people to use its services and then passing the cost on to the taxpayer or user. It is the corporate way.

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