In the ad, a flannel-shirted twentysomething actor walks onto a stage and begins calmly explaining away the Canadian stereotypes. “I’m not a lumberjack or a fur trader,” he begins. “I don’t live in an igloo or eat blubber or own a dog sled. And I don’t know Jimmy, Sally or Suzie from Canada, although I’m certain they’re really, really nice. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it ‘about,’ not ‘a-boot’.” He’s getting pumped now. “I believe in peacekeeping, not policing; diversity, not assimilation. And that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal. Canada is the second largest land mass, the first nation of hockey and the best part of North America. My name is Joe and I… AM… CANADIAN!’’ Ever polite, he closes with “Thank you.”
The 60-second ad, which debuted during the Oscars after the dance routine for “Blame Canada” from the “South Park” movie, instantly tapped a keg of emotion deep within the Canadian psyche. (Molson is not running the ad on U.S. stations.) Jeff Douglas, the actor who delivers the rant, performs his act across the country during hockey game intermissions. Some editorials have suggested he run for prime minister. One secret of the ad’s success is its tone, which manages to capture bedrock Canadian feelings of pride and resentment of the United States, but with humor, irony and a little humility. “The country was really founded as a response to the threat of Americanism,” says Robert Fisher, a professor of marketing at the University of Western Ontario who lived in the United States for 11 years. “Who we are as a country is that we’re not American.” Not everyone is thrilled with the ad. It’s been called everything from jingoistic to a crass marketing ploy. “I am outraged that my nationality is being used to sell beer,” wrote one person in a letter to the editor of The Toronto Star. “If you want to voice your national pride, go out and vote.”
Overlooked in the debate over the state of the Canadian national soul is the fact that the ad has moved a lot of beer. Molson is locked in all-out battle with Labatt for bragging rights as Canada’s biggest brewer (with both claiming the No. 1 spot). In just six weeks after the ad started airing, the premium Canadian brand gained almost 2 points in market share, to about 14 percent (each point is worth $15 million to $20 million in annual profit). “It’s been such a great boost for us,” says Brett Marchand, vice president of marketing for Molson Canadian.
The “I am Canadian” tag line is fast becoming Molson’s version of Nike’s enduring “Just do it” slogan. Molson used it from 1994 to 1998, then dropped it for “Here’s where we get Canadian,” widely criticized as a flat mouthful. After man-on-the-street interviews conducted by Molson’s new ad agency for the Canadian brand, Bensimon Byrne D’Arcy of Toronto, showed a surging sense of national pride, the agency recommended that Molson revive the slogan. Glen Hunt, the agency’s group creative director who wrote the spot, was inspired by all the “How’s it goin’, eh?” cracks he heard during a three-year stint in New York. “It certainly felt cathartic to me,” Hunt says.
In another measure of the ad’s success, it was ranked second overall on the top-10 most popular spots for a dozen days at AdCritic.com (the site, where you can view “The Rant” and other ads, gets up to 600,000 hits a day). The ad could never crack the No. 1 spot, a place that’s been lorded over in recent weeks by the massively popular Whassup ads. Outdone by Americans again.
