What Québec Wants

Time for breakfast

Quebeckers make time for breakfast - significantly more so than Canadians in the ROC.

An Ipsos Reid survey conducted in 2005 on behalf of the Florida Department of Citrus found that Quebeckers ate breakfast on an average of 4.4 days Monday to Friday compared to an average of 4.0 days nationally and as low as 3.6 days in Alberta and 3.8 days in Ontario.

The same survey suggested that Quebeckers are more likely to say that the breakfast they eat is balanced and nutritious. Asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement ‘I eat a balanced and nutritious breakfast on a regular basis during the workweek from Monday to Friday’, 82% of Quebec residents agreed (top 2 box) compared to 72% nationally and as low as 66% in Ontario.

Now a new survey from Ipsos Reid for Nutella adds an interesting perspective on children and breakfast time. It asked Canadians if their child wants to eat breakfast each day – ‘want’ being the operative word. 

79% of respondents in Quebec said “yes, there is usually no problem getting them to eat breakfast”. That number dropped to 68% nationally and 61% in Ontario. The same survey suggests that the key reason for a child not to eat breakfast is being too rushed. This is especially the case in Ontario.

So it’s not for lack of wanting. It’s a lack of time. That should be a wake-up call.

The meaning of Québécois

It’s still called “La St-Jean” by most in Québec but the official name of today’s national holiday celebration is “La Fête nationale du Québec”.

And its two spokespeople, media personalities Marie-Chantal Perron and Boucar Diouf, suggest that when they talk about les “gens d’ici” (the people from here), they mean everyone who calls Québec their home independent of ethnicity.

But make no mistake; this is a celebration of the French language, culture and identity. For the past 25 years, the celebrations have been organized by the Mouvement national des Québécoises and Québécois. Its website claims that sovereignty, national pride, promotion and defense of the French language are at the heart of its actions.

The official website of la Fête - in French only of course – offers great content on the history of the celebrations including patriotic texts published over the years. And the theme this year is “une voix qui porte” – loosely translated as “a voice that carries, that resonates”.

So what is the definition of the word “Québécois”?

EKOS asked 1,022 Canadians in December 2006 shortly after the House of Commons passed a resolution affirming that the Québécois are a nation.

As EKOS wrote in its report, “the result, quite literally, is that the House of Commons resolution means one thing in one part of the country, and something else elsewhere”.

In Québec, the term Québécois is defined by residence and territory so it’s more civic than linguistic or racial in nature. In the rest of Canada, the term Québécois has retained the traditional English Dictionary definition as meaning a French-speaking Quebecker.

The EKOS report goes on to say: “In English, then, it seems, many Canadians make a distinction between “Quebeckers” who irrespective of linguistic background are residents of the province, and “Québécois” who are seen as Francophones.”

I’m not a research methodologist but it seems to me that asking someone in Edmonton about the meaning of the word “Québécois” instead of “Quebecker” is more likely to lead to answers about language than geography.

EKOS adds: “So, are these alternative understandings just a point of anthropological curiosity? We think not. The probing on whether or not recognition of a ‘Quebecois nation’ means more powers or is just a symbolic gesture becomes more charged when we consider that Canadians do not share a semantically consistent understanding of the term. The term is neither conceptually nor phenomenally equivalent across the Québec / ROC divide.”

Canadians do not share a semantically consistent understanding of the term?

How about just sharing a drink on this day? One look at the sponsors of the Fête nationale suggests that it’s what we should be doing instead of debating semantics.

Not so random acts of generosity

In this week’s CONSUMED column in the NYT magazine, Rob Walker writes about Hyatt Hotel’s new program of ‘random acts of generosity’ aimed at making its customers not just pleased but grateful. The result of months of consumer research, the initiative will mean that staff will randomly delight customers by unexpectedly picking up the tab your hotel-bar drinks or hotel-spa massage.

Walker quotes Robert Palmatier, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Washington and author of a paper on the role of gratitude in human relationships and in marketing.

Here’s a link to Walker’s column.

The Hyatt program is interesting but, as Walker points out, has one potentially major flaw; the hotel chain went public with it. “Hyatt is walking a fine line in generating buzz about a program that it doesn’t want customers to actually expect. What if a Hyatt guest reads this column and wonders why he didn’t get any free drink?

Quebeckers want respectful service.

I have no doubt that gratitude can be a powerful emotion in marketing but recent data from Ipsos Reid suggest that feeling respected could be the real key to customer loyalty in Quebec.

The survey conducted in April 2007 on behalf of TD Canada Trust asked Canadians to rank the following six features of service in order of importance: respectful, friendly, knowledgeable, accurate, quick and provides peace of mind.

‘Knowledgeable’ was the feature most likely to be ranked first among all Canadians. Quebeckers however stood out from the rest of the country ranking ‘respect’ significantly above other service features.

This reminds me of the Ritz Carlton’s service credo: ‘Ladies & gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen’.

That’s respect without random free drinks.

Quebeckers eat their veggies

Compared to Canadians in the ROC, Quebeckers are most likely to spend less than 60 minutes a week being physical (i.e. exercise, sports, running/jogging, walking, etc.)

Thinking about the amount of physical activity they engage in during the course of one week, Quebecers (35%) are the most likely to say they spend less than one hour doing so, while those living in Saskatchewan and Manitoba (26%), Alberta (23%), Ontario (22%), Atlantic Canada (20%) and British Columbia (14%) are less likely to say they’re active for less than one hour a week. – Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of the Canadian Chiropractic Association in April 2009.

This is consistent with 2004 data from Stats Can showing that Quebec is the province with the lowest percentage of individuals with an “active” physical activity index.

Yet Quebec is also the province with the highest percentage of adults with a normal Body Mass Index.

There are of course many factors at play here. One of them is obvious from this other map from Stats Can; Quebeckers are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables.

Funemployment

A recent article published in the Los Angeles Times  discussed a trend among young adults: funemployment.

According to the Urban Dictionary, funemployment is about taking advantage of being out of a job in order to have the time of their life. Instead of sending resumes and actively seeking a job, the “funemployed”, mostly singles in their 20’s and 30’s, are living for today by traveling, going back to school, volunteering, partying or hitting the beach. Many use social media like Facebook and Twitter to find “funemployed” partners and make plans.

The L.A. Times quotes Jean Twenge, co-author of " The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement" and an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State who is an expert in generational surveys. "For many younger people, work is less central to their lives. These days, more people than in the 1970s are saying they want jobs with a lot of vacation time. Younger employees today also are less willing to work overtime.”

Here’s a short video of Mike Van Gorkom, funemployed, formely Director of User Experience Design at Yahoo! – He shares his epiphany: how he now enjoys life and realizes how his stressful job affected his life.  He now says he will eventually seek  “a job that won’t take over my life like this last one did”.

What seems like an epiphany to Mike might not be so for many Quebeckers – unemployed or employed.

They are generally less likely to let their work or career take over their lives insisting instead that pleasure be central to their lives.

Yankelovich asked Canadians ten years ago if they agreed with the statement “there is too much emphasis on accomplishment and not enough on pleasure for its own sake”. French Quebeckers were significantly more likely to agree than Canadians in the ROC.

More recently (2006), Leger Marketing surveyed Canadians about the relative importance they attach to their work, social and family life. Again, they are more likely to adopt a balanced approach.

Looking more closely at young Quebeckers working in the marcomm industry, a recent survey from the Bénévolat d’entraide aux communicateurs (National Advertising Benevolent Society) shows that 51% of Gen Y Canadians (18-29) living outside Quebec consider their professional life to be as important or more important than their personal life while it’s significantly lower among young Quebeckers (38%).

It looks like “funemployment” in Quebec is as much about fun and employment than fun while unemployed.

- Posted by Manon Varin, Project Manager at Headspace Marketing Inc.

Sex in advertising

New Yorkers, who are not easily offended, find that Calvin Klein has crossed the line with this poster of a girl and her three male friends.

I guess it all depends where you are.

Would this poster get the same reactions in Montreal or Toronto?

Quebeckers appear generally more tolerant of sex in ads and in movies than Canadians in the ROC.

Leger Marketing surveyed Canadians’ opinions on advertising in 2001 and specifically asked about whether there is too much violence, sex, humour or information.

Quebec was the province least likely to say that there is too much sex in advertising.

And, more recently, PMB 2008 asked about agreement with the statement “it horrifies me to see many sexual images in articles and films”. Quebeckers were significantly less likely than Canadians in the ROC to agree with the statement.

By the way, also according to PMB 2008, Quebeckers are significantly less likely to agree with the statement “an unmarried girl of 18 should not have sexual relations”.

No data available about doing so simultaneously with three guys.

In search of relevance

Four in ten web users in Quebec say they aren’t aware of sponsored links on search engine sites like Google, Yahoo and Toile du Quebec.

According to a recently released report by SEO SEM experts Skooiz and email-marketing firm Toutacoup.ca, this % has not changed significantly in the past three years. The report suggests that while web users likely see the sponsored links, they do not see them as different from other links.

The real wake up call in this report is the finding that the six in ten web users who say they notice the sponsored links generally do not find them relevant.

Our firm sponsors links on Google. I guess we’re covered since searching “brands quebec” leads to both our site’s link in the top position and a sponsored link.

But is it relevant?

Tweets in Quebec and Gilles Duceppe

One could think that the whole world is twittering judging by this Time Magazine cover.

The social marketing tool is getting a lot of attention and, like anything that’s on trend, marketers are hoping to capitalize on it.

In his cover story about Twitter in Time, Steven Johnson writes that “successful businesses will have millions of Twitter followers (and will pay good money to attract them), and a whole new language of tweet-based customer interaction will evolve to keep those followers engaged: early access to new products or deals, live customer service, customer involvement in brainstorming for new products.”

But he also adds later that it’s entirely possible that three or four years from now, we’ll have moved on.

A recent Ipsos Reid study offers a reality check.

It shows that only 26% of online Canadians are aware of Twitter. Of those, 6% reported using it. This equates to roughly 1% of the population as a whole.

In Quebec, awareness of Twitter is significantly lower at only 7%. Applying the same ratio of awareness to usage, this would equate to .3% of the Quebec population – about 21,000 people.

So, are these 20 thousand Twitter users engaged with businesses and brands or just telling their followers what they had for breakfast?

It’s hard to tell.

In his Time article, Johnson writes that last month an anticommunist uprising in Moldova was organized via Twitter and that the Chinese government blocked access to Twitter in an attempt to censor discussion of the 20^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Could just 140 characters start a political uprising? Or revive interest in Quebec’s sovereignty?

Twitterholic.com, with its twittastic robots that scan the Twitter public timeline for new twits to tweet, reports that the most popular Twitter user in Quebec is Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Quebecois, with 1,146 followers. He’ll likely need a few more twits to create a country.

Shades of green

Many studies assess Canadians’ green attitudes and their concern for the environment. Quebeckers are usually as concerned and at times more concerned than Canadians in the ROC.

But few studies probe actual behaviour. Who walks the talk?

Stats Can released such a study in 2006. It’s a bit dated but the findings are surprising.

The study focuses on six environmental behaviours at the household level:

1. use of reduced volume toilets
2. use of low-flow showerheads
3. use of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL)
4. recycling
5. composting
6. lowering temperatures

Households that practiced four to six behaviours were considered very active. Those who engaged in two to three behaviours were moderately active, while those who adopted zero or one behaviour were considered less active.

In 2006, almost half of Canadian households were very active across this range of environmental behaviours (45%).

Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) was the most active province, with close to two-thirds of its households (64%) participating in four or more environmental activities.

Quebec was the least active province.

Come hell or high water

Quebeckers live in the moment. And that leads many to be less concerned about potential emergencies.

According to a survey by Léger Marketing on behalf of Allstate, Quebeckers are least likely to be concerned about experiencing an emergency such as an ice storm – a somewhat surprising finding given how the 1998 ice storm paralyzed Montreal for weeks.

Very/somewhat likely to feel that you will personally experience an emergency (such as an extended blackout, ice storm, tornado, forest fire) in the next ten years:

• Atlantic Canada 66%
• Quebec 38%
• Ontario 62%
• Prairies 57%
• Alberta 49%
• BC 56%

Consequently, they are least likely to be concerned about being prepared.

When asked what they think represents the most likely threat to their homes, Quebeckers stand out from the rest of the country for their more limited concern about winter storms, theft, and water damage.

Interestingly, after residents of BC, Quebeckers are the most concerned about earthquakes. It’s perhaps proof that when you live in the moment, you may feel the earth move.