Also in this special report:
* Quebec media market heats up: With the economy on the rebound, and a renewed sense of confidence in the business community, national advertisers are again starting to invest in media p.B12
* St-Hubert hatches new image p.B12
* Coke gets tough in Quebec market: Competitive spots seek to portray Pepsi as a pale imitation of The Real Thing p.B15
* Musee lets down its hair: Cultivates down-to-earth image in an effort to become ‘the people’s museum’ p.B18
Two Quebec broadcasters are getting an image makeover, with the help of Montreal-based agency Groupaction/JWT.
Campaigns for Montreal fm radio station CKMF 94.3 and Tele-Quebec, the province’s public television station, broke earlier this fall. Both repositioning efforts employ a healthy dose of humor to communicate their messages.
Groupaction has held the ckmf account for about eight years. The goal is to shift its public perception from that of a dance music station for the 18-24 set to a pop station for all age groups.
Richard Boudreault, vice-president, creative at Groupaction, explains that ckmf began as a disco station – a reputation that has been hard to shake.
This fall’s campaign plays on the station’s nickname, Radio Energy, to position ckmf as the ‘happy,’ ‘feel-good’ station. The theme line, roughly translated, is: The Energy Gets Me Going.
Three 15-second television spots were created to zero in on three different target groups.
One features a 30-ish male lawyer dressing for work in the morning. When his favorite song comes on the radio, he begins playing air guitar, a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business.
The second features a 45-year-old father driving home from work, drumming along to the music on his steering wheel, dashboard and windshield – until, at the end of the spot, he shatters the glass.
In the third spot, a twentysomething woman grabs a chicken leg from her refrigerator, to use as a microphone as she lip-synchs to an upbeat tune.
Magazine ads, billboards and transit shelters all reinforce the feel-good positioning.
Tele-Quebec awarded its account to Groupaction/JWT this past spring, following a review involving four major agencies. Boudreault says it was his agency’s previous experience with ckmf that put it over the top.
While Tele-Quebec is an educational station, he says, it was looking for a new approach that would widen its appeal and made it seem more accessible, rather than a stodgy, boring service for intellectuals only.
The campaign, timed to launch Tele-Quebec’s new fall season, employs busboard and interior transit ads. There are 12 executions in all, each highlighting one of the station’s programs. The ads use double-entendre headlines to show the fun side of educational television.
Boudreault says this is a major departure for Tele-Quebec, and has attracted a lot of attention.
‘The play-on-words approach is very popular in Quebec,’ he says. ‘By having a double meaning, it reaches both audiences: the one that wants to have fun and the one that wants to have something tangible, concrete and educational.’
The ads use black-and-white photography, accented with Tele-Quebec’s corporate blue. An execution highlighting a program called The Story of Man, for example, features a shot of a chimpanzee, with a headline that translates as ‘A Show in Our Own Image.’
