For the fourth year, Strategy presents its Top Clients report, an annual feature devoted to recognizing the accomplishments of leading clients in the Canadian marketing community.
This year, as before, Strategy’s editorial staff reviewed the year’s news in an effort to identify those clients that stand out most clearly as exemplary marketers.
These selections are based on what we consider the fundamental tenets of good marketing: sales results, attention to brand development, innovation and productive relationships with suppliers.
Measured against these criteria, Levi Strauss & Company (Canada) has unquestionably earned the distinction of being named Strategy’s 1998 Client of the Year.
It was only an on-line booking of a flight from Denver to Florida. But to Graham Duffy, president and ceo of the Internet service Canadian Online Explorer (Canoe), it was a portent of greater things to come.
The fact that it was an American who made the booking, using Canoe’s new travel service, proved to Duffy that Canoe has begun to demonstrate its worth beyond Canadian borders.
‘The on-line medium is still very u.s.-centric,’ explains Duffy. Canoe, owned by Toronto-based Sun Media Corporation, is ‘competing for eyeballs’ – not just with other Canadian on-line services, but also with well-funded u.s. players.
Despite the competition, however, Canoe has succeeded in attracting considerable attention from Canadian advertisers.
In the past year, the on-line service scored two of its biggest sponsorship deals to date, signing Royal Bank Financial Group as exclusive sponsor of its Slam! Sports Winter Olympics site, and Colgate-Palmolive’s Mennen Speed Stick as exclusive sponsor of its Slam! Sports $24,000-plus hockey pool.
The next step is to get advertisers to buy across the service, rather than just sponsoring a single segment. Duffy says General Motors of Canada already does this, promoting its sportier brands on Canoe’s sports site, Slam!, and its Cadillac line on the financial information service, Money.
So seriously does Canoe take its pursuit of advertising that in October it formed a partnership with rival on-line service Sympatico. The result of this union is NetForce – essentially a rep house for the two services, offering media buyers the opportunity to do one-stop shopping.
With the industry moving at lightning speed, it can be difficult to keep pace. Canoe has attempted to meet this challenge by constantly expanding and enhancing its range of offerings.
The new Canoe Travel service, for example, allows visitors to search for the best hotel, airline and car rental rates around the world, and make bookings on-line. Canoe has also improved its entertainment information service, Jam!, by adding a listings guide that offers a rundown of close to 3,000 events across the country.
Duffy says Canoe’s goal for the coming year is to enhance its ‘portal’ capabilities. An improved search function and expanded content, he explains, will encourage more Canadians to use Canoe as their default home page – their launching pad to the rest of the Web.
Canoe also hopes to rely less on editorial from Sun Media print publications, and begin creating more unique, interactive editorial.
By way of example, Duffy points to the Winter Olympics site – which, in addition to stories from Sun Media and Canoe’s own reporter in Nagano, featured interactive forums, contests, polls and databases of information (such as athlete bios and country profiles) that a newspaper would never have the space to include.
By creating content specifically for the Web world, Duffy says, Canoe will be better armed to compete with other on-line services.
Also in this report:
– Top Client Overall: Levi Strauss develops intimate relationships p.21
– Top Client, Entertainment: Playdium partners to grow entertainment pie p.22
– Top Client, Retail: Canadian Tire revs up power brands p.24
– UPS pushes overnight delivery envelope p.25
– Top Client, Alcoholic Beverages: Labatt builds equity Out of the Blue p.26
– Top Client, Telecommunications: Bell makes 10-cent comeback p.27
– Top Client, Transportation: Air Canada hones in on business target p.29
– Top Client, Children’s Products: Binney & Smith boosts iQ: Maker of Crayola spins off tween-targeted line p.29
– Top Client, Financial Services: Amex fills generation gap p.31
