Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act, which bans advertising to kids under 13, has been in effect since May 1980. It’s the only legislation of its kind in North America and it prohibits any marketing in all media – in no uncertain terms, despite the more recent appearance of the Internet and other forms of interactive media.

Once a Quebecer hits 14, he or she is open game as far as advertisers are concerned, but there is still the question of local tolerance to deal with. Max Lenderman, a youth marketing specialist (youth in this context meaning people aged 16 to approximately 25) in Montreal and founder of Gearwerx, comments, ‘Certainly the Quebec market is much more sensitive to marketing than the rest of Canada, and much more indignant. But that changes as you get younger and younger. Kids really aren’t much different; it’s the adults that are different.’

And ‘youth’ are the people hovering in between. Advertisers in La Belle Province are finding that opt-in campaigns on wireless platforms are a great way to take their message to teenagers and young adults.

It’s not hard to see how quickly the technology has become an important device for reaching youth. A lot of kids carry a cell phone around, and to many, the tiny devices are integral to their daily activities and social lives. New marketing campaigns are tapping into the ability to reach people on the move, one-on-one, ready for action – but they’re also being careful to respect consumers’ privacy.

This summer Lenderman used cool cell phone rings to lure youth to a Tommy Hilfiger flagship store opening on St. Catherine and Peel in Montreal. DJs in the store window ran a ‘name that tone’ game where people had to guess the original version of a cell phone ring. Gift with purchase was a free ring tone that you could download inside the store.

Lenderman hired local kids to make up street teams of youth carrying Tommy Hilfiger shopping bags. Agents would roam around individually and then casually ‘run into’ one another and make rehearsed exclamations like, ‘Did you hear about the big sale?’ or, ‘How did you know that Tommy Hilfiger has just opened up!?’ The subtle, unobtrusive buzz, along with the music, was enough to drive young shoppers into the new store.

‘It’s hard to measure but there was lots of foot traffic,’ Lenderman says. ‘It was almost like a MuchMusic experience with people looking in the window from outside. It really attracted a younger demographic.’

The campaign was part of a wider series of Hilfiger store openings, but according to Lenderman, ‘A lot of companies will send a team to a local market. We recruit from the area where we’re going to conduct the campaign. We try to go in there and get people that are in that scene where we’re going to be. The first question we ask in a Quebec campaign is ‘Are you bilingual?’ even before we ask for experience.’

Into their hands

Last spring, Toronto-based Rogers AT&T Wireless asked Montreal marketer P2P to develop ideas on how to use SMS (short message system) in Quebec. P2P stands for ‘person-to-person,’ or what founder Pierre Parent likes to call ‘proximity marketing.’ The idea is to always make sure your client is getting closer to the customer instead of waiting for the customer to come to you. SMS is exactly the kind of thing Parent was envisioning when he opened his doors in 1993.

‘Rogers didn’t really have many people using SMS and they wanted to take a new approach with the youth and young adult market,’ Parent says. So his team set to work designing a program that would give people a reason to try the new technology. Rogers chose Quebec as its test marketplace. The province contains about 10% of Canadian SMS subscribers.

The project started this spring with a campaign to create the first comprehensive French-language text-messaging dictionary. The ‘Texto’ dictionary project (‘texto’ is the French term for SMS) was incredibly successful. Rogers collaborated with Musique Plus to ask listeners to send their texto messaging expressions to the Texto Web site. Online Web banners directed others to participate in the making of the dictionary. Gearwerx organized street teams to hand out stickers and a tiny laminated dictionary of texto terms.

‘Every texto that was added to the virtual dictionary was followed by the name of the person that gave it to us so you could be part of the creation of the virtual dictionary,’ says Parent. ‘We had over 13,000 participants – a lot more than we expected. Of course, we didn’t get 13,000 unique texto expressions, but we had close to 800 original and fun textos that we kept for the dictionary.’

Following the success of the Texto project, P2P launched phase two: Zone Ludik, or ‘Fun Zone,’ a Web site at www.rogers.com/zoneludik/ that went live on Oct. 17. SMS users who subscribe to the Rogers service can log into the site, fill out a user profile, and start receiving Rogers’ texto messages according to the categories they select.

After registering, subscribers start to receive invites to special events and parties and special offers on anything from CDs to movie tickets. The first 1,000 people to sign up received a free CD from Universal Music. Other partners include Popcorn, a Montreal-based film broker and the technology TV channel, V.

The site was launched with TV spots on Musique Plus, banner ads on Web sites, and spots on Radio Energie in Montreal and Quebec City. A viral campaign was also introduced to encourage kids to pass the word along to their friends. So far, Rogers has about 800 Zone Ludik subscribers, and expects to get 5,000 by the end of April.

‘That’s actually pretty good considering that we only have 400,000 cell phone subscribers in Quebec,’ says Anne-Marie Beauchemin, director of sponsorship and promotions for Rogers, Montreal. ‘Only about 42,000 people have SMS capability, and we’re specifically targeting youth.’

The next leg of the campaign begins in January in collaboration with Tous Contre Un, or All Against One, a daily quiz show now on TéléQuebec. A Rogers-sponsored question will be added to the usual repertoire of current events trivia questions that can only be answered by SMS users who sign up. People who register to play will receive the question during the day and can reply right away. When the show airs later, a winner is picked from those who sent correct answers.

‘So far, it’s hard to know how it’s been received,’ Beauchemin says. ‘I get great comments from the competition, but it’s hard to get a really close feel for what people think. One thing we are careful of is to make sure that this is not perceived as advertising but clearly as offers that are good for our subscribers. For that reason, we won’t be signing up with just anybody who comes to Rogers. The question will be ‘Does that fit with our customers?’ and ‘Do they really want that?’ If the answer is yes, then we can talk.’

In late September, Bell Canada and Montreal-based Cossette division Blitz made a similar push to get 18- to 24-year-old Quebecers to use their SMS. Their strategy was to extend a long-running television campaign for Bell Solo that featured a character named Steve coping with a number of different mascots for the products. Bell sent street teams, also provided by Gearwerx, made up of five Steve characters, to 10 campuses across the province and asked people to participate in Steve’s mock ‘strike’ against the mascots by signing a virtual petition.

Students were shown how to use text messaging to add their name to the petition and earn a chance to win prizes. The goal was simply to put text messaging into the hands of youth who might have SMS capability, or might soon own a cell phone, and have no experience using the technology.

After submitting their name, students wait 10 or 15 seconds to get a return message that might tell them they’ve won something, like a Solo cell phone and text messaging package, or maybe just tells them to ‘go away, you are not one of us,’ in keeping with the humorous tone of the campaign.

‘What we see in studies is that when you don’t try SMS, you don’t use it,’ Blitz account manager Stefani Charette says. ‘But when you try it, that’s the beginning.’

Response was mainly positive. ‘In September we also had Videotron on strike so there was a big strike environment at this time, and people were looking at the promotion and relating it to what was happening. People thought it was funny.’ Over 1,500 kids took part in the promotion over three weeks.

Youth marketing expert Pascale Leblanc of Toronto’s Youthopia says text messaging is an effective marketing tool – when it’s ‘intelligent, clever and funny,’ and brings added value to young consumers’ lives. That said, she’s not sure that text-messaging campaigns are necessarily targeting the right kids.

‘To reach them efficiently, corporations need to learn about their purchasing behaviours and their cultural, entertainment and political icons, as well as the perceptions about the product category and their own product and/or services. Marketing and promotional strategies should be based on youth buying behaviours instead of their social-demographic profile.’

LeBlanc points out another problem with the way text messaging is being sold.

‘Parents like to know who’s trying to reach their kids and how. Cellular companies and others are trying aggressively to reach the 12- to 16-year-olds. Parents are quite concerned about the methods and quality of the overall messages.’ That’s a problem when part of Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act explicitly prohibits advertising to kids under 13.

Parents are doubly concerned about advertising that they can’t see. Says Lenderman: ‘I defy any parent to even understand a simple texto message.’ Then again, that’s part of what makes it so appealing to marketers – and youth.

But Lenderman points out that kids have to sign up to become part of Zone Ludik, and ‘parents can control the Web sites their kids go to.’ He also adds that mom and dad usually pay the bill and will notice when the text messaging (usually around 10 cents a pop depending on the subscriber plan) starts to get popular. (Incoming messages are free.)

Parent also comments that the age group using text messaging the most are 16- to 18-year-olds. ‘Even 20-year-olds, which is not old at all, are not that familiar yet with it, but the younger they are, the more they’re enjoying it, in their class at school, on the town, everywhere.’

The bottom line is that SMS advertising has landed, and is not likely to go away anytime soon. Campaigns like these will set a trend for future campaigns, when shops like P2P use their expertise to hawk new wares to cell phone users.

Lenderman adds that text messaging is here to stay, as long as it’s done right.

‘I think Quebecers really appreciate creative effort in marketing. They’re more artsy-fartsy and they really appreciate a good, solid, artistic thought-provoking immersive campaign versus the scratch-and-win or 50%-off deal. To get them interested you have to be a little more highbrow than in the rest of country. With those factors, are they more averse to guerrilla tactics? I don’t think so. If you have a good idea and you’re using local elements, they usually respond.’