Youth marketing in Quebec straddles the yin of corporate sponsorship and the yang of counter-culture.
Marketing to Quebec youth is like a tug-of-war. On one hand, they are the most TV-addicted and star-struck kids in the country – with a potent visceral attraction to anyone homegrown. As reported in Strategy (March 10/03), ‘in Quebec the cult of celebrity runs deep, and the cult of celebrity endorsement runs even deeper.’
One only has to think of the phenomenal popularity of Star Académie, the success of the show’s multiple advertising partners and their convergent tie-ins, cross-promotions and media extensions to see the marketing opportunities. The youth here don’t turn off nor tune out big-money marketing initiatives.
On the other hand, Quebec’s libertine lifestyle philosophy incubates a vibrant youth counter-culture milieu that eschews anything overtly corporate or mainstream.
Marketers and their brands in Quebec are therefore thrust into an environment of yin-yang duality, as major sponsorships, celebrity endorsements and other mass programs are introduced at exactly the same rate as the youth taste-makers deem such moves as ‘selling out.’
To give perspective to this duality, allow me to introduce two examples of Quebec-centric marketing events aimed at capturing the hearts, minds and wallets of teens in La Belle Province. Both are ideal and unique market-specific experiential marketing events, yet they successfully accomplish their marketing missions through very contrasting methodologies.
La Célébration Jeunesse is produced by Le Groupe Jeunesse, a youth-services company now in its 23rd year.
The celebration is a big one: the multi-day event presents a paradigm of dynamic largesse by incorporating a number of sponsored zones to form a uniquely dazzling ‘city of youth’ in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium and Quebec City’s Centre de Foires.
No costs are spared for the busloads of teens that are transported to the events by Quebec’s high schools (a relationship exclusive to Le Groupe Jeunesse).
Major-label Quebec pop stars are slated for concerts and appearances each year, from ‘It’ girl Gabrielle Destroismaisons to quasi-ghetto hip-hop combo Les Architekts. Over 88,000 visitors aged 12 to 17 in Montreal and 21,000 in Quebec City visited the sponsor-heavy event last year, reaching nearly 25% of this target group in Quebec. That’s no chopped liver, my friends! Clearly, La Célébration has a lot to cheer about.
On the other side of the yin-yang divide rests the two-year-old Festival FoodXTour, a rough ‘n’ tumble music and extreme sports event that unambiguously caters to the underground set. It’s run by a Quebec skateboarding clothing label called Food Clothing, the type of company whose mop-haired principals ride the board to work with ska-core blasting in their iPods.
The tour’s sublime event strategy has catapulted it to instant prominence to kids in Quebec: it only travels to the hinterlands and outskirts of the province, serving a youth market that salivates for anything cool like a Pavlovian dog on the Atkins diet.
Kids in tertiary towns like Val d’Or, Plessisville, Saint-Hyacinthe and Sept-Iles flock to see Quebec-specific hardcore and hip hop acts, as well as grassroots bands recruited from each venue that bring their local fan base. A skate and BMX park offers event-goers a chance to witness Quebec’s most prominent extreme sports enthusiasts land tricks.
And most importantly for Food Clothing, the extreme-themed experience easily translates into sales: even with relatively low attendance (total audience is expected to reach 16,000 teens this summer), non-mainstream sponsors are quickly seizing the opportunity to market to an exceptionally receptive crowd.
Yet with every yin-yang situation, there’s a little bit of one within the other. La Célébration Jeunesse may have major sponsorship backing, yet it struggles when trying to establish cool-factor credibility with the alternative crowd. (Is there anything school-endorsed that’s cool with teens?) Top-line sponsor Clean & Clear leads the sponsorship charge, with the likes of PlayStation2 and Subway in tow, yet the event’s ‘Underground City’ finds major sponsorship hard to come by.
La Célébration Jeunesse is close to utopia for big-time brands marketing to tweens and teens, but would an alternative brand find relevance in the company of dozens of mainstream advertisers? Would the cynical teen set deem that brand as ‘trying too hard,’ or worse still, as ‘selling out?’
And although the FoodXTour is de rigeur for skate punks and music heads during the summer, the event’s credibility-culling edginess is also the roadblock to signing up major sponsorships. Are mainstream advertisers brave enough to face a fiercely independent counter-culture? What would the kids say if the underground event they wait for every summer came to town with a mega-sponsor attached to every stage and skate ramp? Would Food lose its street-rep?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It’s our job as marketers and brand creatives to come up with the audacious ideas that bridge the gap between mainstream and underground, simply because the opportunities that come from reaching both are enormous. Especially in Quebec, which is easier said than done. But it can be done; brands can thrive in both milieus. Selling big doesn’t have to mean selling out.
Max Lenderman is partner and CD at Gearwerx, a youth marketing company based in Montreal. He can be reached at mlenderman@gearwerx.com.
