In a continuation of its “Tested for Life in Canada” platform, Canadian Tire has launched a new campaign to get its Maximum Tools brand’s products into the hands of professionals who can vouch for their quality.
The retailer selected some of the country’s long-standing, family-owned businesses to test tools and create content for a new ad campaign and testimonials as part of its online “Tested for Life in Canada” platform.
The brand tapped into its network of 15,000 Canadians who are part of product testing and found that more than 1,000 are in the trade professional demographic. It also used LinkedIn to help identify potential professionals.
The retailer journeyed across the country to surprise those businesses by bringing tools for their professionals to test out. A resulting TV and online video campaign launched Wednesday. Notch Video created the online videos, with Taxi on the TV spot, Fuse Marketing handling the experiential tool drop to businesses, and Touché! on media.
The TV spot and online videos drive to the “Tested for Life” website, where trade professionals can view more in-depth testimonials about products.
The Maximum brand was launched in 2014 as a response to the retailer losing share of power tools and accessories. Earlier this year, the “Maximum Mural” campaign picked up a CASSIES Bronze award. While this year’s campaign does veer slightly towards targeting skilled do-it-yourselfers, it is mainly focused on professionals, says Cindy Graham, associate VP of brand marketing at Canadian Tire.
“This campaign is really focused on driving home the fact that Maximum Tools are designed for the rigorous demands of our trade professionals,” she says. “That’s a really critical difference between our campaign this year and last year.”
The testimonials are particularly important to the very brand loyal, discerning target, who is more likely to take the word of their peers over the retailer itself, she says. “As trade professionals, their tools are their livelihoods, so making sure that we deliver against the expectation of those trade tools was job number one.”
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Correction: This article originally misstated that the online teaser videos (shown above) were running on TV and misstated the launch date for the campaign.