Opinion Quebec via Vancouver

By Jason Perdue and Nicolas Quintal

**Pour lire cet article en français, cliquez ici.**

Ask an English marketer about the Quebec market and you’ll get the same inevitable responses.

Quebecers live for the moment. They’re more passionate. Bolder. More likely to purchase based on emotion. And then there’s the infamous sense of humour – over-the-top, edgier and more slapstick than the dry wit supposedly favoured by the rest of the country.

We admit it: Quebec is different. But not by the definitions too many agencies seem to rely on. It’s more complex than that. Quebec culture continues to evolve, and marketers from the rest of the country continue to struggle to keep up.

20 years ago the trend among national agencies was to simply overdub English spots. Next came the equally awful era of the double shoot, where the English TV script was also shot in French (often as an afterthought) using different actors.

Currently, most clients looking to impact Quebec from the outside go one of two routes. They either hire a multinational agency with offices in English and French Canada, or they hire an English agency, that in turn, contracts out the French work to a local agency.

Both options pose the same problem: you’re essentially hiring two agencies.

A second agency isn’t the answer

Two agencies means paying for two receptionists, two offices, two creative directors, two account directors, and worst of all, the countless hours your two agencies will waste arguing with each other.

When a client hires an agency, it’s based on their shared values and vision. So when a third party with different views is brought on to handle the French business, there’s friction every time.

How do we know? We’ve worked at such agencies, and been on both sides of these battles. They were never pretty.

With this in mind, Rethink has “rethought” the agency approach to reaching the Quebec market. Our goal was to unify our national campaigns, providing clients with one unique vision, communicated to both cultures.

To succeed, we knew we’d need an insider understanding of French consumers, culture, and the advertising networks in Quebec.

The key is having the right key people

The first thing we did was hire a full-time senior account service person based in Montreal. She’s a fully bilingual Quebecer who’s dedicated to helping national clients with marketing initiatives in Quebec. Apart from regular trips to Vancouver she’s in the market, keeping a finger on the pulse, providing insights and developing strategies relevant to French Canadians.

We also transplanted bilingual, senior-level Quebec creative talent from Montreal to Vancouver, complete with all the requisite insight, cultural knowledge and passion. That means we have the firepower to do award-winning creative work in both languages, in-house. It also means the same team that does a client’s French work does the English, and they understand 100% of the business, not just the 25 % that’s French.

In addition, we hired a fully bilingual proofreader (no small feat in Vancouver) who goes over every piece of work with a fine-toothed comb.

On both the account and creative sides, there’s lots of collaboration between our French personnel and their English counterparts. And creative direction for both markets comes from a single source, so clients are presented with a singular vision.

There’s no chance of communication loss between multiple agencies, multiple egos, multiple time zones or multiple languages.

With this model, we have both markets in mind during our entire process, from the crafting of the strategy, to idea generation, to the final execution of concepts.

We stand by the belief that a strong strategy and a great idea can work anywhere, whether you’re in Montreal, Vancouver or beyond.

Posted November 17, 2009 by Sophie Langlois, account director, Nicolas Quintal, associate creative director and Jason Perdue, copywriter, all with Vancouver’s Rethink Communications.

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