Made in Canada, Eh?

On the topic of “National Positioning”, I couldn’t agree more with Armand’s recent post re: German cars and Albertan beef. There’s certainly a big plus to marketing a country’s products, as there can be associative or reputational purposes behind this type of marketing. And I believe there are two thoughts in regards to this aspect.

Firstly, citizens who identify strongly with a nation are very susceptible to these “nation pride” marketing tactics. So slapping a maple leaf on everything Canadian produced is a great way to attract consumers in this situation. And I’m not just referring to hardcore fanatics who will only buy Canadian produced goods, but in general I think there is a large inclination to feel warmly toward one’s home country, and that’s why the leaf sells.

Secondly, often times products bear the Canadian label because Canada is genuinely good at what it does; and by that I mean top in its class, a real world-quality product. So to put a “Real Canadian” before maple syrup actually makes sense because our syrup truly is one-of-a-kind and world renown. And there can be many qualitative attributes that give rise to this phenomenon: China has an abundance of cheap labour that allows it to produce low-cost goods in large supply; Germany is always first to arrive in the innovative engineering game; Canada is rich in natural resources that allow it to manufacture grade A stuff.

The second point differs from the first on that not everything is attached with the Canadian icon, but only the things that we truly excel at and do better than everyone else; equivalently, the leaf is not rubber stamped from an ink pad, rather intricately and artistically etched. Same goes for any other product made in any other country.