Tough to swallow those over-the-top ads
Customers just didn’t want to see Tim Hortons linked to pipeline
Earlier this month, more than 30,000 Canadians signed a SumOfUs.org petition calling on Tim Hortons to stop in-house advertising on behalf of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline — and 16 hours later, the company listened. Tim Hortons chose to distance itself and its brand from the controversial pipeline that has failed to win social licence with local communities, First Nations and Canadians more broadly.
Along side this stunning online victory is another story that hasn’t made the headlines: Countless Canadians took the time to personally visit their local Tim Hortons to speak directly with the manager, delivering the message they wouldn’t be buying their daily doubledoubles until the company stopped this campaign.
Gerald Amos, an elder from Kitimaat Village, was one of them. He told the manager his purchase would be his last unless the company ended its Enbridge ad campaign. Amos lives where the proposed Enbridge pipeline project terminates and is deeply concerned about what’s at stake with the project. Upon his visit, the manager replied he had received numerous visits from customers, urging them to stop the ads. On June 5, after Tim Hortons announced it would drop the ads, Amos went to Timmies for lunch. So did folks across the country.
Amos’ story highlights why this campaign was so powerful — customers don’t want to see the brand behind their beloved Timbits linked to a deeply controversial pipeline project, and thousands of them spoke up to tell the company just that.
Little surprise, a few dozen conservative pundits are up in arms, backed by several federal cabinet ministers. As though Enbridge ads no longer staring you in the face while you’re waiting for your coffee means the sky is falling. But that’s not what this is about.
Amid all this were ridiculous accusations that the folks behind all this ‘aren’t Canadian’ — I, for one, was born in Edmonton and lived both there and in Calgary in my childhood. And the more than 30,000 Canadians who have signed the petition — and 750,000 more who are part of the SumOfUs community in Canada — know where they stand, too. Our community has worked on campaigns on worker rights to environmental protections and everything in between.
The supposed counter- boycott of Tim Hortons that ensued within hours of the decision was, by contrast, not grassroots. That campaign was cooked up by Conservative pundits and somehow, a handful of protesters in downtown Calgary became a burgeoning media story and proof of some alleged national mass annoyance with Tim’s.
Why are Conservative pundits trying to take this victory away? This was never about attacking the oil industry — it was about how a pipeline company can’t ride the coat-tails of Timmies’ national reputation. Instead, it has to pull up its sleeves and do the hard work of building engagement and trust — not just hiring actors and buying ad space.
It doesn’t make sense to ask a coffee retailer to defend controversial pipeline ads. Ultimately, industry and government have failed to win the trust of Canadians to build energy projects like these. And instead, they’ve weakened environmental laws and shortchanged people and planet — and the workers they pretend they have at heart.
All Canadians deserve good jobs, including oil and gas workers employed across the country and the 100,000 employed at Tim Hortons.
And we all deserve companies that act as good corporate citizens, responding to the needs of customers, communities and the planet.