Why Brands Need to Regionalize Their Marketing Strategies

With Toronto recently being named the third-largest tech hub in North America, many American companies including Twitter, DoorDash, eBay and Pinterest are setting up shop in Canada. U.S. brands need to find ways to regionalize their brand to Canada to build authentic connections with consumers here in Canada.

The biggest hurdle that American brands typically face is a lack of understanding of the Canadian media landscape. Partnering with a Canadian agency is a great way to not only develop and execute a strong, culturally relevant PR strategy but gain insights into the different nuances of the Canadian market.

What do American Brands Need to Know Before Partnering with Canadian Agencies?

• The differences between our media landscapes: The Canadian media landscape is much smaller and more concentrated than the U.S. It’s important to find an agency that can shed light on the differences between each market and help regionalize a brand to make it relevant to our media landscape. American brands don’t need to know all of the nuances and details, but understanding that our media pool is drastically different is a great starting point when searching for a Canadian agency partner.
• Cultural nuances: Our two countries are similar in many ways but American brands need to understand the cultural nuances that set us apart when establishing a PR strategy. Demonstrating that the brand understands Canadians - including our holidays, Canadian spelling, and cultural differences within each of our markets - goes a long way in establishing positive sentiment within the Canadian market. Brands must have a conversation with agency candidates about any cultural differences that may apply to their company and how to weave that into their PR strategy.
• The need to re-strategize: Because our markets are so different, a successful U.S. strategy doesn’t typically translate into success in Canada. A Canadian agency needs to understand what an American company has done in the past, including what worked and what didn’t, but it’s equally important for U.S. companies to understand that this won’t mean the strategy will look the same in Canada. There are often key learnings we can pull from target audience reactions in the U.S. but developing a Canadian strategy is imperative in finding success here in Canada.

Are American Brands Prepared?

American brands are often unprepared for the fact that, although they may be extremely well established and successful in the U.S., they are essentially starting from the beginning in Canada. Expecting that the media will cover their launch, simply because they’re a notable brand in the U.S., can often set companies up for disappointment.

As a Canadian agency, we have to manage the expectations surrounding a media reception for a company launch or announcement. From there, we build a PR strategy that enhances the media story here in Canada to optimize media coverage. Because we know that Canadian media will opt for a Canadian founder story before an American company story, we work with our clients to determine a strategy that best ladders up to their ultimate business goals in Canada. This often means leaning on activations, data, or hyper-local regionalized strategies to garner results that may come easier from a simple press release in the U.S.

Understanding that the media reception will look different in Canada and developing a Canadianized strategy is what sets U.S. companies up for success when launching in this market.

What are the Top Three Considerations for American Companies?

1. Media hesitancy: Canadian media, and their audiences, are most receptive to local stories. International companies will always face higher media hesitancy until they’ve successfully proven that they’re committed to the Canadian market. This means taking the time to integrate into Canadian culture, developing relationships with key media over time, and, most importantly, sharing stories that are relevant to Canadian audiences. Consider - why would a Canadian consumer be interested in this story? What impact does this have on the general Canadian audience? If there aren’t strong answers to those questions, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.
2. Media fatigue: The media landscape in Canada is significantly smaller than that of the U.S. Whether assessing mainstream, business, broadcast, or trade media, the volume of outlets in Canada is far fewer. With a smaller media pool comes the need to be extremely strategic about when, and how often, a company is sharing stories with key reporters to avoid media fatigue and risk losing valuable media relationships. Diversifying a company’s story matrix to alternate between business, lifestyle, trade, and long-form stories ensures that companies are continually connecting with different reporters and outlets. This ensures the company remains top of mind among its target audiences through consistent media coverage without overburdening any specific reporters.
3. Cultural insights: Demonstrating that an American company understands the nuances of Canadian culture is a great way to build trust and positive sentiment. Working with a local agency is a great way to learn more about those cultural nuances but if an agency partner isn’t in the plans, doing some research ahead of time can go a long way. Adopting Canadian spelling and being aware of Canadian-specific holidays are two examples of ways American brands can regionalize their PR efforts to more strongly resonate with Canadian audiences.

How can American Brands be Strategic?

Developing a Canadian-focused strategy is incredibly important when entering this market. While the strategies themselves will vary from company to company, the two pieces that remain consistent for any strategy are relationship buildingand regionalizing the brand. What does this look like in practice?

Build the relationship: Because our media pool is much smaller than in the U.S., developing long-term relationships with key reporters and influencers is the best way for a company to set itself up for success. The good news about having fewer media contacts in our market is that identifying and investing in key media relationships is much more straightforward. We see valuable relationship-building stem from three elements.

1. The first is to start strong. Think about how to best engage reporters and influencers in a way that is respectful of their time, adds value to them, and still communicates the brand’s key messages. Depending on the company, this can look like deskside visits, a media event, or simply an introductory email.
2. The second is understanding that this is a long-term investment. Don’t expect that one side will result in immediate coverage. Rather, starting on a strong foot with reporters will help keep a brand top of mind when relevant stories arise, meaning more coverage over a longer period.
3. Finally, understand that reporters aren’t likely to cover company announcements or promotional material alone. Canadian media, in particular when working with U.S. brands, are looking for value-adds for their story. Does your company have unique data or insights into a particularly timely topic? When relevant news comes out, do you have a spokesperson that can offer quick-turnaround interviews that support the story within a reporter’s timeline? If your company is sharing an announcement, do you have high-res imagery or video, a press release that summarizes data and spokesperson quotes, or infographics? Offering value-adds like these help to reduce the time required to cover a story and makes reporters’ lives easier, meaning they’re more likely to come back to your organization the next time they need a source.

Regionalize the brand: Because Canadian media will typically opt for local stories and spokespeople over American companies, finding ways to regionalize the brand is crucial in establishing and growing a media presence in this market. There are many ways to do this but what it boils down to is showing that your company understands the Canadian market and is committed to being a part of it. Some tactics that work well in establishing a brand locally while garnering media coverage include hosting local activations for regional audiences, developing strategic partnerships with beloved Canadian brands and/or influencers, partnering with a notable Canadian who can act as the company’s local spokesperson, and collecting/sharing regionally-relevant data.

Trial and Error of American Brands

One of my favourite examples of an American company successfully entering the Canadian market is Rover.com. Having been quietly operating in the country for a short while, the popular pet sitting and dog walking services company ramped up its PR efforts in 2019. What I loved about this PR strategy was that the Rover.com team understood what worked well in PR and also understood that their approach would need to be adjusted for the Canadian market.

The company used a variety of tactics that all connected back to how committed they were to integrating into Canadian culture. Fun data reports like the Difference Between Cat and Dog People and The Most Popular Pet Names shared Canadian-specific data and insights around pet parenting habits. These reports, combined with a Canadian spokesperson and pet expert and regionalized events like Puppy Yoga that included local partners, all laddered up to the company’s goals of building awareness and positive sentiment within the Canadian market.

One of the most notable examples of an American company failing to adjust to the Canadian market is Target. Before launching in Canada, Target was already a well-established brand in the U.S. and one that had a lot of Canadian fans. While Target may seem like they were set up to succeed in a market expansion in Canada, their failure in this market ultimately came down to the fact that they didn’t take the time to listen and adapt to what Canadians wanted. The unwillingness to adapt and re-strategize for Canadian expansion resulted in the company rolling out nationwide and shutting its doors completely within a short span of just two years.

If there’s one thing to take away here, it’s that the Canadian market presents some great opportunities for American brands. As long as American companies understand the cultural differences between our markets and are open to developing a regionally relevant PR strategy, they can be truly set up for long-term success.

Kelsi Tsatouhas, Senior Business Director at Canadian integrated communications agencyTalk Shop Media