I'm a web strategist and aspiring know-it-all with a passion for all things digital. I've worked in PR, advertising and not-for profit industries, and now I run a creative agency. These are the things I think about, and am sometimes compelled to write. More...

The failures of the Christmas slogan generator

Dec 11 2007
11

Stuff like this always makes me laugh. Here are two Canadian Christmas campaigns for two mobile phone companies, both running at the same time:

Share the Joy (Bell) Share the Joy

On the left, Bell. On the right, its main competitor, Rogers. Demonstrating how much I actually pay attention to commercials, I had seen both of these campaigns, but every time I saw the slogan, I assumed that it was always associated with whatever commercial I was currently watching. It wasn’t until the other night when my girlfriend asked of the Bell commercial, “wait… isn’t that Roger’s slogan?”

If you’re going to share the joy, you might as well share slogans, too.

  • Danny

    DOES stuff like that happen often ? Maybe once in a blue moon I suppose. Maybe next Christmas season’s ad campaigns, one company may hold back until they see the competitor’s slogan or have a back up ad.

    Danny (Ottawa613 on Twitter)

  • http://thereisnobox.ca jted

    My ‘guess’ is that the competing ad agencies both did concurrent market research on the same demographic at the same time and their super-computers (ie: Macs) spat out the same ad. Bell added the obligatory beaver, Rogers added the ubiquitous glitter. Oh what fun.

    Telus did similar research, and came close to signing off with “The Joy Share”, but then stuck with the DJ fish.

  • http://76design.com steve

    that is seriously hilarious. they’re both such big lumbering dinosaurs of companies they probably share the same marketing department and haven’t even noticed yet.

    “oh crap – we still have staff working in that building? rogers moved in last year. whoops!”

  • http://www.ryananderson.ca Ryan

    Telus’ campaign right now is “Meet Awesome,” which to me is a horrible insult to advertising copy.

    The funny thing is, Bell is Cossette and Rogers is Publicis. This has been going on for weeks now, though. I’m surprised that one of them didn’t pull their campaign.

    Reminds me of a time when I was at the PR firm that we came up with the same slogan for a childhood obesity campaign as a margarine company. Luckily, we caught it in time. Still, I guess things like that happen from time to time.

  • http://www.acriley.com Charlotte

    OMG!! That is too funny, Ryan. (Both the Bell/Rogers slogan match and the margarine/childhood obesity campaign.) This is definitely going in my blog’s weekly wrap-up of good reads. Thanks to you (and your girlfriend!) for the tip-off.

  • http://www.spaceandtime.wordpress.com Nick Iannitti

    I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Zellers also appears to have stolen the schtick that Best Buy was doing last year (and is continuing this year): “discover the wow.” While they didn’t steal the slogan directly, they did steal the concept of people giving “reactions” to each other as opposed to simply presents. What really made it obvious on the Zellers commercial was that the first woman opens a large gift box and takes out the word “WOW” which is printed in such a similar font to the Best Buy posters, it’s hard not to notice.

    It’s nice to see that even the large corporations haven’t forgotten that the real meaning of Christmas is sharing. Oh, and the birth of our saviour, longer store hours.

  • http://www.ryananderson.ca Ryan

    Advertising 101:

    January – October: “Buy, buy, buy.”
    November – December: “Give, give, give”

  • Anonymous

    On the left, Bell. On the right, its main competitor, Rogers. Demonstrating how much I actually pay attention to commercials

  • http://www.christmascentral.com/cont...ristmas-lights LED Christmas Lights

    On the left, Bell. On the right, its main competitor, Rogers. Demonstrating how much I actually pay attention to commercials

  • Bob Jenkins

    You really can't beat the squirrel or whatever it is holding the Christmas wreath though. That is too cute.

  • http://www.christmascentral.com/content/pages/artificial-christmas-trees-main Pre Lit Christmas

    Maybe once in a blue moon I suppose. Maybe next Christmas season's ad campaign. I can't wait to get our Pre-Lit Christmas tree out and start trimming it.