Bombardier

Bombardier found itself the target of negative media due to the transfer of jobs to other countries, union pressures and other issues. The company needed to regain control of its corporate image, better leverage its reputation and turn itself into a brand that the Canadian public and key opinion leaders would embrace.

A further challenge was that most Canadian consumers think of Bombardier as “the snowmobile company” and don’t interact with the brand’s trains or planes as they do with day-to-day consumer products. Taxi needed a natural connection to link Canadians to products they don’t really experience. The answer: Canadian pride, the most common and positive thing that connects Bombardier and Canadians.

Ironically, Taxi found the trigger for this emotion not at home but elsewhere: Canadian pride is at its highest when Canada performs on the international stage. Based on this insight, the campaign is a portrait of the Canadian spirit abroad. One television ad shows Bombardier trains winding their way through the countryside and the lives of people in China; another takes a plane through Morocco. A third spot, which aired during the Beijing Olympics, featured people from around the world embracing a little bit of Canada during the Games. Rounding out the campaign was a series of print ads showing stylized renderings of Bombardier trains and planes on stamps – a classic symbol of travel.

Media platforms coincided with Canadians performing well on the international stage, evoking Canadian pride and engaging emotionally with the audience, which in turn worked to increase Canadians’ support for and pride about Bombardier. In less than a year, tracking showed double-digit growth in positive brand attributes among both opinion leaders and the general public.