TAXI DELIVERS KNOCKOUT PUNCH - Strategy

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TAXI • BOMBARDIER
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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.
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