bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999) — Summer 1999 // Été 1999, pp. 29–34
How do you make a statement in New York City, the self-proclaimed capital of the world, of attitude, of cool?
If you are a person, you wear black and get a publicist. If you are a company, you spend millions on PR, marketing and special events. And if you are a Canadian diplomatic mission? Rescue American hostages in a distant land and make the Ambassador our Consul General? Oops, been there, done that.
So, how do you get jaded New Yorkers to think that Canada counts and that they should pay more attention to it? How do you project a dynamic image of Canada in one of the busiest, toughest but influential marketplaces in the world? And how do you do this on a budget that wouldn’t rent the beach house for a Hampton wedding?
The Canadian Consulate in New York had an idea: the Upper North Side: Canada in New York Season of Events, a concerted effort of public diplomacy, business development and cultural promotion to project our brand image of Canada in New York. Why? To strengthen Canada’s image among New York decision-makers. To highlight Canadian excellence, innovation and creativity. To advance Canadian public policy objectives. To attract investment to Canada. And to grow Canadian trade.
The New York City Setting
The Upper North Side Season had its origins in the work and thinking of the Consulate on the nature of Canadian diplomacy in New York. Simply put:
• New York City is a world capital and home of global players and forces (financial markets, multinational corporations, global media, world cultural centre, ideas capital that had the potential to exert a tremendous impact on Canada;
• Canada has enormous interests at play here but little visibility or leverage;
• our diplomacy has to vie for the attention of the financial, corporate, media and cultural elites in fierce competition with others;
• developing a brand image is a way of getting across our message;
• and public diplomacy is the critical means of getting across the brand.
The Consulate had taken a number of steps to enhance its public diplomacy: building a ground level office with a public face, establishing a web site (Canada-ny.org), publishing a monthly newsletter (formerly News and Arts, now the Upper North Side: Canadian Events in New York), hosting numerous events, working with Canadian institutions in New York and developing an identifiable logo.
All in all, a good start. But New York City is the toughest place in the world to make an impression. Companies pay millions to advertise on Times Square, on buses or in the media outlets, and branding is a city religion. There are buildings whose sole purpose is not to sell goods but to project a brand image. Niketown, a giant temple of 57th Street, is there for image not for sales; ABC, MTV, FOX and NBC have store-front studios and shops to let America see them.
What could we do?
The Brand of Canada
Five major Canadian cultural institutions were coming to New York in the fall and winter of 1998: the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the National Ballet of Canada, the Canadian Centre of Architecture, the Stratford Festival and the National Gallery of Canada.
We decided to see if we could package these five major events along with others we would devise and present them in a coordinated marketing program. We would also check with other Canadian institutions and corporations to see if they had events in New York. All these events together offered the opportunity to assert a strong Canadian presence and profile in New York.
Our Season would not be one of megabucks. But by bringing together a number of New York and Canadian partners we could leverage influence and project a dynamic and modern image of Canada.
We defined our own brand image of Canada around four themes: Canada: Stable and Evolving (130 year success story; a living constitution; great diversity; model world citizen); Canada: Friend and Partner (neighbour by geography, ally by history and shared interests; partner in the largest trading relationship on earth; shared North American stewardship; complementary approaches to common social challenges); A Canada on the Move (the Maple Leaf Miracle; great economic fundamentals; world competitor; technological innovator; free trader; and best quality of life on earth); and Canada: Hot and Cool (hot culture; cool place to visit).
Thus, our Season would seek to project a modern image of a confident and vibrant Canada. It would promote trade and investment by creating awareness of the opportunities of investing in and trading with Canada. And it would promote Canadian culture, by highlighting the excellence of Canadian arts and culture.
From Brand to Plan
As a first step, the Consulate thought broadly about what kind of events, in addition to the five major ones already coming, would capture the reality of Canada.
We brainstormed about popular images of Canada and how we could exploit that interest. For example, we kicked around various ideas of how to draw attention to the 125th anniversary of the RCMP – the Mountie Hot Air Balloon over Central Park or a lecture at the New York Police Academy. We finally settled on bringing down two RCMP on horses to participate in the first Terry Fox Run in Central Park. With the NHL, we sponsored an exhibit of the Hockey Hall of Fame in one of the buildings of the Rockefeller Centre in the heart of midtown Manhattan.
We looked for issues that would highlight Canadian public policy leadership – human security (human rights and protection of children in armed conflict) and trade liberalization were obvious choices.
For the economic angle of the Canadian image, we pushed the Canadian Society of New York to start a Canadian CEO series profiling Canadian business success stories and leaders. And we wanted to spotlight a cutting edge industry in Canada. After some thought, we decided to put together a one day conference and trade show on the Canadian animation industry involving provinces, municipalities, multi-media companies, software companies and teaching institutes.
A current snapshot of Canadian society would also need events with Canadian music, literature, personalities and cuisine. Building on earlier visits to the East Coast Music Awards in the Atlantic provinces, the Consulate and the owners of the fabled Bottom Line music club in Greenwich Village hit upon the concept of a monthly contemporary music series, featuring Canadian music groups to be called the North of the Border Series. We rejigged our monthly classical music recitals in the Consulate into the Inniskillin Wine and Music Series featuring up and coming Canadian classical artists. We devised a Canadian Conversation Series with famous Canadians. We got the James Beard House to feature the best Canadian chefs in New York on one special evening and we convinced the celebrated 57/57 restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel to present two weeks of Canadian cuisine.
Another concept was to build a series of legacy lectures around names of Canadians that ew Yorkers were bound to have New Yorkers were bound to have heard of, for example Marshall McLuhan and Glenn Gould.
Finally, the Consulate wanted a gala event to launch a Canadian Culture Fund which would help finance major Canadian performances in New York in the future. Why not an evening on Canadian comedy?
The final step in pulling together the Upper North Side Season was to check to see if other Canadian institutions or performers were coming to New York in that period. As usual, a large number of Canadian artists and performers were on their way here: the Cowboy Junkies, Le Théâtre des Deux Mondes, Ben Heppner, Robert Lepage and Diana Krall among others.
We also approached the provinces on their events in New York. It was important to us to project an image of all the regions of Canada. We met with Quebec House in New York to include their trade, investment and culture events as part of the Season.
We received funding from Ottawa ($150,000) which augmented some funding from the post’s public affairs and cultural affairs budgets ($90,000). We focused on the two main components for the Upper North Side: Canada in New York Season: its packaging and promotion and the actual organization of the events.
From Plan to Package
Our primary tools would be a distinctive logo and slogan, a pamphlet and an official press event to launch the Season.
Since for most New Yorkers, their universe is New York, so accurately captured by the famous New Yorker cartoon which shows the New Yorker’s world map as comprising in exquisite detail the island of Manhattan and Europe and Asia as distant dots in the horizon, we decided to try market our Canadian Season through a New York metaphor.
We rejected a number of ideas: North of 49th (the Canadian Consulate is located on 49th Street and it refers to the 49th parallel): We didn’t think New Yorkers would get the geographic reference. CoNoBo (Country North of the Border), NoCabo (North of the Canadian border): both knock-offs on how New Yorkers shorten their neighborhood names, SoHo being South of Houston. Canada Seasons and True North: too boring.
The Upper North Side? This idea was a take on such well known Manhattan neighbourhoods as the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side and it would show that Canadians are an important part of the city. Perfect!
A Canadian graphic agency, Scott Thornley + Co, designed our look. As the Consulate had already conceived of its own logo, an Apple with a Canadian Maple Leaf, Thornley decided to build on it and modernize its design. He then conceptualized a number of promotional products which would help get out the image and slogan of the Season: magnets, posters, pins, magazine ads, and banners.
The most important promotional tool would be the pamphlet — a 24 page brochure to 70,000 addresses. We bought a mailing list of 45,000 names from a company which specialized in mixing and matching mailing lists from New York cultural organizations. And, we hired a firm to distribute brochures in the corporate headquarters of over 100 major New York multinationals.
We created a new Web site (uppernorthside.org) to serve as our virtual events newsletter to reinforce our presence at Canada-ny.org and canapple.com, our websites.
We decided to risk a press launch when a Canadian-owned restaurant, Estiatoio Milos, offered to host the event. A publicist was hired and a press kit put together. Peter Jennings agreed to be the master of ceremonies.
Alas, Monica Lewinsky did us in. President Clinton showed up in New York to give his first public speech at the Council of Foreign Relations after the deposition of Monica Lewinsky before the Starr Grand Jury. Many of the TV crews we had hoped to cover our event chased the President around town.
The Season
The Season thus started in September and ran through to the end of February. On any given day there was a Canadian event on in New York. That there were probably about 500 other events on any given day was a simple fact of life in New York.
All told, the cost of the events was about half of our total budget. A number of the events had major corporate sponsors including Newcourt Credit Group for the Stratford Festival at City Centre, Seagram for the TRANSformation exhibition, Clearly Canadian for the North of the Border Series, CIBC Wood Gundy and the NHL for the Hockey Hall of Fame and the Four Seasons for the Terry Fox Run.
Achievements
Well, did we achieve what we wanted to?
While there was no Times Square billboard, The Upper North Side; Canada in New York Season of Events had a tremendous payoff for public diplomacy, public policy, trade and investment and cultural promotion for a modest budget.
The Events of the Canada Season
North of the Border Series at
the Bottom Line
- three sold-out Canada nights
- featured bands included The Henrys, Great Big Sea and Blue Rodeo
- featured three Canadian bands, a headliner and two lesser known bands
The Inniskillin Wine and
Music Series
- featured performances by Juillard students
Three major exhibitions
- TRANSformation: Winners of the Prix Saidye Bronfman Award, organized the Canadian Museum of Civilization at the American Craft Museum (Sept-January)
- The Canadian Centre of Architecture’s The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks at the Cooper-Hewitt (Oct-Jan)
- The National Gallery of Canada’s Collection of 18th and 19th Century English and French Drawings (Feb-April) at the Frick Museum
The Stratford Festival at City Centre
Four Canadian dance companies
- The National Ballet, Toronto Dance Theater, Ballet British Columbia, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet
- The National Ballet’s first NY appearance in eleven years earned enormous critical acclaim with three rave reviews in the New York Times alone
Two weekends of Canadian films
event at the Cantor Film Center
- Such A Long Day’s Journey, The Grey Fox, La Déroute and Un 23 août sur Terre
Three Canadian legacy lectures
- Marshall McLuhan Lecture delivered by Tom Wolfe, one of the first journalists to bring the world’s attention to Marshall McLuhan in his 1965 article “What if He’s Right” in New York magazine and author of A Man in Full and Bonfire of the Vanities.
- covered by C-SPAN; and front page of the National Post
- the annual Glenn Gould Lecture hosted by the Royal Conservatory of Music
- the Lionel Gelber lecture
- featuring the winner of the prestigious Lionel Gelber Award, a major Canadian literary award and the largest juried prize of its kind in the world
Three policy conferences
- Human Rights in Canada and the US on the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at NYU
- The Protection of Children in Armed Conflict at Columbia University
- Canada-US Free Trade Agreement: Ten Years Together at the Americas Society
Canada: the Animation Nation
- highlighting excellence in Canadian animation
- included a Master Class starring Sheridan alumni who had created the special effects for blockbuster movies such as Terminator, Jurassic Park, Stars Wars and Spawn
- featured business partnering event with 21 Canadian and 10 US companies that included the production of a 24 page booklet that is now the definitive directory of Canadian Animation Resources
- produced in collaboration with Sheridan College, “the Harvard of Animation” the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, Canadian multimedia software companies, and New York digital companies
Two courses of Canadian cuisine
- special Canadian menu and products at the renowned James Beard House
- featured Canadian chefs Robert Feenie, owner of Vancouver’s Lumière and Andrew Hewson both from the Plaza Athenée, Normand Laprise of New York’s Cena and Montreal Toqué!, Thomas Haas, Daniel’s pastry chef, Ellen Greaves, the executive chef at the Tea Box in 5th Avenue’s Takashimaya and Louis Charest, the chef of the Official Residence
- covered by CBC and Chatelaine. A border snafu choked up the Food Network’s planned half hour show
- two weeks of Canadian cuisine at the Four Seasons’ Fifty Seven Fifty Seven
Canadian Club Conversation Series
- featuring Robert MacNeil & Morley Safer, Michael Adams, Peter C. Newman, James Houston and a serious look at Canadian & American comedy
The Canadian Society of New York
Canadian CEO Series
- heard from CN’s Paul Tellier and Youssef Nasr of the Hongkong Bank of Canada
“Why are Canadians So Funny?”
- A New York institution, the 92nd Street Y, for one night was transformed into an Upper North Side comedy club and celebrity symposium on Canadian popular culture
- Canadians Lorne Michaels, Martin Short and Eugene Levy joined moderator cum analyst Michael J. Fox in a play-by-play on the Canadian psyche
- evening opened with three upcoming Canadian comics — Sean Cullens, Barry Julien and Ophira Eisenberg
- 12 camera crews from all major networks, with reporters from the Daily News, Time Out, New York Observer and the New York Times
We increased Canada’s presence in New York through the pamphlet and advertising, through cooperating with so many New York institutions, through a neat logo and through the sheer volume of events and their coverage in the New York media.
We became an active player with New York cultural, business and policy institutions. We developed a broad network of contacts, both in New York and in Canada, interacting with a wide array of cultural, policy and business groups and developing a reputation as a viable partner for events, conferences and lectures.
The Season
The Season played back into Canada through extensive media coverage in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, National Post, Southam Press, Radio Canada and CBC Radio as Canadian media were interested in the stories of Canadian excellence, creativity and innovation showcased abroad.
The Season
The Season was a way to target our messages on Canadian policy leadership on human security agenda, on the world leading Canadian animation industry and on the performance of the Canadian economy and corporate sector through the CEO series.
On culture, the Season established a Canadian Culture Fund for the presentation of future Canadian events at the prestigious 92nd Street Y.
The Season
The Season created a framework. We now have a recognizable logo, a catchy New York slogan, expertise in promoting and organizing different events for different crowds, the reputation as a reliable partner, the experience in putting together a season and new audiences.
As any effort at “branding” takes many years, the Upper North Side season should be seen as a first step in the continuing effort in public diplomacy to assert the Canadian presence in New York and build Canadian influence, identity and competitiveness both at home and internationally.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999) — Summer 1999 // Été 1999, pp. 29–34. Read the rest of this issue →
