Earls twitter feed doesn't exactly have Kardashian levels of followers.
They had no idea this would get huge like this.
As UCB said, they wanted it to get huge. They just misread the tea leaves on how big of a market the latte sipping crowd is relative to how numerous the supporters of Canadian industry are. And that is the fault of whomever was in charge of this promotional campaign. As noted, we're already a populace that's generally upset at being battered around by outside parties. So for Earls - with more restaurants in Alberta than anywhere else - to step up and launch a campaign centred around the necessity of buying foreign beef due to an insinuation that Alberta and Canadian producers are not humane was very poorly thought out.
Last edited by Resolute 14; 05-02-2016 at 11:31 AM.
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Yup. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. They could have quietly switched suppliers and nobody would have noticed. Instead, they decided to brag about moving to an American supplier while insinuating that Canadian producers are inhumane. As a PR move, it was not handled well at all.
It was a calculated move.
They're not stupid. They know that Albertans would have a fit with this change, they simply don't care. This was obviously done to appeal to different markets and they apparently value those markets more than the bit of business they might lose in Alberta because of this.
Most people are only pretending to be outraged, it's the new cool thing to do. Most of the people boycotting them are people that weren't going to go there anyway, they just want to participate in the fake outrage. One month from now, very few people will care
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Most people are only pretending to be outraged, it's the new cool thing to do. Most of the people boycotting them are people that weren't going to go there anyway, they just want to participate in the fake outrage. One month from now, very few people will care
They talked about this last night on the National, and one thing that was brought up was Earl's serving Shrimp, which is apparently a nightmare industry for the workers.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
They're not stupid. They know that Albertans would have a fit with this change, they simply don't care. This was obviously done to appeal to different markets and they apparently value those markets more than the bit of business they might lose in Alberta because of this.
It was a calculated move I agree, but it is far too early for you to say they were not stupid. Not when they are directly risking their largest base of operations against future growth plans into an American market already neck deep in competition.
It is also curious to me given their apparent new target audience is also a demographic more likely to be vegetarian/vegan than any other demographic. It is a curious campaign.
Will be interesting to see what the sales look like since the swap. For all the 'outrage' I'm told they've been just as busy, in Calgary at least. Full weekly sales figures will be out on Wednesday so we'll see.
Where is the golden child Justin Trudeau in this? You can bet if this was a Quebec industry being targeted like this he'd be tweet up a storm supporting Quebec.
Do you guys read the news? After 30 years of non-stop roll-backs of tariffs, the massive expansion of global trade, we are starting to see some serious blow-back.
Will be interesting to see what the sales look like since the swap. For all the 'outrage' I'm told they've been just as busy, in Calgary at least. Full weekly sales figures will be out on Wednesday so we'll see.
They are minus 3 visits from me and my friends who purposefully went somewhere else last Thursday.
