Category: Advertisements

  • Remembering the Radically Canadian Marketing Campaign

    In 1996, the Canadian Football League was faced with a dilemma. Having just ended a three-year run of having teams based in the United States, the CFL was retreating north and returning with an all-Canadian lineup. The Baltimore Stallions, the defending Grey Cup champions, relocated to Montreal to become the reborn Alouettes. How could the CFL create an opportunity out of its failed American expansion experiment?

    Go radical. That’s how. As the season was about to kick off, the CFL launched a national “Radically Canadian” marketing campaign that was both patriotic and quite edgy. While “Radically Canadian” instilled a sense of Canadian swagger that was rather rare, the campaign also included slogans such as “We Play By Our Rules”, “It’s Called a Rouge, Get the Point?”, “One Tough Mother”, and the famous “Our Balls Are Bigger.”

    1996 CFL Schedule with the Radically Canadian Logo
    The 1996 CFL schedule featuring the Radically Canadian logo
    (source: Canadian Football Research Society)

    The Radically Canadian logo appeared on the league’s website, publications, and promotional materials. Fans could purchase t-shirts, hats, and sweatshirts from the online “Rad Shop.” There was even a Radically Canadian dance CD produced. You can find these items for sale secondhand on a number of online sites.

    The online “Rad Shop” on the CFL website in 1996

    Of course, the campaign wasn’t without controversy. Some found the “Our Balls Are Bigger” and “One Tough Mother” references too risqué.  Some teams didn’t carry merchandise with the slogans for fear of offending customers. And, “Radically Canadian” didn’t translate well into French, causing fears its use could potentially stoke English-French tensions that were running high in the mid 1990s.

    Source: Montreal Gazette, 13 July 1996, page 63 (newspapers.com)

    But, in the end “Radically Canadian” represented a serious effort and investment by an old league looking to reinvigorate itself and broaden its appeal to a younger Canadian fanbase it would need to cultivate for the future. As a marketer and fan, this author gives the campaign a thumbs up. It’s been almost thirty years since the CFL introduced this marketing campaign. Given the current environment, one has to wonder if now just might be a good time to dust off the old “Our Balls Are Bigger” merchandise and once again be “Radically Canadian.”

  • The Edmonton Elks 2.0

    This is the third of a series of posts that will explore the stories behind the names of the existing Canadian Football League teams. See the previous post on the Calgary Stampeders.

    Throughout the long history of Canadian football, there’s been very little controversy surrounding team nicknames. Sure, there was a time in the not too distant past where there was one team called the Rough Riders and another called the Roughriders. But, for the most part the country’s professional football club names have been a bit quirky sounding but certainly not eyebrow raising.

    The one exception to this rule is Edmonton.

    Football has been played in the Alberta capital since 1895. Just as it is today, the early Edmonton team’s main rival was Calgary. The story goes that a Calgary sportswriter took a jab at the Edmonton team by calling them “the Esquimaux” (the French translation of Eskimos) in reference to the rather cold northern Alberta climate. The Edmonton team embraced the insult and used the moniker for a number of years before adopting the Anglicized version of the word in 1910.

    The team was known as the Edmonton Elks in 1922, foreshadowing a name change that would come a century later, and played Queen’s University in the Grey Cup that year.

    The original Eskimo team folded in the 1920s. In 1938, the Edmonton Eskimos were reborn and played in the Western Interprovincial Football Union. However, this team too ceased operations due to the onset of the Second World War.

    An advertisement taken out by Hudson's Bay Company cheering on the new Edmonton Eskimos (1949)
    An ad taken out by Hudson’s Bay Company cheering on the new Edmonton Eskimos (source: Edmonton Journal, 3 September 1949, page 18.

    It wasn’t until 1949 that the current Edmonton club returned to the WIFU. Once again Edmonton adopted the Eskimos moniker although there were some suggestions that the team be called the Oilers, the name later given to the city’s future professional hockey team.

    For the next seventy years, the Edmonton Eskimos represented Northern Alberta and were considered a model CFL franchise. They won three Grey Cups in a row in the 1950s and won five championships from 1978-1982, an astonishing feat no other team has been able to accomplish.

    However. over time a growing number of people voiced their concern over the use of the name “Eskimos.” Facing mounting public pressure, the team announced that it would be dropping the “Eskimos” name in July 2020.

    A year later, June 1, 2021, the team announced its new yet familiar name: the Edmonton Elks.

    The current Edmonton Elks primary logo (sportslogos.net)

  • Advertisement for 1951 Toronto Argonaut Season Tickets

    Toronto Argonauts season ticket advertisement in the Toronto Star

    It’s the summer of 1951 in southern Ontario, and the Toronto Argonauts are in the final push to sell season tickets for the upcoming season. Here is an ad that appeared in the Toronto Star on June 14 soliciting fans to purchase (or “subscribe for”) tickets for the Argos’ home games at Varsity Stadium.

    Check out the pricing for these tickets. $17.10 for the best seats in the house. That’s still less than $200 in today’s dollars. Good value for six games.

    The Argos went 7-5 in 1951, third place in the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union but good enough to qualify for the postseason. One of their star players that season was a running back named Ulysses “Crazy Legs” Curtis. He was one of the first black players to don the Double Blue.

  • Sacramento Gold Miners in a Wild West Shoot Out

    Ad for the Sacramento Gold Miners' home opener
    Source: The Sacramento Bee, 17 July 1993, page 17.

    In 1993, the CFL expanded into the United States with the addition of the Sacramento Gold Miners. Here is an ad that appeared in the Sacramento Bee hyping the Gold Miners’ home opener at Hornet Field vs. the Calgary Stampeders.

    The ad features a comparison of Sacramento quarterback David Archer to Calgary quarterback Doug Flutie.

    Calgary won the game 38-36 in front of a crowd of 20,082.