Canada, Beer and The Least Common Denominator (or: “Proud to be Canadian”)

Waving Maple Leaf (you didn't know that, did you?)
At the very end of our intercultural training for my exchange semester in Canada, the professor showed us a little video to loosen up and cap our session.

We had talked about culture and intercultural communication in general before, about Austrian an Canadian culture in particular and we had even discussed about some “strange encounters” between Canadians and Austrians. We had heard lots about the “Britishness” of Canadian culture, and how it is different from the US in some way. And still, when we watched the video (which is from 2000 by the way), we had really no clue what it really was about (or “a boot”).

Almost four months and some Canucks games, pints of (not very well-tasting) Molson Canadian and “intercultural interactions” later, I feel like I know a great deal more about Canada. Continue reading Canada, Beer and The Least Common Denominator (or: “Proud to be Canadian”)

AOL, Customer Experience and the “new” realities in 2006.

If members…are trying to provoke the Consultant into being unprofessional, immediately cancel the account. (AOL Offer Matrix 2006, according to Consumerist.com)

The dominating perspective my three courses at Sauder School of Business (Market Research, Consumer Behaviour and Integrated Marketing Communications) use to look at their topic is advertising. Even though market research and consumer behaviour teach other topics and usually look at the broad picture, it often comes down to research about questions concerning the framing and/or distribution of messages. This is great on the one hand, as I never had courses the rigorous, strategic and marketing-orientated North-American way. On the other hand, the consumer behaviours course – as great as it is – hasn’t talked much about experience, satisfaction, post-purchase behaviour, word-of-mouth and all the other things that exist next to advertising. Apparently, this is going to change now. To finish our discussion about overpromising/underpromising, we watched this little clip:

What did Vincent do? He recorded, he blogged, he got his story on Consumerist.com, he was on national TV not long after that. Hunderts of thousands of people could see first-hand how AOL treated a customer who didn’t want to have the service anymore.

What did AOL do? First, they fired “John” and declined any corporate wrongdoing. Then, after serveral other customers and even employees came up with similar stories, they pledged to change the internal procedures. Did that happen? I don’t know. But it is nice to see how the communication model AOL and so many other companies still believe in clashed big-time with the power of losely connected individuals. As AOL’s retention manual was posted on the Consumerist in the course of this events, a perfect example of how they perceive(d) “communication” as a one-directional and not necessarily human distribution of a message were revealed.

This happend to AOL in summer 2006, without twitter and a way less developed “social media” environment. Now, almost 3 years later, things are even faster and even more “unpredictable” for companies. As David Armano described in detail in his case about the Motrin Moms, brands can get in serious trouble within few hours, with all the details saved on the web forever.

So, what’s the good thing? There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Budgets are reallocated, broadcast media is losing and new companies with a more egalitarian view on people’s role in marketing emerge. And hopefully even more business school students are going to see the following bullet points in consumer behaviour courses:

  • Listen to the squeaky wheel
  • Look for complaints – make complaining easy
  • Accept responsibility
  • Quick action
    • Replacement
    • Repair
    • Refund
    • Exchange
  • Empower and train employees

In my case, they were accompanied by the words “Earlier in the days, you could’ve ignored things. There were not enough journalists to write about everything. Nowadays, everybody is a journalist. There is no way you can ignore things now.”

Hawaii – 7 days in (actually more than) 7 pictures

What do you do when you are on exchange to Vancouver and have a so called reading break? You decide to go to a sunny island everybody dreams about and that is far, far away from where you usually live. And that’s what my fellow Austrian exchangies and lovely people from the Netherlands, France and Australia did.

So our journey to Oahu, Hawaii began in the evening of the Thursday before reading break. Responsible and forward-looking as I am, I posponed packing to the day of departure and spent the night before going out and – together with Wolfi – carrying a “tired” friend of a friend to his residence until 5 in the morning. Well, unplaned social gatherings are always the best.

Anyways, we did get our stuff packed, got Christine through the US border control and finally arrived at Seattle International airport. Spirits were up and some fiercely fought UNO battles began. I mean, what else would you do on a small little airport, where everything except Starbucks is closed, the seats have armrests so as to make nobody feel comfortable and your flight leaves at 6 am, with check-in starting at 4? See, that was my point.

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Well, some hours later, we were finally sitting in the airplane, where I fell asleep quickly, as I always do in my famous sleeping position – sitting, mouth wide opened.  However, my dreams of white sand and clear water were suddenly interrupted by a message that sounded through the speakers. Technical difficulties, unboard the airplane (unboard means “get out of here”, for more about airline language watch George Carlin), wait a so-called “hour”.
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Hours later we were still stranded at the airport, messages from Delta were spare and not satisfying. But finally, as we had already missed our connection flight in Salt Lake City, they gave us a new flight. And what flight they gave us.
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From Seattle to Atlanta with an overnight stay in the Renaissance Hotel and a first class flight to Honolulu on the ensuing day. I leave it to you to calculate CO2 emissions and time wasted. On Saturday at 4 pm, some 24 hours late, we finally arrived on Oahu.

After being surprised by the rather strong wind checking into our 8 bedroom hostel room, we did what everybody does at Waikiki Beach: We enjoyed the sunset. However, enjoying doesn’t really fit my experience. I wasn’t touched. I wasn’t relaxing. I wasn’t really enjoying the surroundings, I didn’t let it “in”. I was more in the 24/7, “did that” “done that” mode that so often makes us walk around more or less unattanding to great things that pass by left and right. I didn’t even take my camera with me. Coming back to the hostel, we saw a rather unsurprising picture. A little beer pong tournament going on in the parking lot. North America is really into drinking games.
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No, we didn’t join the tournament, but the night was still short, thanks to Conny, who dragged us to Sandy Beach at 10 am. Swimming at Sandy Beach more or less equals drowning. However, watching bodysurfers and finally open the inner eye to the surroundings was better anyway.

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Another short night later, we united with our friends from UBC, lovely people from the Netherlands, France and Australia, to take the bus to Hanauma Bay, a natural reserve maybe half an hour outside of Honolulu.
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After watching a short instructional video you are allowed to snorkle with beautiful fish between coralls that had built in the former vulcano crater. I will never forget the feelings I had when I suddenly found myself swimming side by side with a sea turtle. I am not a good swimmer – actually I am a bad swimmer – and I am not necessarily a big fan of the things that are going on in your average ocean, but this was amazing. Seeing this lovely animal diving calmly made me smile. Not exactly a good idea when you are wearing a snorkle, but still.

Yet another long night and delicious food at a Thai restaurant later, we started the next day lying at Waikiki Beach, 2 minutes away from our Hostel. It was only two days before our departure to Vancouver. And I had finally arrived. Enjoying clouds, enjoying the rain, enjoying the blue sky, enjoying the sand, enjoying everything and nothing. There I am, wondering what life is about, about priorities and the luck I have to see more of the world than most of the people in my age. To enjoy the company of lovely people from all around the world, that inspire me and always make me want to know more, see more and feel more.
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And as always when you whish something would never end, you see the end standing 2 feet in front of you. So we rented a little car and planned our second to last day on Oahu.


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Starting from our Hostel on Waikiki Beach we drove basically all across the Island, always following the coast, with it’s amazing beaches and venues. We ended way up in Mokuleia, where the road turned into a rocky way with too many holes to actually move on.
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As you can see, the trip was definitely worth it. Even though there were no big waves on the north shore, even though Pearl Harbor was already closed when we arrived and it started to rain heavily; Even though they played Rihanna about 1000 times on the radio it was an amazing last day.

And there it was, departure day. Diamond Head, the mountain top viewpoint right next to Waikiki beach was closed, so we decided to use the Hawaii backup option number one: spending the final hours on the beach, letting our minds wander and enjoying the time.

Eventually, the place where we were headed to wasn’t one to have bad feelings about.