During a presentation at the Canadian Club, Guy Laurence, Rogers president and CEO, as well as self-described ‘new Canadian,’ bestowed our nation with words of telecom and national branding wisdom.
While Laurence says he admires Canada’s “quite patriotism,” he feels it’s time for our country to “step out of the shadows and into the light on the world stage.”
Rogers’ CEO believes that Canada has two distinct problems related to brand. The first one is that our country’s brand is not “well defined” in the world and second, that Canada is not ambitious enough when it comes to self-promotion.
Laurence goes on to discuss Canadian media and artist success stories like Vice, Justin Bieber and the forever dreamy Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling, before delving into a world he’s more familiar with, the telecom industry.
“Leading media companies, like Rogers, also have a role to play. So we look forward to participating in the Minister’s upcoming consultation. I’m glad to see that her consultation paper is promoting Canadian content globally, and if it’s not clear from my remarks today, we support a funding model that exploits this huge opportunity,” writes Laurence.
“We’re asking the government to recognize that there is enough money in the system already. We don’t need more funds– we need to consolidate the alphabet soup of funds so we can reduce complexity and administrative costs,” he continued.
Rogers CEO describes a digital-first future where content isn’t bound by platforms and instead is distributed on a more neutral basis.
“We’re asking for content to be funded on a platform neutral basis… for content to be created for all distribution platforms, whether it’s a TV screen, a movie screen, or a smartphone screen. Consumers are going digital. Rogers is going digital. Canada needs to go digital. Content should end up anywhere and everywhere it makes sense.”
The Canadian Club is a club in Toronto that meets several times a month to hear lunchtime speeches given by invited guests from the fields of politics, law, business, the arts, the media, and other prominent fields.
To read Laurence’s entire Canadian Club speech check out this link.
[source]Rogers[/source]
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