Take the Giant Screen Down Now: Telus damaging its own brand equity by imposing harassment on community

Monday 31 October 2011

Telus damaging its own brand equity by imposing harassment on community

The following is an email sent to Telus media relations group (jim.johannsson@telus.com; shawn.hall@telus.com) and to the Telus investor relations group (ir@telus.com) on Oct 27^th and 30^th 2011:

Telus,

Did you know that your advertising is the source of much anger and resentment by a large community in downtown Vancouver? The video screen operator, PavCo, has recklessly and contemptuously erected a new giant high definition LED screen directly in front of hundreds of residential glass homes and is blasting your ads at high intensity from an area called Terry Fox Plaza. Check out: http://takethegiantscreendownnow.blogspot.com/ (and recall that blogs are read from the bottom up)

Shawn Hall of Telus has advised our group that Telus is "satisfied that the issue has been solved" and that continuous blasting of your ads into our glass homes on main event nights is considered acceptable by Telus. Given Telus' supposed commitment to community values and social responsibility, might you wish to reconsider this position? More importantly, might you want to reconsider your branding of the BC Place Stadium altogether? This issue is quickly going to transition from a PavCo problem into a huge Telus brand equity problem.

- - -

Please respond. We are referring to your incessant Telus advertising appearing on a giant video screen disrupting an entire community. Although Telus does not own the screen at Terry Fox Plaza, it is YOUR advertising which is assaulting us in our glass homes. We are certain that your investors and your marketing team will be very concerned about your firm’s brand equity in a sensitive case like this. Do not miss this opportunity to inform your teams of this quickly escalating and potentially explosive issue. Our group will soon begin exposing advertisers as ‘enablers’ of the giant screen (through your ad revenue support) and will start shaming those companies publicly. We thought it would be fair to advise your company of this first so that you could act responsibly and pull your advertising from this screen.

Regards,

TtGSDN

Taking inventory of complaints received

The following agencies, departments and organisations have been made known to our organisation as having received complaints about the giant video screen at Terry Fox Plaza:

- Premier Christy Clark’s office
- Minister Pat Bell's office (PavCo Minister)
- Deputy Minister Dana Hayden’s office
- MLA Mary McNeil's office (False Creek N)
- MLA Adrian Dix (Vancouver Kingsway)
- MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert (West-End)
- MLA Jenny Kwan (Mount Pleasant)
- MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East)
- MP Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre)
- BC Ombudsperson office

- BC Information and Privacy Commissioner
- BC PavCo’s Executive Management
- BC PavCo’s Chair and Board of Directors
- BC PavCo's marketing department
- BC PavCo's general inquiries office
- Pace Group Communications' office
- Mayor Gregor Robertson's office
- City Councillor Geoff Meggs' office
- City Councillor Andrea Reimer’s office
- Various other City Councillor's offices

- City Manager Penny Ballem

- City General Manager Brenda Prosken

- City Parks Commissioner Constance Barnes
- City Planning Department

- City Real Estate Services Department

- City Development Permit Board
- Enquiries Centre for Billboard Permitting
- City's Board of Variance office
- Chief Building Inspector's office
- Deputy Chief Building Official's office
- City Noise Complaints office
- City 311 Hotline

- City Legal Services Department

- Chief Medical Officer, Van Coastal Health
- Vancouver Police Department

- Insurance Corporation of BC (ICBC)

- False Creek Residents Association
- Vancouver Public Space Network
- Budweiser (Labatt)
- PepsiCo
- Dr Pepper (Snapple Group)
- The Province News
- Telus Corporation

Quick summary of the situation

BC PavCo, a BC provincial agency, decided in September 2011 to contravene several sections of the Vancouver City Signage By-laws (meant to protect citizens from exactly this type of billboard harassment) by erecting the biggest baddest high-definition LED giant video screen in all of Vancouver at Terry Fox Plaza. This was done for the sole purpose of generating revenues by forcibly pumping Telus, Budweiser and Pepsi advertising at the local community, with no consideration paid to the fact that this daily flashing assault would also be pumped into the living rooms, across dinner tables and into the children's bedrooms of residents in the immediately adjacent glass residential community. PavCo's response to the outcry from this community demanding that the screen be moved elsewhere so that it is not directly facing hundreds of glass residential homes? – ‘Too Bad For You’

BC PavCo's Freedom of Information Act violation

...BC PavCo CEO Warren Buckley was legally required to provide documents proving the ownership of the giant video screen at Terry Fox Plaza. Under a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by citizen’s group 'TtGSDN', PavCo’s deadline to confirm the identity of the screen’s true owner/operator was January 23, 2012. Remarkably, in December 2011 Deputy Minister of JTI Dana Hayden told MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert that Telus Corporation is the true owner and operator of all three outdoor screens at BC Place Stadium. Interestingly, neither Telus nor PavCo have since asked the press for a retraction of media reports suggesting the same. Will Warren Buckley try to continue hiding these documents from the public despite repeated attempts by the media and the public to acquire them? The Office of the Information & Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia is now investigating PavCo's non-compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.