Coin Branding Inc. | One First Canadian Place, Suite 350 | Toronto, ON M5X 1C1o. 416.941.9456 | c. 416.560.0928 | andris@coinbranding.com | coinbranding.com

Great branding means businessTM

Canadian TirePositioning / Name / Tagline

Canada's largest retailer by sales has more than $10-billion in annual revenue. The company’s executive leader-ship contacted us after reading an excerpt from Brand: It Ain’t the Logo* (*It’s what people think of youTM).

Unlike several competitors including Walmart, Canadian Tire did not have its own “value brand.” The company sought an in-house label, to apply across a wide range of product categories, that offered similar quality to the competitive national brands but at a lower price, and with fewer “bells and whistles.”

It was my honour to play a direct role in coaching the Canadian Tire team on following rigorous brand discipline while considering several viable brand positions, more than 600 names and 50 taglines. Rigorous brand discipline in this context included continuous focus on the specific objectives the name and tagline must achieve, which – especially given the limited marketing resources Canadian Tire was to put behind its value brand – include expressing, in an authentic and highly memorable fashion, the brand’s unique position.

The ultimate choice of name, LikeWise, does its job by conveying the value brand’s “like” but not identical qualities to the national brand. The chosen tagline – Just what you need – reinforces the like features of the value brand, and through a double entendre, suggests that LikeWise is exactly what the consumer needs.