CIRA features Mounties, hockey, bears, and maple syrup in new commercials.
Last year, .Ca country code manager CIRA aired a series of commercials in an advertising campaign called Don’t Be a Traitor. Featuring Canadian staples such as Mounties and maple syrup, the commercials espoused the benefits of choosing .ca over .com.
CIRA says the TV commercials were a big success, and it has returned with four new spots this year. The 15-second ads will run on Canadian TV starting Monday, September 14.
The commercials state that Canadian shoppers are four times more likely to choose .ca over .com and refer people to the domain name Choose.ca.
My favorite ad is “Put it on the net”, embedded below. Other spots are Domain name of thrones, A winning hand, and Bear necessities.
What is their motivation for these campaigns since they are a non-profit?
Also, why do they own https://www.whois.com/whois/cira.net if .ca is supposed to be the only way to go?
And why do they also own, https://www.whois.com/whois/yuincanada.com?
I love all of their .CA commercials! You have to be Canadian to understand some of the commercials.
Canadians don’t care how the rest of the World thinks of us, we only care what we think of each other.
Canadians are also passive aggressive by nature, we always get the last laugh! Lol
You’re passive-aggressive? So the kindness is all a front? 🙂
Just don’t cross the line and you will be fine. haha
Most Canadians are modest as well. We don’t need a pat on the back for everything that we do.
Any sensible person would know they need to get a .com after seeing that ad.
.Com is becoming the dominant force in many countries, Canada, Australia, and now India according to NamesCon panelists. It is sucking all the air out of the room!
Canadians don’t trust anything outside of their own country.
.CA will always have a place here in Canada.
snoopy1267 is just an old .com pusher (he does it under every news). Just ignore him.
As long as the ads are not unethical, I think they are good resources of public education. Hopefully, more TLD operators would do this.
You mean like .US, right?
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
.US should be more popular in the USA, like .CA is here in Canada, but it will probably never happen, unfortunately.
You can’t “educate” people to not use .com. That isn’t education, it is BS spin.
What I meant is educating more people that there is a wide variety of choices of domain extensions, not just .com or .net or .org.
As a Canadian yet with ties to the USA I can clarify a bit.
The dot ca is by far the go to domain for most small to medium sized Canadian businesses. The reach is generally within Canada and thus a .CA fits the needs just fine. Of course owning the dot com is crucial (IMO) for a world stage but thousands and thousands of business here year after year only need a .CA. That I would imagine is their target.
Would the savvy prefer the dot com, most would if it was available but as we know, most cannot obtain it.
These commercials in no way attempt to de thrown dot com, rather a fun way to remind Canadians they have an option and frankly everywhere I look here, they are taking it.
Based on what I can see it is likely ingrained here more so than .US is on the other side of the boarder.
Now as a domainer I prefer dot com of course and can by experience state a good dot ca will see but a fraction of what the dot com would on the resale market.
I can also tell you via experience personally that major US corp’s entering Canada also recognize the importance of dot ca when entering Canada and the smart one;s grab it!
P.S. It is not snowing here.
.CA is ingrained in us.
.CA is also the default domain extension used by the Canadian Government.
For the US Government it’s .GOV. If the US Government used .US instead of .GOV, .US would be a lot more popular in the States.
I agree! Very good point Mark, never thought of that point.
The country code for the USA is .com.
There is no place for .us, it is not like most other cctlds. More comparable to .ws or .la.