This content was originally published on Morning Brew on March 30, 2022 and was written by Andrew Adam Newman.
Northern exposure
London, Ontario, is a popular city both for Canadian brands to test pilot products before rolling them out across Canada, and for US brands to do so before introducing them in the states.
- It was one of the markets where McDonald’s first piloted its Beyond Meat burger in 2019.
- London also, at least according to local lore, is one of the first places in Canada that McDonald’s introduced its McNuggets and its ill-fated (but obsessed over) pizza. (Both McDonald’s in the US and Canada did not respond to requests for interviews.)
“London, I think, offers the right mix of a large urbanized environment, but still with dynamics that are easier to test with,” Kapil Lakhotia, president and CEO of the London Economic Development Corporation, told us.
Thanks to Canada’s comparatively open immigration policy, Lakhotia said that in London, immigrants make up 25% of the population and more than 140 languages are spoken—all within a regional population of ~700,000.
“All of that creates a very good dynamic for marketers to try out products that would appeal to a variety of different people and a variety of different socioeconomic demographics,” Lakhotia said.
Of course, retailers could gauge responses from a diverse population in a city like New York, but part of a pilot program involves placing and testing advertising, which is a lot more affordable in a market like London.
Pilot programs “have to simulate the rollout of another market,” Bruce Winder, a Toronto-based retail consultant and author of Retail Before, During & After Covid-19, said. “Because when retailers test, it’s all about having new media come out of that market—maybe some TV ads, radio ads, print. In a small market like London, you can control all those things in a vacuum.”
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