The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben calls out Chrystia Freeland's hypocrisy

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben calls out Chrystia Freeland's hypocrisy -The Best Promotional Campaigns ever with Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founder of Chatter AI If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share, so expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD, ready for you. The Ben Mulroney show has been working tirelessly to bring you the voices and the opinions of newsmakers that matter to you. And because Justin Trudeau, rather than do the right thing and call an election when he should have, he has thrust us, the entire country, into the drama that is the liberal leadership race. Gotta do that first. Gotta do that first. I know, I know Trump's a problem, but before we do any of that, you gotta let us get our house in order. Okay, so that's, I take the world as it is. That's the world as it is,

which means the people who are making news, who will have an impact on your life, are the people who could eventually become the liberal leader and our prime minister. One of those people is Christy Freeland. And we have been trying doggedly to book her as an interview on this show. And the invitation is still open.

I suspect it will fall on deaf ears. I will remind anybody listening who knows Ms. Freeland that yes, when I'm alone in front of this microphone, I give my opinions, but when I have someone sitting opposite me, I try to be as respectful as possible because I think that's what our listeners wanna hear. They don't wanna hear me shout down the person here.

Why would I do that? I have good faith conversations with people I disagree with all the time and they end up being great conversations. And I invite Ms. Freeland to take the challenge to come sit with me and face real good faith, but tough questions because I think the time that we live in demands that and the job that she is seeking demands that and so when I find

out that I didn't book an interview with Christia Freeland but Bill Maher of real time with Bill Maher in Los Angeles did that gets my goat because he doesn't know the first thing about the dynamics at play here in Canada. And so, like, let's, let's, for example, for example, he asked her about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the liberal leadership race. And you know, she loved it. We used to have snowbirds before we decided we didn't want to spend our money in the United States. And I don't think this, I mean the reasoning is it's going to put a dent in global warming. I don't think it is.

That you can only idle your car for a minute, I think remotely in three minutes if you're in it, before you can get going. To warm it up. This just pisses people off. And it looks like, as in America, they still haven't gotten the memo that this s*** don't work. So you're against that kind of stuff, right?

Yes. Look, Bill, I have got the menu. I have received the memo, to be a polite Canadian. I have received the memo sir. You know politicians win when they listen to people sincerely and hear what people are saying to them about their lives. And politicians lose when we think we are smarter than the people we work for. I mean I don't even know where to begin. OK, first of all, that is a municipal bylaw from Ottawa that I heard about a month ago.

And you know what I did as a responsible person on radio? I called the mayor's office and I asked him for his information about it. Apparently, it's been in the works for months. It actually sounds worse than it is. But the point is, it's irrelevant to the works for months. It actually sounds worse than it is, but the point is it's irrelevant to the job she is seeking. And you know that when she heard it, she's like, oh, thank God we can talk about this for a few minutes. That's two minutes, we don't have to talk about.

What I actually did, which was be a foot soldier in a government that promoted doggedly, slavishly, a carbon tax that killed jobs, that destroyed businesses, and that took money out of hardworking men and women's pocketbooks. That's what she is responsible for. And so then to hear her say,

we succeed when we listen to people, you didn't listen for nine years. You didn't listen. And Bill Maher is not gonna say that. Why would he? He believes because he's an American that the only person that matters in the decision-making tree is Justin Trudeau.

Why? Because he comes from a place where you vote for a president. That's it. You don't vote for a prime minister in Canada. You vote for a government. You vote for an MP, a member of parliament, who then helps form a government. So it's a team approach. There's a lot of blame to go around in terms of who is responsible for the mess that we are in today. And one of those people is Christia Freeland.

She avoided those conversations entirely by going down to see her friend Bill Maher, who gave her the softball of all softball interviews because he doesn't know what he doesn't know. Let's listen to a little bit more about this love-in, because she had touched on it a little bit before, on listening to people. With the Prime Minister, I think every politician has their sell-by date, and that's part of what happened. But I think the other thing that happened is my party, we're actually called the Liberal Party,

and I am an old school liberal. And liberals in Canada win when we are focused on people and on what they need in their lives. And we lose when people think that we're focused on virtue signaling and identity politics. You gleefully participated in all of those things for nine years. I'm sorry you don't get a pass on that. And you don't get to put it all on your leader's shoulders when you stood next to him nodding in agreement, voting in

lockstep time after time after time on all of these things that have broken apart the social cohesion that we've enjoyed as a country for over a century. You don't get a pass on it. But then, of course, we gotta talk about the big bad boogie man in Pierre Poliev. Let's listen to this. As soon as the conservative here in America said he was gonna invade Canada,

suddenly the conservatives in Canada didn't look too good. I mean, the guy you will be running against, Paul Pierre Pr... How do we say his name? Pierre? Well I call him Maple Syrup Mega. Or Mini-Turk. Okay, well...

Well, of course that doesn't help with my pronunciation. And also, you know what? This is sad to me that everybody becomes more like America in our worst kind of ways. Pierre Poliev is nothing like Donald Trump. You can say it, Ms. Freeland, that doesn't make it so. I know you are part of a government that prioritized performance over everything. But this, but just because he uses a key phrase here or there that sounds like it might have come from south of the border doesn't mean his policies doesn't mean his values doesn't mean his vision

for the country have anything to do with MAGA. There isn't a shred of evidence that you can point to that would allow anybody to come to that conclusion. But there you are on HBO with a bunch of people in Los Angeles who heard maple syrup MAGA, thought it was cute and applauded for you. That is not helpful to the debate that we should be having here in Canada, where you should be sitting with someone like me

or any of my colleagues who will take you to task on things like that. Maple syrup MAGA, explain that to me. What is it about him that makes you think you can get away with tarring him with that brush? Because I wouldn't let you get away with it. However, if I asked you the question and you came back with some facts, I would say now we move on because you went on the record.

To me, to me, this we've seen it too many times. Justin Trudeau does it. Mark Carney, in our previous segment, Bob Fife was exasperated that he was dodging the Canadian press. And then you go down to Los Angeles in the middle of a leadership race to become Prime Minister. That is not good enough. Voters in this country deserve better. They deserve accountability. And the only way we hold you to account is when you face the fire with people like me. The invitation is open. I don't know if you'll take it, but we as a country deserve far better than you sitting down with a comedian in Los Angeles as you try to become the Prime Minister of this country. We got so many fun sort of marketing stories and I'm so glad that

once a week I get to talk to somebody who knows so much more about this than me but we can I love that my conversations with our next guest. And so let's just welcome back to the show, Tony Chapman, the host of the award winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, and founder of Chatter AI. Tony, how are you today? Fantastic. I'm right back at you. I continue to follow you now that we're doing the show together and I admire, and I know

you're very modest, but some of the things that you take on to help society, including your recent embattled sister ship, I just wanted to give you kudos because you're often giving us kudos. Well thank you very much, my friend. Let's go to what some people have been waiting for, for, well, hoping would come back. They didn't know it was going to come back, but the actual physical rolling up of the rims in the Roll Up to Win Tim Hortons campaign that's back with the physical cups.

It's not necessarily on the app anymore. Talk to me about, let's talk about the campaign writ large and how successful it's been. Well, listen, you know, it's one of the most successful promotions because it does a couple of things. One, it drives new traffic into the stores because everybody's curious if somebody's come in and won. Also rewards your loyal users, convinces them to try new product because they got it for free. And the physicality of rolling up your rim is something they missed with the digital game.

And I think that today when we spend so much of our time on screens and the cloud on our mobile phones, that physicality actually doing something with your, I think is the magic of it and they should never have moved away from it. I wouldn't have a digital component. I'd say you wanna play, you come in and play with our cups. But I congratulate them for bringing it back. I'm glad they did too. I had some people giving some pushback

at some point when we first announced it. And I said, look, nobody forced you to come up with this campaign in the first place, but you gotta dance with the one that brung you. And if you decided that you were gonna get rich off of rolling up rims, well, then you gotta own it. Yeah, I agree. And you know, the interesting thing

that most consumers don't realize is it's all based on probability. They know a lot of slippage. You might win and never go after your prize. You might not even bother rolling up the rims. So they can announce a much bigger prize pool You might win and never go after your prize. You might not even bother rolling up the rim. So they can announce a much bigger prize pool than they know they'll give away. In fact, they even ensure that.

And so it gives us a chance to really dream big. And I think when you look at lotteries, you look at promotions like that, it's as much about hope. Wouldn't it be great to win as it also inside, you know, the chances of winning that big prize is in there, but it's still fun to play that to me is sort of a brand that's connecting and engaging with their consumer and I think Tim Hortons does it as well as as most Tony you roll up the rim and Monopoly McDonald's those are gangbusters successful people wait for them every

year but talk to me about why marketing campaigns fail. Marketing campaigns fail because number one, they're too complicated, but the biggest problem, marketers get bored of them before consumers do. And I can tell you, we created Kraft Hockeyville. 15 years ago, Kraft continues to put their shoulder into it. We created promotions at similar magnitude, has magic. You know, bring home a Stanley Cup for Pepsi,

where Messier would show up with a Stanley Cup and watch a hockey game with you. And they gave it up after a couple years, not because the consumer, because new marketers came in and they got bored with it. So the biggest problem, I think, with a lot of big ideas is not fatigue with the consumers, fatigue with the marketers,

because they always have an itch to try new things. So what could have been a niche story ended up being making national and indeed international news that a couple of McDonald's franchises, one in Edmonton and one in Newmarket, Ontario, temporarily changed their name from McDonald's to McDavid to reflect the star power of Connor McDavid, both where he plays and where he's from. And there's certain people who would say, don't mess with your brand. If you're McDonald's, don't mess with your brand.

What do you say to those people? I say they're crazy. Play with your brand, have fun with it. Consumers gone from being a consumer of content to now creators of their own content. You have to march and step with them and say, hey, we can have fun with this. And listen, I thought it was such a brilliant move

on their part because the oxygen of all marketing, the only thing that breathes life into your brand is attention and they got attention. And because you're talking about it and I'm talking about it and thousands of others are talking about it, you get full kudos to McDonald's and I hope head office was angry

and they threatened a legal action and that only puts fuel on the fire. And all of that to me is when you say, you know what, let's not take life so seriously. Let's have some fun. And honestly, McDavid, given what he just did for Team Canada, that's scoring, that's scoring, that's a hat trick.

That's the overtime ball. Well, it's a huge deal, but it also, it also speaks. I mean, you've got to be bullish on your brand. You've got to be really, you've got to appreciate the resilience and the strength of your brand to know that it can, that if you change the name of your, of your business for a few days, it's your brand is not going to suffer. In fact, it'll probably get stronger. That's called elasticity. And that's what you can stretch it out and know it'll

come back to where it was and maybe even be better because people are gonna smile when they drive by that franchise because you made that book. Yeah, well I remember a few years ago the International House of Pancakes, IHOP, changed their name to IHOP, the International House of Burgers. They suggested it was going to be a permanent change. It certainly wasn't. It was a promotion for this new line of burgers that they wanted to put on the menu and they they went viral for weeks at a time. And you had the uprising, the consumers, I can't believe it. How dare you? And you know what? Again,

attention. Yeah. We were talking about a brand we weren't talking about yesterday. Listen, it can blow up in your face if you take it too far. Yeah. But if it within that, if your brand is sent like Pizza Pizza is a great example with the tariffs and stuff, they know the brand is in that serious. So don't take yourself that serious. Humor is always attention worthy and making moves like that, I think, especially when you create a for and against. But really, the outcome doesn't matter.

That to me is a brilliant chess move on the marketing board. Hey, if the if the next headline that Inter Miami, the the the soccer team in Miami, one of the two soccer teams in Miami, when you find out that it's now worth more than the Miami Marlins, what's the takeaway from that for you? Well, number one, it just shows you how soccer, you just have to look at new people coming into this country and coming in the United States, they either have a basketball or a soccer ball under their arms. They don't necessarily have a baseball. And so that's the future demographically.

But the other inside story is so brilliant. Beckham, when he showed up and agreed to play, he said, part of my contract is I get to buy a franchise for $25 million, way under the accident price. He then parlayed it in getting partners to pay for everything, including the stadium. He retains 10%. So that $180 million in counting of value for him coming and kicking a soccer ball for a few years in North America. Much of an inside story is the fact that soccer is going to become, I think, and I've said this for a long time,

it's going to surpass hockey and basketball in our lifetime. And people get so angry with me, but you just have to look at what's happening in the schoolyards. Parents, only 8% of people are paying organized hockey. Look at the soccer fields in the summer because moms feel it's safer. It's a lot more affordable. And you know what? It's within the DNA of a lot of the people coming into Canada. So it's our future.

Tony, we only have about two minutes left, but I want to talk about this streaming app that never came to pass called Venue. It was Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers. They were going to go it alone on, they were going to work together on sports streaming and the whole thing fell apart. Break this down for me real quick. Well, it fell apart in the courts because they thought it was too much power and too few hands. But here's the real thing that all of those, the day of a standalone sports streaming service, they have to fill that 24 hours a day. Netflix and Amazon shows up and says, we're going to pick the cherries off the tree that people really want because we can afford it.

And guess what? If you're a subscriber to Amazon Prime or Netflix, you're going to get your NFL. And if that happens, what happens to that standalone streaming service? What are they going to do? Softball? That's the data. So the issue is I think standalone streaming for as much as the courts thought it was a concentration of power, the concentration of power they should be looking at is Netflix and Amazon. They're going to be the only games in town. Maybe, maybe Apple's going to be in there, I think, but I think it's going to be just a two lions. Just absolutely. Yeah. Is this so is this the death rattle of sports on traditional

media? Absolutely. Without question. There's no way they can show up with the poker chips of a Netflix or an Amazon nor can they get the data. That's the data we talked about it last year. What you're looking at. Are you a sports camp? Boom, I'm gonna take you there. Oh, you love merchandise? I'm gonna take you there.

The ability to monetize when you own the data you can't even put a number on it and that's what the NFL knows and that's why they're gonna shore up to the people that have the data. Yeah, the only thing that should be of concern is how much Netflix is ultimately going to cost the consumer. Because I could see it going upwards of 50, 60, 70 bucks a month with all these add-ons

that are costing so much. But I want to thank you so much, Tony Chapman. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. I love these conversations and I appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Appreciate it.

We'll see you next week. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk. Business.