Vetting a marketing number for a Canadian team, festival

Updated November 2026

Before a number goes into a sponsor package, a festival grant file or a team newsletter in English or in French, check who published it, for which year and period, on which people, and what exactly was counted.

A seasonal calendar makes old numbers dangerous

Canadian event organisers work in cycles: winter carnivals, summer festivals, back-to-school fairs, playoff runs. A figure copied from last season, or from another country, slides easily into this season's file. Bilingual material makes it worse, because the English and French versions are sometimes written by different people from different sources.

The routine below is short enough to apply to both language versions of a document. Each example comes from a page we opened ourselves.

Orange costumed mascot holding a magnifying glass over a blank chart in a community hall with hockey sticks on the wall (illustration)
Illustration created with AI

Season, region and scope

Read the period and the territory

The World Out of Home Organization, 2026 report describes 2025 actual spending and a 2026 forecast. It puts North America at $10.3bn and Europe at $10.2bn for 2025, and gives the digital share of out-of-home revenue at 36.9% in North America, against 41.3% in Europe. Its figures were collected from more than 100 responses covering 85 territories. A Canadian festival cannot take the North American total as a Canadian one, since the page gives no separate Canadian line in the extract we read.

Trust is a stated attitude

The Nielsen survey reported by Marketing Dive, 2015 asked about 30,000 consumers across 60 countries. Of those, 83% said they trust recommendations from friends and family, 63% trusted television advertising and 48% online video advertising. Those are global averages. A reader in Moncton or Calgary may differ, and the article does not break the results out by country.

What a small sample can still tell a team

Not every useful source is large. The Malta thesis, 2014 rests on fifteen semi-structured interviews and reports no figures at all. Its finding is a description: people called guerrilla advertising innovative, creative and surprising, and said it made them curious. The same abstract says that such advertising does not necessarily lead consumers to buy. For a local team planning a surprise appearance at a game, that is a fair summary of what can be said: attention is plausible, a purchase effect is not shown.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 2006 post adds a caution about sales data. Weekly or monthly sales capture only part of what advertising does, and the visible effect depends on conditions such as a sharp change in spending. In a seasonal business, the calendar itself moves sales, so a spike after an event may be the season and not the event.

Limits and method

Our reading has limits. The Advertising Research Foundation summary, 2016 of a 2016 journal issue reports that brand users remember advertising better than non-users across six measures. We saw the summary and not the papers. The 2005 Journal of Advertising Research article by Heath and Nairn argues that claimed awareness understates the effect of emotional advertising, and we read the abstract only. The Nielsen article does not state the interview method.

One more check applies to bilingual organisations. A figure quoted in French from a European source and in English from an American source can look like two findings when it is one. Cite the same publisher and year in both versions, and translate the description of the measure with care: trust, recall and intention are not interchangeable in either language.

  • None of these studies was run in Canada on mascots.
  • Some are more than ten years old.
  • Survey answers describe intention and opinion, not what people did.

An earlier recall percentage that we used to point to now sits behind a page that returns an error, so we have stopped citing it.

A simple file for the next season

Keep a short table beside each sponsor package: the figure, the publisher, the year, the territory, the sample as described and the date you last opened the page. In a bilingual organisation the table travels with both language versions, so a translator cannot change a number without seeing where it came from. When a source cannot be found any more, the line is crossed out and the sentence is rewritten without it. This takes minutes per document, and it spares a volunteer committee the awkward moment of being asked by a sponsor for evidence that does not exist.

What this means for a team, event or business ordering a mascot

A mascot suits the long Canadian season when it has a defined job: opening a game, walking a parade route, welcoming visitors at a booth. Think about layers for cold weather outdoors and ventilation indoors, and about who will perform it for a two-hour shift. We build the costume in your colours with your logo, with French and English wording on any labels you require.

We make no claim about ticket sales or foot traffic. If you want to know whether it helped, measure the same event year on year: attendance, queue at the photo spot, social posts tagged by visitors. Keep weather and date in the record.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Can I reuse an American or European figure in a Canadian grant file?

Only if you label it as such. A regional total does not describe Canada.

Do I need to check both the English and the French version?

Yes. Each version must cite the same source and the same year.

What does a fifteen-person study prove?

It shows how those people reacted. It does not give a percentage for a town or a country.

Why do seasonal sales mislead?

The season moves sales by itself, so an increase after an event may not come from the event.

Do you promise results from a mascot?

No. We describe what we make and leave results to your own counts.

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