Why are people boycotting Tim Hortons?

On Thursday June 4, 2015 Tim Hortons responded to a couple of tweets made by people who had signed a petition requesting that the company remove the Life Takes Energy ads that were running on the Tims TVs in Ontario and BC for the pipeline company Enbridge. Tims confirmed to these people that they value their feedback and had removed the ads from rotation.

What followed was an uproar on the internet. There was two sides to the hashtag war, but in the end #BoycottTims was the winner, trending nationally on Twitter. People lost. their. minds. Here are some guesses as to why:

The US involvement?
The group that made the the petition to drop the ads was a US based organization named SumOfUs. Some would argue that besides the maple leaf and out of control politeness, Tim Hortons is the most Canadian thing on the planet, but it is not Canadian anymore either. It is a company now owned by the American fast-food restaurant Burger King. So maybe people were mad about all of the American involvement in a Canadian matter? Over 28,000 people signed that petition, but were they all Canadian?

Seen as censorship?
Did they see the removal of the ad as some form of censorship on the part of Tim Hortons? Did the public think we were turning into China? I mean, the ad had to have been approved by the company before it was placed on their TVs. I don’t know about you, but I have never seen a pipeline company on the Tims TVs before…maybe it’s not something they usually do. Enbridge did comment and say that they respected the decision of Tim Horton’s to remove their ad.

The working class are Tim’s coffee drinkers…they are also the oil workers?
Some could argue that the people who were signing the petition and causing a racket about the ads probably drink coffee at Good Earth, or local coffee shops that import coffee beans that save orphans from slavery, not Tim Hortons. Some may argue that the people who drink Tim Hortons coffee are the ones who are working in the oil industry or industries directly or indirectly effected by what happens in the oil industry. If Tim Hortons doesn’t support Enbridge, a large pipeline company, then do they in turn not support the people who work in the industry?

When times get tough, people get scrappy?
The people who support the oil industry, minus a select few nut jobs, are relatively low key online. Which means the conversation we usually hear is the uproar from groups like SumOfUs. Maybe it is the fact that the oil industry is not doing well at the moment and people saw this as people effected by the downturn being kicked while they are down. Their local coffee joint picking on them may have awoken the beast. Now they have to go to Starbucks, and that java is expensive!

Politician’s input?
It’s not every day that we see politicians joining in on a boycott (especially over something so minor), but a number of Conservative politicians, such as Michelle Rempel and Jason Kenney, tweeted support of the boycott action (directly or indirectly). Maybe this legitimized it to the oil crowd as being something they could get behind.

People didn’t like Tims to begin with?
You always hear people talking about how they hate Tims. Maybe now was just their time to let their feelings out. (While tying themselves to being pro-oil…even if they are not.)

People don’t like when complainers win?
Not that activism is necessarily complaining, but it could be seen by some as being a squeaky wheel. Maybe people were annoyed that signing an online petition can actually effect change? Maybe it was because Tim Hortons thought it was a good idea to publicly acknowledge to a bunch of people that they had removed the ads…in the same vein that they would tell someone that they are sorry they received poor service and they will be sent gift card.

Mob mentality?
Did they see that everyone else was doing it and just jumped on the hashtag train? Did they even know what the hashtag was for? A lot of people seemed to think it had something to do with coffee that tasted like dirt.

It could be a combination of some or none of these reasons that the world got a rare glimpse into a mob of angry pro-oil people hating on a national treasure. But it did make for an entertaining day.

Let’s all remember that this entire thing started because an ad that was supposed to run for 4 weeks, was pulled after 3; that 80% of people involved in the conversation today didn’t even know that Tim Hortons had TVs that ran ads in their establishments; that Tim Hortons is allowed to run whatever ads they want; and that at the end of the day – having the ad running at Tim Hortons is not going to make or break the oil industry.

Now let’s all have a moment of silence for the poor social media person who sent the Tim Hortons “we value your feedback” tweets. That was definitely a “you are fired from our social media team” move.