In January, Liam Mooney was watching TV with his fiancée and business partner Emma Cochrane when Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded to comments from the U.S. president about Canada becoming the 51st state.
“I was really bothered,” Mooney told OBJ at the time. “As a former political staffer working in Ottawa (and) as a branding and political consultant strategist, I just saw the opportunity to do something quickly because of the nature of this problem and, being a proud Canadian, it seemed like it could be a fun, cheeky kind of way to respond to this issue.”
And so, Mooney and Cochrane, co-founders of Ottawa-based Jackpine Dynamic Branding, put together an apparel brand designed to support Canada’s sovereignty. It started with baseball caps and tuques with the wording “Strong and Free” and “Canada Is Not For Sale,” and in French “Fort et libre” and “Le Canada n’est pas à vendre.”
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Less than a week later, Ford’s team inquired about getting a hat for the premier to wear when he came to Ottawa for the first ministers’ meeting. Mooney worked around the clock to make it happen and it paid off. After Ford addressed the media wearing his “Canada Is Not For Sale” hat, sales skyrocketed. Mooney told OBJ at the time that in the span of 90 minutes he sold $20,000 in hats.
Since then, Mooney and Cochrane have handled a multitude of business challenges and given media interviews to outlets from across the country and around the world.
It’s no surprise that Mooney and Cochrane are this year’s recipients of the Newsmaker of the Year award, selected by OBJ and the Ottawa Board of Trade. OBJ caught up with Mooney recently to see what he and Cochrane have been doing since January and what he plans to do next.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
What have you been up to with the ‘Canada Is Not For Sale’ brand since January?
Well, we went global. We now make completely made-in-Canada products. We have a registered trademark. We’ve partnered with companies across Canada, including institutions such as OCAD University in Toronto. We’ve invested millions of dollars in workers and in factories across the country. We’ve donated $10,000 to Wounded Warriors Canada, an organization that dedicates its services to serving first responders of various kinds.
Our brand was on the stage of Saturday Night Live with Mike Myers. The words were uttered in the Oval Office by the prime minister to the president of the United States. A Blue Jays fan was kicked out of the Rogers Centre for wearing our hat and both Rogers and the Blue Jays said it was an absolutely huge mistake.
It’s been a real honour to be along for this ride.
What have you learned from this experience?
At the national level, I learned that Canadians love their country. They’re proud of their country and will stand up for it. There are a lot of really amazing Canadian businesses out there. We saw people in every province and territory buying our hats. But there are gaps in our supply chains since globalization. Also, there are several industries that had proud traditions in Canada that could be reignited. With Canadian know-how and ingenuity, we could easily identify opportunities to enhance a process, to augment a machine or to improve production for certain items.
On a personal level, I learned that my capacity is so much more than I had previously thought, imagined or understood. We sort of naively just stepped right into this and kept saying yes to things. I think that that adventure that’s still ongoing has been very rewarding.
What’s it been like dealing with all this media attention, especially international press?
There was a global curiosity and everybody interpreted it differently. Some were coming from a social angle or technological and others from economic or political. You kind of become almost an ambassador for Canada, not that I was calling myself that. Journalists started asking about the broader mood in the country and asking for the bigger context. They were asking about the political system, especially when we did interviews during the Ontario election and the federal election.
We did Russian state media twice and Chinese state media in Canada once. In the context of speaking with international media, it’s tricky. You want to represent your nation and your community as well as possible by showing them that we’re energetic, optimistic and doing stuff about it. Everything just happens so fast when you’re a part of the news flow.
What’s next for the ‘Canada Is Not For Sale’ brand?
We’re working on something really cool for ‘Canada Is Not For Sale.’ It’s a new product made in Ontario. We’re working with a tool-and-die company to create something for Christmas.
Only nine months into it, I think we are really feeling motivated to continue making more in Canada and continue to find ways to keep money invested in Canadian businesses, Canadian workers to create Canadian products.
I’ve always been inspired by this idea of cathedral thinking; these people who would set out centuries ago to make a cathedral and they would know that maybe they or not even their grandchildren would see this completed. And so in that sense, I see it in what we’re building right now. We are proof that if Canadians put their mind to it, we can do this.
The Newsmaker of the Year award is part of the Best Ottawa Business Awards – better known as the BOBs – which are presented annually each fall. Mooney and other notable local business leaders – including the CEO of the Year recipient and the CFO of the Year – will receive their awards in a gala at the Westin Ottawa on Friday, Nov. 28.
