Sporting chancers: Three Canadian corporations’ representations of sport-for-youth-development

Abstract

In this article, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of three Canadian corporations that used sport-for-youth-development (SYD) to fulfill part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR). Although the use of SYD has become an increasingly larger component of corporations’ CSR, there is a dearth of scholarship examining advertising texts produced by corporations, particularly by corporations other than Nike. This article directly addresses this lack, contributing to the growing body of critical examinations of corporate presentations of SYD in the Canadian context. We examined four televised commercials to describe the discursive strategies used by the corporations to authorize a particular notion of SYD. Specifically, we examined how the semiotic choices in the commercials signified key discourses related to SYD and how these elements were used to attempt to educate viewers on specific truths about childhood and youth sport. We were also interested in the underlying assumptions of these constructions and the power relationships underpinning them. Analysis of the three corporations’ texts revealed stark contradictions, difficulties, and tensions in their uses of SYD in televised commercials. We found that although the commercials presented some positive constructions of SYD, we argue that they predominantly produce and rely on several dominant discourses about youth sport, including: sport is a place of universal inclusivity, and sport has inherently “magical” qualities capable of providing all young people with contexts for positive youth development. We further argue that these CSR campaigns mirror the values of Canadian nationalism and construct SYD in a limited individualistic, consumerist manner that closely aligns with the ideologies of neoliberalism. These findings are important for researchers, educators, and SYD program developers, and we encourage other researchers to examine SYD in corporations’ CSR campaigns.

Keywords

advertising children corporate social responsibility sport-for-development young people youth

By analyzing four television commercials, this article critically examines how three different Canadian corporations situate themselves as active participants in conversations about sport-for-youth-development (SYD). In this article, we use the term “SYD” in reference to a burgeoning youth wing of the sport-for-development and peace (SDP) movement (Kidd, 2008). We became interested in this project after observing how frequently SYD rhetoric was being used by corporations as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. We turned to the literature and found a small but growing body of research examining CSR and SYD as a primary outcome of interest; however, the majority of literature critically examining media texts produced by sport corporations focused on Nike (Cole, 2001, 2008; Hayhurst and Szto, 2016; Lafrance, 1998; Lucas, 2000; Szto, 2013). To add to this collection of works, the article analyzes four Canadian SYD commercials to provide a critical perspective on how messages of SYD are being constructed by powerful corporations in Canadian society. More specifically, we examine how the semiotic choices in the commercials signify key discourses related to SYD and how these elements are used with the intention of educating viewers on specific messages about childhood and youth sport. We were also interested in underlying neoliberalist and nationalist constructions embedded within these representations and the power relationships underpinning them.

Sport, youth, and neoliberal governmentality

Our study seeks to understand discourses surrounding youth sport promoted by Canadian corporations within our current neoliberal era of governance. To this end, we employ Foucault’s analytics of government and, in particular, his concept of governmentality. By governmentality, we are referring to more than just the political art of public management, but also to the philosophical and ideological aspects of it, moving deeper to address issues of self-control, family, and the agency of individuals in our society (Foucault, 1991; Rose, 1989). Social scientists use governmentality as a conceptual tool to better understand the myriad of ways in which human conduct can be directed and calculated by those in power (Foucault, 1991; Lemke, 2011). After Foucault, scholars saw the state-form as more than a collection of functional bureaucratic apparatus’—it was viewed as a powerful site of symbolic and cultural production, with operations that can be understood in particular ways (Ferguson and Gupta, 2002; Greenhouse, 2010). According to Foucault, the reason for Western neoliberal governance comes down to a utility value: a calculation of state means to achieve an end that must support free market, unregulated capitalism (Foucault, 1978: 20).

Neoliberalism as an ideological movement in the Western body politic emerged out of socio-cultural forces of the mid-to-late 1970s. Inflation, and global and local recessions, along with a declining Western manufacturing industry, led to a cascading reversal of social benefits (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberal governmentality prioritized the privatization of public resources to minimize labor costs and reduce public expenditure while also eliminating regulations on big business and displacing responsibilities to non-state actors (Harvey, 2005, 2014). Critical to our interest in corporations, the neoliberal era has also seen a drastic reduction in North American corporate tax rates. This has led to a reduction in traditional funding streams created by private actors finding their way into government coffers.

As a cultural phenomenon, neoliberalism promotes discourses that prioritize the values of consumption, individualism, personal responsibility, and (market) competition. Individuals and their families are expected to take responsibility for themselves and out-compete others in the marketplace in order to provide for their own needs. Privatization then provides a rational explanation for inequality through the assumption that individuals get what they deserve resulting from their efforts. This free market philosophy stands in direct contrast to the social democratic values within Canadian society, which have traditionally emphasized state intervention in social and economic issues and legal regulation of business (Armstrong, 2010).

Critical scholars across the diverse subfields of sport studies are investigating the complex and multiple manifestations of neoliberalism in contemporary sport contexts, and much of this work has concerned young people. The acceptance of sport as a cultural form (Hall, 1981) has put physical–cultural studies at the forefront of these investigations, with claims that sporting spaces have increasingly become a vehicle for advancing consumerism, consumption, and materialism (Silk and Andrews, 2012). Scholars caution against socializing young people within commercialized sporting spaces, arguing that sport may serve the function of (re)producing neoliberal subjectivities (Fusco, 2006a, 2006b, 2012) by helping to shape certain types of citizen-consumers (Giardina and Donnelly, 2008) as “bodies of modernity” (Wikaire and Newman, 2014).

With an emphasis on the political economy of the sport world’s major governing bodies and events, sport sociologists have likewise drawn attention to the neocolonial and transnational capitalist interests that operate through sport to inscribe hierarchies in the global imperial order (Giulianotti, 2004; Gruneau, 2015). Here, scholars have paid particular attention to the institutional dynamics of neoliberal sporting governance structures, claiming they may (re)produce hegemonic relations of power that funnel from the macro-level into the lives of participants in and consumers of sporting events and programs (Darnell, 2012; Gruneau, 2015). Central to the dissemination of contemporary neoliberal sporting visions is the corporate conglomeration labeled by Jhally (1989, 2006b) as the “sport-media-complex.”

SYD and CSR: Beyond Nike

Sport has long been touted as a development tool to improve and control certain populations (Darnell and Hayhurst, 2011; Kidd, 2008). However, what differentiates current SDP efforts from the use of sport in the past is the rapid expansions and loose collaboration of agencies and organizations that are now mobilizing sport to meet international development goals (Darnell, 2012). These sport-for-good initiatives address a broad range of contemporary social issues, including the breaking down of barriers to recreational access and providing forms of humanitarian assistance, as well as educating children and young people in deprived communities (Kidd, 2008).

Recently, there has been a rise in sport-based youth development programs and a growing body of literature investigating their effects on young people. SYD programs are often justified under the assumption that sport participation facilitates “positive development” (Holt and Neely, 2011) and “social inclusion” in the lives of marginalized young people (Kelly, 2012; Spaaij, 2009, 2014), particularly for the purposes of crime prevention and risk reduction (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011; Kelly, 2012; Nichols, 2007; Pitter, 2004).

The Canadian public also appear to hold the belief that sport serves as a favorable development tool in the lives of children and young people. A survey conducted by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport showed that respondents ranked “sport” second only after “family” in its potential to promote pro-social values in young people and ethical values to citizens in general (Mulholland, 2008) and that 49% of Canadians believe in the ability of community sport to contribute to social inclusion and to reduce crime amongst young people (Kidd and Donnelly, 2007). These sporting visions coupled with an understanding of neoliberal reform in Canada help to explain the recent surge of public, private, and charitable SYD partnerships across Western nations. This trend is exemplified in Canada through the Bank of Montreal’s Kicks for Kids, the Toronto Blue Jays Care Foundation, Nissan’s Kickoff Project, and Canadian Tire’s Jumpstart Foundation.

Despite the rhetorical and symbolic legitimation provided by governmental rights discourses, in the neoliberal era most SDP initiatives are heavily dependent on private donors for funding (Kidd, 2008). Although private funding can be offered philanthropically on the individual level, institutionally speaking, the largest primary vehicle for private funding in neoliberal times has come by way of CSR campaigns (Giulianotti and Armstrong, 2014). CSR expanded rapidly alongside the growth of neoliberal reforms from the 1970s onward (Carroll, 1999) and requires organizations to consider the interests of investors, suppliers, consumers, employees, the community, and the environment in discharging their profit-directed activities (Smith and Westerbeek, 2007). CSR plays strongly to the mantra of neoliberal governmentality because in allowing ruling capitalist class factions to divest funds from the public, a context of public need has been created that consequently serves to justify corporate intervention in governance via CSR initiatives (Montez de Oca et al., 2016).

As the curator of some of the best-known and most influential sport-based CSR programs in the athletic apparel industry (Szto, 2013), the case of Nike neatly illustrates the role of private industry in the youth wing of the SDP movement. Nike has championed the private sector’s involvement in SDP through both explicit and subtle private transnational governance technologies and strategies (Hayhurst and Szto, 2016). However, scholars have warned about the dangers of corporations such as Nike positioning themselves in SDP initiatives, since this privatization of social justice benefits from a system of perpetual inequality that thrives on consumption and needs to be addressed through privatized means (Hayhurst and Szto, 2016). Perhaps it is unsurprising that research into Nike and SYD added to past work that criticized Nike’s advertising, specifically with reference to race (Andrews, 1996; Cole, 1998) and gender (Cole and Hribar, 1995; Lafrance, 1998; Lucas, 2000). However, there is a need for researchers to examine newer developments and partnerships. For instance, Nike’s involvement in Black Lives Matter or its N7 initiative that funds sport and recreation programs for Native American and Aboriginal communities in the United States and Canada and supports a number of high-profile Native American athletes.

Outside of Nike, international SDP research on CSR campaigns has been critical of corporations for playing down their consumers’ awareness and representing those in the Global South as helpless, undeveloped/uncivilized peoples (Hayhurst, 2011), while also promoting neoliberal visions of “girlhood” to wealthy donors (Darnell and Hayhurst, 2014). Others claim that such global development initiatives ignore the histories of colonialism that gave rise to certain countries’ relative deprivation in the first place (Darnell, 2010). North American sport-based CSR initiatives have likewise been criticized for presenting sport as a form of salvation or as an antidote/panacea for the childhood obesity “epidemic” (Fusco, 2006b, 2012; Montez de Oca et al., 2016). In the Canadian context, Gardam and colleagues (2017) recently sought to answer calls for further scholarly attention to the increasing transnational corporate involvement in social welfare programs involving sport (Hayhurst, 2011; Hayhurst and Giles, 2013). These researchers explored CSR campaigns generated by the extractives industry in Canada’s Northwest Territories and identified colonialist discourses within these initiatives that they claim reproduce the need for neoliberal intervention through sport (Gardam et al., 2017).

Our study will add to this burgeoning body of literature investigating youth-focused SDP and CSR (Gardam et al., 2017; Hayhurst, 2011; Hayhurst and Szto, 2016; Levermore, 2010). In particular, our study explores how rhetoric surrounding sport and youth development is transmitted through televised commercials produced by three major Canadian corporations. While scholars have noted the obvious attractions of non-state actors for the SDP cause, few have fully explored how—or why—SDP is so susceptible to private sector sponsorship, funding, and partnership, and consequently, we argue, the unintended effects of the “creeping” privatization (King, 2012) and corporatization of SDP’s youth wing. Considering the prominence of Canadians in SDP scholarship (Coleby and Giles, 2013; Darnell, 2007, 2010, 2012; Darnell and Hayhurst, 2011; Fusco, 2012; Giles and Lynch, 2012; Hayhurst, 2009; Hayhurst and Szto, 2016; Kidd, 2008; Szto, 2013), it is perplexing that there has been so little investigation into the institutionalization of SDP in Canada. Examinations of this kind may help expand our limited understanding of how privatized SDP efforts seek to produce particular notions of sport and childhood/adolescence, as well as ideas about citizenship and culture.

Methodological approach

This article synthesizes critical theoretical approaches from sport sociology, physical–cultural studies, and media studies to analyze the ways in which three Canadian corporations depict SYD in their televised commercials. While there are multiple corporations in this field in Canada, we were interested in examining ones that were popular and had prominence for Canadians. To select corporations and commercials for inclusion in this study, we searched the internet for media on any Canadian corporation’s CSR that included an SYD component. As we detail below, the three corporations we purposefully selected for inclusion in this study have become prominent in Canada (through their sponsorship of major sporting events and teams) and we were struck by how all these corporations focused on the need to take an “authentic” approach in their CSR commercials. The three corporations selected were: Bank of Montreal (BMO), ScotiaBank, and Canadian Tire Jumpstart (CTJ). The first two corporations—BMO and ScotiaBank—are Canadian banks, whereas the third corporation—CTJ—is a foundation directly connected to the Canadian sports retail chain Canadian Tire (CT).

BMO sponsors a number of Canadian professional soccer teams and over 20,000 youth house league soccer players (BMO Corporate Responsibility, 2017). BMO elaborated on its CSR motives on its website: “We are involved in a broad range of sponsorships and events. Our support reflects our values, has a positive impact on the diverse communities we serve and, ultimately, helps build our business” (BMO Corporate Responsibility, 2017). The BMO commercial analyzed in this study, “What does a bank like BMO know about basketball?” was BMO’s first commercial since the company announced it was named the official bank of NBA Canada (the National Basketball Association) (Krashinsky, 2015). “This spot is an opening statement about why BMO has chosen to partner with the NBA—to celebrate and enable the positive effect basketball can have on the people, especially the kids who play it” (FCBToronto, 2017). Likewise, ScotiaBank is the official bank of the NHL (National Hockey League), sponsored the World Cup of Hockey, and sponsors over 5000 community teams across Canada. Their CSR commercial analyzed in this study, “Hockey Dreams,” was televised, ran online, and was shown in movie theaters (Harris, 2016). Clinton Braganza, senior vice-president of Canadian banking at ScotiaBank, described the motivation for “Hockey Dreams” as “really simple insight in the end. Whether you are an adult or a child, you can relate to the notion of dreaming and putting yourself in the position of your hockey heroes” (Harris, 2016). Again, on ScotiaBank’s website, the vision behind the commercial was presented as: “From the plains of Saskatchewan to the suburbs of Ontario, kids dream of legendary hockey moments … even if they don’t score the game-winning goal, every kid should know what being a hockey hero feels like” (ScotiaBank, 2017). The commercial was described as a “major hit—with millions of hits and positive comments on Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites. ScotiaBank is considering doing similar spots in other nations where the bank had a presence” (Buffery, 2017). The final corporation selected for our study, CTJ, differs in ostensible intention from the two previous corporations. CTJ is a registered charity that helps financially disadvantaged children (aged 4–18) participate in organized sport and recreation by covering the expenses of registration, equipment, and/or transportation (Jumpstart, 2017). While CTJ had produced a number of commercials promoting its SYD work, we specifically chose their two “Want in” commercials (as we describe in greater detail later, CTJ produced two versions of this commercial, one featuring a “Hockey Dad” and the other, a “Hockey Mom”) because they resulted in “the most impressive results the charity has ever seen” (Cleansheet Communications, 2016). Because CTJ is connected to a retail sports equipment chain, we would be remiss not to mention some pertinent background on CT’s recent marketing strategy. In 2012, CT unveiled a new tagline, “Canada’s store” (Krashinsky, 2012), that was part of a marketing strategy designed to strengthen Canadians’ support for CT over American-based chains, such as Target. This strategy involved emphasizing “Canadian” life events that CT facilitates, including children dreaming of hockey glory (enabled by purchasing hockey equipment at CT outlets). Shortly after this launch, CT began advertising with the line “Canada’s hockey store” (Krashinsky, 2012). Another news article described CT’s strategy to use “native advertising”— segments that are financed by an advertiser but look like normal editorial content. For example, for one such native advertising piece, a group of children enrolled in CTJ were filmed receiving tickets and attending a Toronto NBA game. This article continued on to describe how imperative it was to keep these native advertising spots looking “authentic” and not like “heavy-handed advertising” (Campbell, 2014).

We were surprised to find that all three corporations emphasized the words “authentic” and “authenticity” in media pieces about their SYD commercials. The partnership between BMO and NBA Canada and the goal behind “What does a bank like BMO know about basketball?” was emphasized as being “[m]ore than simply a marketing exercise, this is an authentic commitment” (FCBToronto, 2017). BMO’s chief marketing officer stressed: “We wanted to demonstrate our authenticity … capture an authentic look … [T]he footage of real kids playing basketball on neighbourhood courts reinforces the human element of BMO’s brand” (Krashinsky, 2015).

Similarly, in news articles we found about ScotiaBank’s CSR commercial, we were again struck by a focus on ensuring the commercial came across as authentic, a sentiment repeated over and over again by Clinton Braganza, senior vice-president at ScotiaBank: “It’s great that we support the professional leagues” but, “focusing on kids brings added authenticity to the creative.” Braganza detailed how “we tried to really capture the emotion of when that goal is scored. These are authentic moments and consumer research fed back to us that we had captured those moments well” (Kolm, 2016). Braganza further claimed that, “ScotiaBank’s consumer research has shown that keeping the focus on authentic, relatable moments has been what’s made it successful” (Kolm, 2016). In an earlier news article Braganza described how: “We did a lot of research and Canadians told us to keep it authentic” (Krashinsky, 2014).

The four commercials that we examined were produced by the three Canadian corporations and televised between 2014 and 2016. They ranged in length from 31 to 61 seconds.

Analysis

Because we were interested in the ways SYD was employed within televised commercials produced for consumption by the Canadian public, we drew on critical theory to connect everyday experiences to broader public issues of power, control, and justice (Kincheloe and McLaren, 2002). Critical theorists produce dense descriptions of social “texts” (including commercials) that examine the contexts of production, the intentions of the producers, and the meanings emerging from the process of construction (Kincheloe and McLaren, 2002). We also drew upon Hall’s (1973) encoding/decoding theory that described how “encoding” referred to the production of the message, while “decoding” referred to how the receiver makes sense out of the encoded message. This was crucial, as advertisements often do more than just attempt to sell products. Instead, products, people, and events are used to signify a preferred meaning (Wren-Lewis, 1983). In critical sport studies, this has been conducted by Lucas (2000: 156) in her analysis of Nike commercials, where she noted:

Empowering girls through sports appears to be the preferred reading of this commercial, yet Nike undermines that by having the girls ask for permission to play … a good example of how multiple and complex readings can be made of a 30-second piece of advertising.

We further employed critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 2001) as our method for examining these four commercials. CDA has been utilized in SDP research by various scholars studying the largest NGO in SDP, Right to Play, (Coleby and Giles, 2013; Darnell, 2007; Forde, 2015; Forde and Frisby, 2015; Hayhurst, 2009) and has also been used with Nike (Hayhurst and Szto, 2016; Szto, 2013). Most pertinent to our mission to explore power in the youth wing of the SDP movement, critical discourse analysts examine the ways in which discourses can construct and maintain inequitable power relations (Phillips and Hardy, 2002). There are always multiple discourses in existence, but not all discourses carry the same amount of weight. Some discourses, often referred to as dominant discourses, are privileged over others and are, therefore, viewed as “true” or “right.” These dominant discourses are made to appear natural, that is, as common sense (McDonald and Birrell, 1999). Both authors completed the following steps in our CDA separately and met after each step to discuss and resolve differences in our results.

First, we repeatedly watched the four commercials and made general summaries of each one. We examined the commercials and made notes regarding production features and casting (i.e. music choices, genders, ethnicities, demeanors/expressions). We also noted aspects of the commercials that were “meaningfully absent” (e.g. professional female athletes and professional athletes of varying ethnicities).

Next, we moved from this descriptive reading of the commercials to searching for patterns in the data. These patterns became our preliminary set of codes, which contained clusters of extracts from the commercials. For instance, one of our preliminary codes, “organized/league sports,” included scenes and dialog relating to the need for children to participate in organized sports. We also made notes on our initial reactions, and on our thoughts regarding the intended audiences and preferred readings of the commercials. We asked questions including: “Who are the producers?”; “What could be their objectives with this commercial?”; and “What could be the preferred reading of this commercial?”

Following this step, the codes were then grouped into broader dominant discourses. Discourses were analyzed by examining common meanings and values attached to “children/youth sport.” We used the following questions to determine what we would identify as a dominant discourse: “Does this discourse give us a prevailing accepted, or common-sense rule of everyday living?”; “Does this discourse include the perspective of marginalized individuals?”

In the last step of our discourse analysis, we examined how the discursive constructions of SYD were embedded in Canadian society and the country’s political economy. Here, we considered the socio-historical conditions that govern these processes of production and reception. We asked questions including: “What kinds of discourses or social practices are interrelated to SYD?” We analyzed the texts in terms of explicit and implicit statements about values and norms related to gender, class, and race (Fairclough, 2001; Willig, 2009). For example, we examined how “good” parents and/or Canadians were constructed and the classed, racialized, and gendered identities they were assigned. We observed common meanings and values attached to “children/youth sport” and the ways they were constructed across the commercials. These common meanings offered ways for parents to position themselves in relation to their children’s sport participation, that is, how parents should act and relate to their children’s sport participation.

Three prominent discourses arose from our analysis, all of which are presented below. Our analysis presents an alternative reading to the purported “social responsibility” of these particular Canadian campaigns and argues that, in creating commercials on SYD that contribute to their business success, these corporations spread messages about SYD that do not necessarily contribute to individual or social well-being. Instead, arguments made by previous scholars regarding SYD in CSR campaigns (Hayhurst and Szto, 2016) are referenced and extended in our analysis. We expose the hubris of private SYD campaigns, explore their claims in the light of related literature, and link the creeping privatization of SYD to the construction of neoliberal subjectivities and citizenship amongst young people. We also elaborate on SYD as a further mechanism for promoting philanthropy and neoliberal ideals.

It is worth noting that we bring our own readings to the data. The following analysis reflects how a viewer might read the commercials with the knowledge that multiple readings of this data are possible and encouraged. We undertook this analysis “to bring out the whole range of possible meanings” (Larsen, 1991: 122) and what we present in this article is our critical reading of the commercials.

Findings and discussion

In the following section, we provide a detailed description of the four commercials. The first two corporations—BMO and ScotiaBank—are Canadian banks, whereas the third corporation— CTJ—is a foundation directly connected to the Canadian sports retail chain CT. We follow these descriptions with a discussion (using dominant discourses) of how the creators of the commercials attempt to “educate” viewers on SYD. We seek to uncover the relations of power and knowledge produced by the Canadian SYD initiatives, paying special attention to the texts’ purported factual solutions and truths.

Bank of Montreal “What does a bank like BMO know about basketball?”

In this commercial, a racially diverse cast of young people are featured playing unorganized basketball across various basketball courts in urban Toronto, such as Moss Park and Harbourfront Square. The young people, older than the children featured in the other commercials analyzed in this article, perform various basketball moves, then one by one look directly, even confrontationally, at the camera and ask what a bank knows of a certain basketball expression: “Do they think a rock is something you find on the ground?”; “Do they know the difference between a double-double and a double dribble?” Again and again this sequence is repeated until, finally, a disembodied narrator (the voice of BMO) responds, “We know one thing about basketball: it teaches kids the skills they need to win, in sport and in life. That’s why BMO supports the NBA and youth basketball.”

ScotiaBank “Hockey Dreams”

This commercial features scenes of children playing hockey in locations that are meant to depict different regions of Canada. Throughout the commercial, children recreate classic hockey scenes involving Canadian hockey players. The scenes of the children recreating the moments are intertwined with actual footage of the iconic goals being scored. The children recreate, move for move, four of what are considered to be the most iconic moments in Canadian hockey player history. The first moment was recreated by a boy pretending to be Bobby Orr scoring an overtime goal that enabled the Boston Bruins to win the Stanley Cup. Another boy recreated the second moment, which featured Lanny McDonald scoring a goal to help give Calgary Flames its only Stanley Cup. The third moment showcased a girl recreating Mario Lemieux scoring a playoff goal for a Stanley Cup victory. The fourth moment was a boy mimicking Paul Henderson scoring the winning goal for Team Canada against the Soviet Union in the Summit Series in 1972.

This commercial features no voiceover, the children never address the camera, and the only conventional text appears at the end: “The fifth season is when kids dream big,” which is followed by “Proud Sponsor of the World Cup of Hockey,” with “ScotiaBank” appearing on the screen for the first time in the 61-second ad. The commercial concludes with the message, “You’re richer than you think” (ScotiaBank’s motto). Worth noting, “the fifth season” is not explained anywhere in the commercial. Through our background research on ScotiaBank’s CSR initiatives we discovered that this line refers to “Canada’s love of hockey” and means it “has a fifth season: hockey season” (Kolm, 2016).

CTJ “Want in” (“Hockey Dad” and “Hockey Mom” versions)

We grouped the two commercials produced by CTJ together, since they are virtually the same but for the fact that one features a male as “Hockey Dad” and the other a female as “Hockey Mom.” Both commercials run for 31 seconds.

In the “Hockey Dad” version, the commercial begins in a darkened arena with somber music playing. Dad is seated in the bleachers (bleachers are benches in hockey arenas for spectators to watch the game), his son seated in front of him. Dad, looking forlorn (an expression also worn by his son), states: “I want to pat my kid on the back for giving it his all, and see him thrive in a positive environment”; “I want to go with him on a road trip, and watch him make friends for life”; “But I can’t, and it tears me up.” At the conclusion of the dad’s address this text appears: “1 in 3 families can’t afford to play organized sports,” which is followed by a voiceover: “If you want to play, call Jumpstart.” Dad and son are then seen dressed in hockey gear, with the dad now dressed as a hockey coach. Both are beaming, and the commercial concludes with a voiceover: “Because we all play for Canada” (CTJ’s motto).

Similarly, in the “Hockey Mom” version of this commercial, the scene is set in a similar darkened arena with somber music playing and the mom seated in the bleachers with her two young children—a boy and girl—seated in front of her. Mom (again, appearing unhappy, an expression that was once again mimicked by the two children): “I want to see my kids develop confidence, take chances, and become leaders”; “I want them to know teamwork, and the joy of working towards positive goals”; “But I can’t, and it hurts.” At the end, again, the children are dressed in hockey gear. Mom remains dressed as she was but is now waving a cowbell. All are seen smiling. Again, the commercial concludes with a voiceover: “If you want to play, call Jumpstart”; “Because we all play for Canada.”

How Canadian corporations’ commercials intend to educate viewers on SYD

In this section we describe how, through their CSR commercials, the Canadian corporations under analysis aim to educate viewers in a specific construction of SYD.

Setting the scene: Defining the value of childhood and youth sports through discourses of “universal inclusivity”

Immediately apparent in all four commercials are constructions of sport as being a universally constant, positive experience for all children, regardless of their gender or ethnicity. This inclusivity discourse emerges through scenes that depict sports as offering spaces that can galvanize boys and girls into taking part in road hockey games across Canada, or playing on basketball courts across the diverse neighborhoods of downtown Toronto. These aspects of inclusion could be viewed as countering our critical reading of these commercials; however, our critical analysis of the inclusion of various ethnicities and both genders revealed a different reading of the commercial than the universally inclusive view of sport the corporations may wish viewers to believe. We observed semiotic choices signaling the fact that while childhood sports are universally experienced by all ethnicities and both genders, future athletic aspirations are not; additionally, we noted the use of traditional, stereotypical gender roles.

In ScotiaBank’s “Hockey Dreams” commercial, the impression is that viewers are privy to authentic games of children’s road hockey and are getting insights into the imaginations of children. This impression is achieved in two ways: by the children never addressing the camera; and viewers accessing children’s dreams of future hockey glory as NHL players. Importantly, boys and girls from a range of ethnicities are shown playing road hockey together. Yet, while boys and girls of various ethnicities are featured playing together, none of the scenes depict famous female or non-Caucasian elite hockey players. On the contrary, in the one scene where a girl dreams of being a future hockey star, she still aspires to emulate an NHL player. Consequently, while participating in childhood sports is framed as equally accessible to all ethnicities and both genders, elite sport is seen to be the exclusive preserve of white males, an oversight that could lead viewers to the assumption that women’s elite hockey and its stars are not worthy of girls’ athletic aspirations.

A similar representation of childhood versus adult sport is evident in the BMO “What does a bank like BMO know about basketball?” commercial. This commercial looked like an effort by BMO to promote diversity in sport by presenting images of active boys and girls from a range of ethnicities. However, upon our critical examination, we saw it could be read as an attempt to structure viewers’ understandings of minorities in sport. In it, boys and girls are shown playing basketball together, but the commercial ends with stating how BMO supports the NBA; there is no mention made of the WNBA (noteworthy, there is no Canadian WNBA team), thereby signaling endorsement based on gender. We also noted the number of different ethnicities featured in BMO’s basketball commercial especially, a telling aspect that we elaborate on in the following section of this article.

The two CTJ commercials presented a unique opportunity for analyzing the different ways in which parent gender is constructed in SYD. Since the two commercials were virtually identical other than a change in parent gender, CTJ’s “Hockey Dad” and “Hockey Mom” commercials enabled us to analyze differences in the presentation of father and mother. Noteworthy is the ending of the two commercials. At the end of the dad version, the dad and son are both dressed in hockey gear, with the dad in the role of a coach. At the end of the mom version, her two children are dressed in hockey gear while mom is dressed as before but now waving a cowbell, signifying her cheerleading role as opposed to the participating coach that dad became. Even the language used by the dad emphasizes his active involvement in his son’s sport, as he describes traveling with his son on a road trip and proudly pats him on the back. Although worth noting, the dad’s statements that, “I want to go with him on a road trip, and watch him make friends for life”; “But I can’t, and it tears me up” were an odd point, given that CTJ does not fund parents’ expenses, only the children’s. On the other hand, the mom again plays the role of passive observer, as she describes merely watching children develop lifeskills without her active involvement in their sports.

Contrary to these inclusivity narratives running through the four SYD commercials’ presentations of sport, young people’s participation in sport has been shown to have many exclusionary aspects. There is a huge youth drop-out rate for sport participation within developed countries (Hedstrom and Gould, 2004), particularly amongst girls from ethnic minorities in low-income neighborhoods (Sabo and Veliz, 2016; Johnstone and Millar, 2012). Sport systems have been accused of propagating white, middle-class, able, heteronormative male discourses, meaning those who do not fit this mold face barriers to integrating themselves successfully in many sporting contexts (Kingsley and Spencer-Cavaliere, 2015). Sport is also a space where masculine privilege and violence are often condoned (Levermore, 2008), and where girls and women are marginalized and even abused (Brady, 2005). Contrary, then, to these grand narratives of universal inclusivity in sport, intersecting variables of class, gender, and ethno-cultural background remain significant barriers to female sporting participation, even if young women are shown to have forms of access.

Next, we discuss how we observed a number of strategies used to potentially encourage viewers to accept uncritically that sports participation will empower children and ultimately result in the acquisition and mastery of a range of benefits.

Furthering the narrative through discourse of the “magic of sports”

With viewers supposedly now better educated in how all children are welcome and included in sports, the four commercials introduce and emphasize the dominant discourse of sports’ “magical” transformative properties (Jhally, 2006a). This is achieved through discourses that can be read as presenting sports as the only way children can acquire crucial personal and social skills. Additionally, the ethnic diversity of the BMO cast of basketball players signified a unique discourse about the magic of SYD for these young people in contrast to the CTJ or ScotiaBank commercials.

Develop crucial life skills

We noted a considerable lack of justifying information in the four SYD commercials regarding why or how sports are important in children’s lives; viewers must simply accept that sports are inherently good. While viewers are clearly educated about the necessity of sports for developing crucial “lifeskills”—a vague term already—in children, they are not given any explanation as to how sports enable children to acquire these benefits. Completely lacking in the commercials is any description of mechanisms by means of which the empowering transformation takes place. In the CTJ commercial the children are never actually shown playing hockey but instead are displayed throughout the commercials in solitude and wearing sad expressions, despite the parents describing hockey as providing children with opportunities “to make friends for life” and promoting “the joy of working towards positive goals.” Thus, although these commercials described how sports may be beneficial to children, we could not overlook the negative implications. In the BMO commercial, the young people address the camera about basketball techniques and BMO’s ignorance thereof, yet they never mention teamwork or any skill that could transfer into lifeskills. Beyond not explaining how sports will empower or help children develop lifeskills, the commercials also presume that viewers possess knowledge about sports and Canadian culture (we build on the use of Canadian culture in the final discourse section). This is evident in the BMO commercial when the young people list technical basketball terms and in the ScotiaBank commercial when the term “the fifth season” is used; none of this argot is explained.

Such depictions demonstrate an ideological and financial investment on the part of corporations in the widespread (mis)conception that sport, in-situ, contributes to positive child–youth development (PYD) (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011). Historically grounded in the positive psychology movement (Weiss Bolter and Kipp, 2014), PYD refers to engaging young people in pro-social behaviors to deter them from health-compromising behaviors and future-jeopardizing behaviors (Holt and Neely, 2011; Larson, 2000). The PYD approach has been used to support claims that sport participation correlates to valued development outcomes, such as improved self-esteem, emotional regulation, problem-solving skills, goal attainment, social skills, and academic performance (Barber et al., 2001; Eccles et al., 2003). It was unsurprising to find this discourse being used by all three campaigns, as it is emblematic of a dominant narrative that pervades our cultural sporting imaginary: sport empowers young people and teaches life skills (Darnell, 2010; Hartmann, 2003). Advocates of this sport-for-good ethos are often labeled “sport evangelists” (Coakley, 2011; Giulianotti, 2004) due to their blind faith (with meager empirical support) in the “power of sport” to change the world by transforming lives and communities. Most of these criticisms have come following program evaluations that expose hubris underlying the expansion of SYD programs (Coalter, 2010; Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011; Kidd and Donnelly, 2007).

Sport reforms young people

The “sport participation results in life skills” rhetoric is particularly evident in the BMO basketball commercial, where the young people, all older than those featured in the CTJ and ScotiaBank commercials, appear tough and cocky. They also speak confidently, even confrontationally, to the camera. This contrasts with the less ethnically diverse children featured in ScotiaBank’s hockey games who are shown enjoying a more innocent kind of play experience. We assert that the BMO commercial featuring “tougher” and more ethnically diverse young people draws on an “interventionist” (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011) SYD discourse, one that promotes the idea that sport participation amongst marginalized young people affects their life chances.

These discourses draw on the entrenched belief across Western nations that sport has the capacity to recalibrate “at-risk” young people into upstanding citizens (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011). In this way, BMO appears to be following in the footsteps of corporate campaigns directed toward urban youth that have been accused of reproducing implicit racial logic, connecting race with risk, violence, and crime, and signaling a pressing need to provide such young people with discipline (Hartmann, 2001). For middle- and upper-class young people, sport’s promise is often defined in terms of providing positive socialization experiences (Pitter, 2004). Contrarily, sport directed toward low-income young people from ethnic minorities is increasingly understood as interventionist because it is designed to orient excluded young people away from “anti-social” behaviors (embedded in the cultural logics of poverty), and toward “pro-social” values (Coakley, 2002; Hartmann, 2001, 2003; Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011).

There is little empirical support for the idea that sport participation alone can reform “problem youth,” as research has yet to show meaningful effects of sport on deterrence, rehabilitation, and pro-social value development on this demographic. (Gardner Roth and Brooks-Gunn, 2009; Nichols, 2004, 2007; Smith and Waddington, 2004). Rather, the benefits of sport programs for deprived young people appear to be highly contextual (Coakley, 2011; Coalter, 2015; Holt and Neely, 2011; Spaaij 2014). Indeed, we know that sport’s “magical” ability to shape and transform young people is not intrinsic to sport but exogenously linked to the quality and character of the social relations surrounding the sport itself. When sport programs include purposeful planning, outreach, reflexive evaluation, and youth collaboration with caring adults, youth participants have an increased likelihood of experiencing an array of positive psychosocial development effects (Fuller et al., 2013; Gilligan, 2008; Richardson, 2012; Tebes et al., 2007). Sometimes labeled as “plus sport” or “sport-plus-development,” these programs contrast with traditional sport participation because they are augmented with additional social services (Coalter, 2013). Rather than simply reproducing existing social relations, these transformative program models may better facilitate change in individuals and communities (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011). Recognition of these crucial sport programming variables is entirely absent from the commercials that instead propagate evangelic SYD rhetoric. Perhaps this is not surprising, considering BMO explicitly stated on its website that its ultimate goal of sponsorship was “build[ing] its business.”

Our analysis of how corporations attempt to both dictate and blind viewers to SYD should teach us that there needs to be more critical analysis of such SYD discourses that rely on unsubstantiated and rhetorical claims of “the magic of sport” to address social inequalities. The implicit information presented by BMO, ScotiaBank, and CTJ is that they are virtuous companies interested only in preventing children (through sport sponsorship) from growing up to be unskilled, non-productive, un-contributing, and sad citizens. Such messages can serve to obscure findings from SDP research that show how although some sport-based youth development programs may support PYD in specific contexts, sport participation alone is rarely enough to affect young people’s life chances, especially for socially vulnerable young people. Moving on from this point, our final subsection explores how such messages relate to wider socio-cultural forces and may aid in the social reproduction of citizenship and neoliberal subjectivities amongst young people.

Reading between the lines: Neoliberal discourses of “consumption,” “individualism,” and “personal responsibility”

With viewers now educated on the fundamental necessity of sports in children’s and young people’s lives, additional discourses can be recognized. These reveal, somewhat remarkably, that SYD advertisements do more than simply promote childhood physical activity. Rather, in these commercials, the central themes that are presented as being connected to sport participation may serve to develop/reinforce neoliberal subjectivity in young citizens.

Consumption

The commercials use specific discourses to possibly communicate the idea that not just any sport will prove beneficial for children and young people—only those sports that have been defined as such by the corporations. In this regard, CTJ merits special attention for its carefully crafted presentation of just what type of sport best benefits children and young people. CTJ focuses on the urgent need to get children involved in organized sports. By positioning children’s participation as possible only through organized sports, it is possible to read the commercial as silencing the possibility of children’s playing and enjoying sports apart from enrolling in an organized program. Noteworthy in the CTJ commercials is the focus on league hockey, participation in which requires the greatest financial investment from parents. This insistence on league hockey participation is further reinforced through the voiceover at the end of both CTJ commercials: “If you want to play, call Jumpstart” (emphasis added), which could be read as insinuating that children cannot even play without participating in organized sports and, most importantly, without CTJ’s intervening benevolence.

Such a discourse stands in stark contrast to those of both ScotiaBank and BMO, whose commercials feature children and young people playing unorganized, pickup sports in parks, backyards, and other public spaces. Indeed, since ScotiaBank features hockey, we can directly compare how hockey is positioned by the two corporations. CTJ promoted organized hockey league participation, and their commercials concluded with children fully dressed in hockey equipment (which featured the CT logo). In the ScotiaBank commercial, the children are shown playing road hockey wearing little equipment. In fact, noticeably absent from the ScotiaBank and BMO commercials are references to the corporations. Similar to Lucas (2000), we wondered if the limited use of corporation signifiers in these two commercials functions strategically to blur the identification of the text as a paid advertisement. Until the final few seconds, BMO’s and ScotiaBank’s commercials could even be misperceived as public service announcements and, as such, delay revelation of the corporations’ investment (in every sense) in the commercials. As we detailed earlier, this was explicitly described as a technique CTJ used called “native advertising—segments financed by an advertiser that look like normal editorial content” (Campbell, 2014).

The motivation for CTJ in presenting such an acutely different angle on SYD from that put forward by BMO and ScotiaBank becomes transparent upon critical reflection: unlike the banks, CT has a sports equipment retail chain and needs to increase its potential for profit; therefore, CTJ furthers CT’s commercial aims through such advertisement discourses of children needing to be in equipment-rich, organized sports stores. Because it requires such commercials to sell sports equipment, similarly to Nike (Lucas, 2000), CTJ disempowers children in its efforts to increase sport participation. And to repeat, this is not just participation in any sport, but in organized league hockey, an activity that requires children to use equipment available at CT stores. In its efforts to manipulate children to participate in organized sports, if they are to reap the rewards of taking part, campaigns like the one mounted by CTJ remove children’s agency since young children depend on parents to buy equipment and enroll them in league sports. Consequently, parents, not children, have the final say as to whether children participate in organized league sports or not.

Beyond merely educating viewers on the necessity of children participating in organized sports, CTJ, like ScotiaBank, draws on a discourse that emphasizes Canadian children participating in traditionally “Canadian” sports and what it means to be a “good” Canadian. Michael Robidoux has written extensively on the role of hockey in Canadian national identity formation and reminds us that, “efforts to construct a sense of national identity through sport inversely acknowledge the potentially assimilatory effects these national sporting practices might have on marginal or minority groups” (2012: 4). From this perspective, consuming hockey equipment through CT moves Canadian newcomers one step closer to participating in patriotic sports and being able to “play for Canada.”

Hockey has also long been part of the promotional politics of Canada’s political landscape, and is best exemplified by Canada’s former prime minister, Stephen Harper. Many writers have noted how Harper seized upon the importance of hockey in the Canadian (sporting) imagination in order to present himself as a regular “hockey dad” (Scherer and McDermott, 2012). Mythology of Canadian hockey heroes and the spirit of nationhood are seamlessly interwoven in the hockey narratives presented by CTJ and ScotiaBank.

This nationalist theme was most prevalent in ScotiaBank’s commercial, where children dream of iconic Canadian hockey moments. The assumption that everyone should be familiar with these iconic moments in Canadian hockey—that all “good” Canadians should be familiar with and value men’s hockey—was explicitly stated as the motivating factor behind the creation of “Hockey Dreams”: “It was a really simple insight in the end. Whether you are an adult or a child, you can relate to the notion of dreaming and putting yourself in the position of your hockey heroes” (Harris, 2016). Thus, like Nike, CTJ and ScotiaBank present themselves as participants in the solutions to social problems. Children gain advantages by participating in sports, but only if they participate in the “right” (Canadian) sports (and with the right equipment), those promoted by the corporations’ TV commercials. Examples such as these demonstrate how SYD is constructed within neoliberal sporting visions to affect cultural politics and reinforce dominant values, social relations, and consumerist understandings of citizenship (Scherer and McDermott, 2012).

Individualism

A central neoliberal ideology underpinning these commercials is the embedded discourses of empowerment. Here, we describe the specific type of empowerment used in the commercials, one which focuses on developing individual power, achievement, and status when the children become adults.

All four commercials include dialogue and scenes that could potentially serve the purpose of directing viewers’ attention to the benefits of sports that will only be fully realized when children become adults. This discourse speaks directly to the fact that the commercials, again similar to Nike’s, are never targeting children but the gatekeepers to their participation in organized sports, their parents—the people with purchasing power (Lucas, 2000). This is explicitly seen, for example, in the ScotiaBank commercial where the children dream of becoming the hockey stars of their parents’ generations, (i.e. Lanny McDonald), as opposed to emulating present-day hockey stars, such as PK Suban or Sidney Crosby. In CTJ’s commercial, both the “Hockey Mom” and “Hockey Dad” explicitly state hockey’s contribution to enabling their children to “make friends for life” and to “become leaders.” Such language and sentiments transform the acts of purchasing equipment and enrolling children in hockey into an “investment” that will result in long-term benefits and skills. This observation reinforces our theory that even though the commercials are presented as being directed at low-income parents, they are targeting all parents, not only those who need CTJ but also—and even especially—those who can afford to buy hockey equipment from CT. Furthermore, even though neither ScotiaBank nor BMO sells sports equipment, we again found the discourse of lifelong skills, skills that are needed for developing good neoliberal citizens. The commercials employed the language of how sport “teaches kids the skills they need to win, in sport and in life” and enables them to “dream big.” In other words, it is not about the sport they will be playing as children, it’s about how organized participation in sport prepares them to be “winners” in life and succeed as consuming adults in a consumer–capitalist society. After all, neoliberalism has been described by Connell as above all, “an ideology which implicitly justifies the social inequality that allows proper rewards for ‘winning’” (Armstrong, 2010: 187).

Both BMO and ScotiaBank explicitly state their sponsorship of elite sports. However, in a contradiction of the good citizen promotion, the ScotiaBank commercial presents the children dreaming of individual glory as hockey players and glorifies sport celebrity through the narrative of children’s fantasies of becoming NHL players. The visual elements trigger the children’s self-projection into professional hockey stardom by transforming their neighborhood road hockey game into a spectacular arena for singular glory. This focus on individuals was repeated on ScotiaBank’s website, where the focus was on an individual scoring the “game-winning goal” and knowing “what being a hockey hero feels like” (ScotiaBank, 2017).

Critical sport scholars have theorized that certain SYD programs may, ultimately, serve as normalization strategies for the (re)production of neoliberal subjectivities (Fusco, 2012). In this conceptualization, young people are socialized through sport participation into worldviews of hyper-individualism (Coakley, 2011), often in place of their involvement in community-based initiatives that may challenge power structures in more transformative ways. This discourse of individual transformation draws upon the (North) American success story of the self-made man, epitomized in the neoliberal era by the celebrity athlete figure (Jhally, 2006b; Leonard and King, 2011). Such meritocratic ideals are deeply internalized by athletes who fervently believe that hard work pays off, and that anyone can do anything if he/she (emphatically he/she) wants it badly enough (Jhally, 2006b; Leonard and King, 2011). All this to say: not only can such corporate commercials that exploit SYD be read as tendentious and self-serving, but meritocratic representations of sport that symbolize individualistic opportunities for social mobility may simultaneously serve to mask the exact structural inequalities (Darnell, 2012) that CSR initiatives of these kinds purport to address through sport.

Personal responsibility

Another significant contrast is the presentation of actors in the CTJ commercial as compared with the BMO and ScotiaBank commercials. Both BMO and ScotiaBank feature scenes of children and young people playing hockey or basketball, whereas CTJ never shows children playing sports. Instead, CTJ presents parents and children as dejected casualties. This aspect of the commercial is created through the use of forlorn-looking parents and children, darkened arenas, and somber music. These constructions make assumptions about the psychosocial characteristics of those who require help from CTJ: they suffer from low self-esteem and are dependent on external assistance. The low-income parents appear to be positioned as the grateful recipients of aid and charity, suggesting that without CTJ’s support, low-income children will be abandoned to unhealthy lives. And thus, the commercials bind children’s participation in sport to effective practices of parenting, specifically to parents’ responsibility to raise good neoliberal citizens.

Such factors emphasizing personal responsibility, specifically parental responsibility, have marked advantages for the sponsoring corporations. Making individuals solely responsible can potentially deflect attention away from and obscure the many institutions involved in structuring courses of action (Shove, 2010). For instance, by framing the subject of poor levels of physical activity amongst low-income children in terms of charity, CTJ may suppress the underlying causes that are relevant to young people’s lack of participation in sport. In doing so, CTJ can promote itself as the philanthropic solution to increasing physical activity levels, thereby distinguishing the retail store connected to the foundation—CT—from similar stores selling sports equipment (Lucas, 2000). Through an examination of Nike’s 2006 corporate responsibility (CR) report, Hayhurst and Szto (2016) described an obvious goal of using CR to increase profits and contribute to the bottom line, which was evident in the market-driven narratives throughout the document. Sections of Nike’s report revealed that the company had redefined the most appropriate way of engaging in socially responsible initiatives by implying that CR is no longer about “looking good” but needs to be profitable for the corporation (Hayhurst and Szto, 2016). In spite of what the corporations may wish viewers to take away from their commercials, individual choice cannot and does not affect larger structural issues. Failure and guilt should not be defined for children and parents according to their being able to play expensive organized league hockey or their ability to become the next Sidney Crosby (especially with regard to girls).

Consequently, we can see how these commercials, with their focus on children and young people developing into “winners,” could contribute to a neoliberal view of sport where values such as teamwork, sportsmanship, and respect are jettisoned in favor of hyper-competitiveness, athletic elitism, and individualism (Anderson, 2013; Jhally, 2006b). Such CSR campaigns hold extra significance in the current neoliberal era, where shifts in governmental responsibility have resulted in a downloading of state responsibilities to charities and NGOs funded by private companies (Harvey, 2005), such as CTJ, BMO, and ScotiaBank. Indeed, the four commercials examined emphasize individual responsibility, both on the part of parents and children and, thus, they could support the belief that participating in sport will translate into a socialization of character that privileges obedience, self-knowledge, self-control, and hard work.

Conclusions

Our analysis of three Canadian corporations’ CSR SYD commercials resulted in the following unique contributions to this burgeoning field. First, our study begins to answer calls from critical sport scholars to explore the structural dynamics of power within SDP initiatives (Darnell, 2012; Gruneau, 2015) by examining how SYD rhetoric is utilized by three powerful institutional Canadian actors embedded in the sport-media-complex. We extended a growing body of literature on SDP and CSR by conducting a critical analysis of how sport–media conglomerates use SYD rhetoric to construct certain visions of sport and youth development. We accomplished this by utilizing critical appraisals of neoliberal governance from physical cultural studies, sport sociology, and the youth wing of the SDP field. Our critical readings of these Canadian corporations’ CSR SYD commercials argued that they can be read as thinly disguised public relations campaigns that perpetuate stereotypes and advance neoliberalist discourses around and intertwining individuality, personal responsibility, consumption, and citizenship.

Second, by situating our analysis within the socio-cultural context of Canada, we examined how these advertising campaigns use discourses of nationalism to construct notions of the “good” neoliberal Canadian citizen. Our analysis revealed why looking at the activities of corporations within Canada remains important, even in an increasingly global era. Our focus on major Canadian companies allowed us to uncover how sport can serve as a medium through which neoliberal philosophies of consumption help construct particular notions of “Canadianism.” These findings are especially unique to our study and differ from past research on Nike. The intermeshing of hockey, sporting consumption, and Canadian identity/citizenship within two of the campaigns we studied may serve as an interesting point of comparison for international authors looking to undertake similar research in their respective nations. Building on our findings, we invite researchers from other countries to conduct comparative global perspectives on SYD-focused CSR campaigns, neoliberalism, and nationalist sentiments. Examining the SYD-related commercials might give insight into the similar ways corporations try to attract consumers.

Importantly, this study focused exclusively on three Canadian corporations’ CSR commercials focused on “children/youth sport.” A synthesis of all Canadian corporations’ CSR and SYD initiatives would lead to an even greater understanding of these campaigns in Canada. In a similar vein, it would be interesting for researchers to examine the online and print ads that accompanied the televised commercials in this study, as these commercials are part of larger advertising campaigns with print advertisements in addition to the commercials. CTJ has a number of other commercials for its SYD hockey-based initiative “The Big Play,” and the two “Want in” commercials analyzed here were a part of this. Similarly, ScotiaBank’s “Hockey Dreams” is part of a “#thefifthseason” campaign.

We also strongly encourage future researchers to examine the “audience consciousness” (Jhally and Livant, 2006) of viewers who consume such ads. Interestingly, we were able to get a small glimpse into viewers’ perceptions, as we accessed the commercials through the social media site YouTube. One of the four commercials, ScotiaBank’s “Hockey Dreams,” had a small number of viewer comments appended to it. While it is not within the purview of the present article to analyze these comments, we feel obliged to mention the observation of one commenter who criticized the fact that ScotiaBank pretended its scenes were filmed on Canada’s east coast when in fact the entire commercial was shot on the west coast. Such perceptiveness indicates that viewers can be critically sensitive, and sensitized, to the manipulations of such CSR advertising campaigns. Such evidence, scant as it is, should encourage other academics to pursue research in how audiences (and young people specifically) respond to these commercials.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Simon Darnell for his assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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