When Vancouver Sun readers opened their newspapers Wednesday (Aug. 23), they may have noticed an odd pairing of stories and advertising.
Featured on the second and third pages were stories covering the McDougall Creek wildfire in West Kelowna, its impact on residents and estimates over structures lost.
Next to these stories was an advertisement for new waterfront homes in West Kelowna. The Shelter Bay townhouses, selling at $1.19 million, were described as the city’s most “anticipated community.”
The ad was not the first time the publication promoted new homes in West Kelowna as the community battled the wildfire. Another had been published Aug. 19.
While one ad client described the placement as unfortunate, the issue highlighted the potential impact on businesses when such an incident takes place.
“When you see some of these blunders occur, a lot of times it's very bad press for a short period of time. On the other hand, it can wind up burning your reputation,” said Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University.
“It's that linkage, subconsciously. You certainly wouldn't want to have a series of ads cropping up all surrounded by stories about fires.”
He said that it can take years to build a brand but a very short amount of time to damage it.
“It looks pretty insensitive,” said Peter Chow-White, a professor at SFU’s School of Communication. “We see what's happening in Maui and Lahaina and you've got these contradictory responses to these types of a crisis.”
He said the inclusion of the ads “looks really bad” and is an unfortunate coincidence.
“There are some advertisements saying, ‘Hey, don't stop looking at trips. We need you to come here and spend your money.’ But they got locals that are saying, ‘Hey, something awful, tragic has happened here and people are still surfing, snorkelling and swimming off our beaches,’ which is really disrespectful.”
Chilliwack-based Van Maren Construction Group Ltd. is building the townhouses featured in the Aug. 23 ad.
Partner Eric Van Maren said in an email to Glacier Media that his company’s thoughts are with all those who have lost their homes.
“We regret the unfortunate placement of our print ad, but these ads were committed months ago, and we don’t control the location of the ads or the stories around them,” he said.
“We paused our online ads several days ago, but it was too late to cancel these print ads.”
It’s estimated fewer than 90 structures will be fully or partially damaged in West Kelowna and the Westbank First Nation because of the McDougall Creek wildfire that started Aug. 15, according to West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund.
One user on social media site X [formerly Twitter] posted a photo of the Vancouver Sun's Aug. 19 advertisement for the One Varsity development by Kerkhoff Construction Ltd.
The user said that it was “maybe the wrong day to run this ad.”
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Van Maren shared emails from the Vancouver Sun that detailed how the placement of the ads was unintentional.
“Both the Production and Layout departments are unaware of the specific advertiser. Ad space blocks are created on pages by ad size and placement sections and ads are inserted randomly during printing process,” said the email to Van Maren.
Glacier Media reached out to the Vancouver Sun and Kerkhoff Construction for comment but did not hear back by press time.
