The Ontario government recently gave me money and forgot to take credit for it. It was a huge missed opportunity.
A couple of weeks back, I noticed a direct deposit into my bank account of $335 from "CANADA PRO/PRO." Thinking this might be a mistake, and having no idea what the heck "Canada Pro" is, I did what any normal, twenty-first-century person would do. I asked Google.
Lo and behold, Google actually prompted my search with helpful suggestions after I'd typed only "direct deposit Canada PR" into the search engine. (When you get a prompt like that, it's telling you that LOTS of people have searched for the same thing.) Thanks to helpful websites like ask.com and others, I soon discovered that this happy little event wasn't a mistake after all. Rather, it's an HST rebate from the Ontario government, issued by Revenue Canada.
You may recall the Ontario government announced in 2010 that it would be providing these rebates to help ease the transition to the harmonized tax. Most people received a total of three such payments (in June and December 2010, and a final payment in June 2011).
Now, what if my account had shown this line item, "ONT GOV HST REBATE" (or even just ONT GOV REBATE)? Maybe "REBATE" is a problem, since the government likes to call this the "HST transition benefit," so "BENEFIT" would work just as well.
True, I might be angry to be reminded that I'm paying HST in the first place. But since when is getting money back from the government ever bad news? Now, I do not believe the Ontario government, and most certainly the government's public relations practitioners, intentionally hid this fact. Simply put, it was a huge lost opportunity, an opportunity handed over to programmers whose mysterious use of the words "CANADA PRO/PRO" has meaning only to them.
I have no doubt the Ontario government spent many thousands of dollars promoting the rebate, pointing to it as evidence of their efforts to minimize the impact of the HST on Ontario taxpayers. But they failed to communicate it at the most crucial and, arguably, the most memorable moment--when the cash went jingle-jangle into my pocket. It's a costly example of how even the best communicators can get caught up in the forest and miss the trees entirely.
Remember: Every point of contact with your audience is an opportunity to reinforce your message.