Scotties Teams With NBA Player for Playful Campaign
The Scotties facial tissue brand has teamed with NBA forward Scottie Barnes as part of its "Get the Name Right" campaign.
To promote the effort, the Toronto Raptor briefly changed his first name from Scottie to Scotties, posting it on social media and announcing it at a press conference.
Barnes' reveal was actually a playful tie-in with the Kruger Products brand. Scotties worked with Canada's The Sports Network and its broadcasters to weave the name change into the coverage of the Raptors' Nov. 26 game against the Indiana Pacers.
"Who better to team up with Scotties than me?" Barnes said in a news release.
Scotties worked with Canada's The Sports Network (TSN) and its broadcasters to weave the name change into its coverage of the Raptors-Indiana Pacers Nov. 26 game and accompanying stunt press conference. SportsCentre, TSN's flagship sports news show, also featured the name change in a special edition of its "Top 10" segment, showing a clip from the Barnes news conference.
"This collaboration with Scottie Barnes has allowed Scotties to tap into the energy and enthusiasm of Canadian sports fans in a fresh and engaging way," Susan Irving, CMO of Kruger Products, said in a media statement. "With this new campaign, we wanted to playfully embed the Scotties name into a cultural moment, highlighting that consumers have been calling us by the wrong name for years while reminding Canadians that Scotties has been proudly serving them for over 60 years."
The wrong name Irving refers to is Kleenex. In 2023, Kimberly-Clark discontinued that brand in Canada. (Several of its other brands, including Cottonelle and Huggies, are still sold there.)
The "Get the Name Right" campaign is just one of Kruger's more amusing efforts to promote its paper products, which include White Cloud toilet paper and Bonterra paper towels. In 2024, Scotties ran a campaign encouraging Canadians to "call us by our name" that included a Toronto pop-up event with a master hypnotist.
Earlier this year, in the wake of lingering tariff tensions, Kruger unveiled a "Made by Canadians for Canadians" campaign that blended humor and national pride.
