The Consumers’ Waterheater Income Fund (CWIF), which rents 1.3 million water heaters to homeowners in Ontario, has turned to online videos and social media to warn customers not to answer the door to the competition.

Working with Traffic Marketing Group, the company’s spreading the message about its ‘Ignore the Door’ campaign by buying ad space on Facebook and YouTube to drive people to their online videos. They also sent out direct mail door hangers.

The target market is seniors, and Barry Zeidenberg, director of marketing at CWIF, tells MiC that an increasing number of people over the age of 50 are joining social media sites, noting that there are more than 900,000 people in that demo on Facebook. Zeidenberg’s team has also created a Twitter hashtag (#ignorethedoor) so people can track the conversation.

The videos, housed at Ignorethedoor.ca, are comedic attempts to show the intrusiveness of door-to-door salesmen trying to sell water heaters.

‘We fully support people switching waterheaters if that’s what’s right for them,’ said Zeidenberg. ‘We just want them to be informed.’