October 2009

Simon Houpt looks at the challenges health organizations face as they try to craft appropriate messages for H1N1-related ads. In Created, he brings us Environmental Defence and Forest Ethics' new campaign, "launching something called Moms Against Climate Change to raise awareness of the upcoming Copenhagen conference." In Noted, Houpt wonders whether winery Yellow Tail "$2-million bet" is "the largest ad buy the domestic market has ever seen. (The entire annual wine industry marketing spend in Canada is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10-million.)" And in Quoted, he reports on a keynote speech delivered by Peter Aceto, president and CEO of ING Direct Canada, during the Canadian Marketing Association's direct marketing conference that was held last week.

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Ahh, Richard Branson, we never tire of your antics. We see from a press release on our desk that you're about to bring us National Fearless Day (Nov. 19), when Canadians will be urged to throw off their inhibitions and do something crazy: ski naked, take a luge run, make a naughty home movie. We're told it's tied to your new "Fearless" campaign for Virgin Mobile, but it makes us uncomfortable. You see, when we think of you, Sir Richard, we think of Virgin Air. And the notion of a fearless airline pilot makes us, well, fearful.

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The Globe and Mail's annual sales conference, held Oct. 7 and 8 at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto, afforded us the opportunity to hear from industry experts and some of our key advertisers.

Their insights and perspectives are worth sharing. We captured them on video for your enjoyment! Click the link below to view the first of three sessions - Nancy Evans, Senior VP of Environics, who was presenting about Canada's changing demographics and the importance of the Boomer segment over the coming decades.


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Slate columnist Daniel Gross posted an interesting contrarian piece on Wednesday.

In it, Gross maintains that, in the U.S. at least, "many newspaper-doomsayers are conflating hope with analysis."

Certainly, things have been rougher for American newspaper publishers than they have been their Canadian counterparts. Nevertheless, headlines emanating from south of the border can colour our perceptions, so it's nice to hear someone stand up to the doom-and-gloom crowd.

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From the Guardian's Media Monkey blog: "The great and the good of the UK PR industry got a bit of their own medicine at the annual PR Week magazine awards last night. The swanky black tie affair, held at Grosvenor House on Park Lane, was infiltrated by members of airport activist group Plane Stupid. The interlopers targeted the table booked by Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic. A kerfuffle ensued during the dinner phase of the evening which reportedly resulted in five police vehicles--and as many as 20 bobbies--turning up removing the Plane Stupid members."

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Simon Houpt looks at the damage marketers cause when they toy with consumers' trust in an attempt to go viral. Such attempts not only make the public at large even more cynical about marketing, they can also backfire and seriously damage a brand. In Created, he brings us four online spots created by Simon Pure Marketing for this year's Toronto Zombie Walk. In Noted, Houpt looks into the Great Metro Voiceover Mystery. And in Quoted, he shares an anecdote from Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant's soon-to-be-published book, The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture.

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Raise your hand if you’ve ever been to a therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist. How about a career coach, financial planner or substance abuse group? Hey, how come your arms are still planted firmly at your sides? Hopefully your life is so trouble-free you’ve never had to reach out for help. Or is it that, like most of us, you’d rather admit to getting de-friended on Facebook than having sought assistance for your problems.

Fret no more; there is free, confidential counseling available to just about anyone in the marketing or advertising and communications sectors.

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A KFC giveaway with lots of fine print
Marketers regard Oprah Winfrey as a rainmaker, but here's one publicity stunt where we bet the involvement of the daytime talk show queen wouldn't be welcome. On Nov. 1, KFC Canada is promoting its new boneless chicken fillet with a two-hour, 250,000-piece giveaway. Back in May, when Oprah helped spread the word about a similar KFC promotion in the U.S., thousands of consumers went home empty-handed after stores ran out of its new grilled chicken meal. Just for fun, we'd like to see a Canadian celebrity try to gin up that sort of frenzy. George Stroumboulopoulos, the gauntlet has been thrown.

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"Marketers are discovering more and more ways they might potentially leverage Twitter to make money, even as the microblogging site appears to be doing its best to ignore--and in some cases, outright discourage--them."



So writes MarketingVox.com in a piece about Twitter CEO Evan Williams' presentation at this year's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

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The editors of Mediaweek recently published their media outlook for 2010.

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Simon Houpt looks at barcode advertising. While still in its infancy, the technology has been adopted by a number of big-name marketers, among them Labatt, Sears and Best Buy. In Created, he brings us a witty campaign for "fledgling wireless company" Wind Mobile. In Noted, Houpt reports on a new trend--one in which marketers promote a faux-brand from a category other than their own. Finally, in Quoted, Houpt writes about Metro Inc.'s first TV ad since taking over Dominion.

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ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WERE ADS and there were scams, and never the twain did meet. But with the industry being embarrassed over a handful of notorious scam ads--creatively edgy spots made to grab industry attention without being seen by the public, such as the ad supposedly made in the name of the World Wildlife Fund that used Sept. 11 imagery--awards shows have come down hard. This week, the Cannes Lions declared a ban on the practice but then said it wouldn't necessarily ban agencies that do it. Way to take a stand, Cannes!

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