November 2008

Dave Michaels gives Montreal agency Sid Lee props for its new Adidas ad.

And in Created, Michaels reviews a Sirius Canada commercial that reminds us that there are still new things worth discovering (including, of course, new music on one of their many channels).

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Long the world's premier showcase for advertising professionals, Cannes Lions will broaden its scope by including awards for excellence in public relations next year.

According to a Cannes Lions press release PR Lions will recognize achievements in sector-related public relations, product and services, and technique

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Arsenio Bonifacio is the Director of Marketing for Edward Jones Canada, a financial-services industry leader recognized for providing excellent investor satisfaction. He has been with the firm for more than a decade and is responsible for the firm's advertising, public relations and new business development opportunities. Arsenio holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from McMaster University and a Master of Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University. He also holds financial services industry designations including Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute (FCSI). He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Association for Bright Children of Ontario and the Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association.

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QUESTION:

Dear Mark,

For months I worked on creating a database that's being used as the platform for a larger project in our company. Near the end I was asked to put together a report on how the database could be used to mine our customer lists and boost sales. This report then got used by someone else in a big presentation they made to senior management. No one asked for my O.K. and I wasn't so much as mentioned as the author of this report. Now I can't help but feel that credit for my work was stolen from me. Do I have a right to be angry about this? I mean, at the end of the day we're all part of the same team here working toward a common goal.

Feeling Miffed in Nova Scotia

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Jennifer Wells chats with Martin Jamieson, EVP of Loblaw Brands, Loblaw Cos. Ltd., and the man behind the grocery chain's marketing efforts. In Quoted, she reports that "the Sid Lee atelier in Amsterdam" has just opened and features "a full-service creative agency...a cool cafeteria [and] designer products from Canadian artists." And in Noted, Wells cites a new study that finds that "seven out of 10 Canadians say they will remain loyal to a brand in grim economic times if the brand supports a good cause."

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Sometimes, using humour in ads can be a highly effective way of delivering a message. And sometimes, it just plain backfires.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson and the maker of painkiller Motrin, learned this lesson the hard way.


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Dandelion, New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliot tells us, is one of the new breed of interactive agencies known as "brand storytellers."

Formed by noted production company Epoch films, whose roster of directors gave us the Get a Mac campaign among other advertising insta-classics, Dandelion's very name promises a new era of interactive content.

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Jennifer Wells interviews Canadian Scott Goodson, the founder of New York-based agency StrawberryFrog. In Noted, Wells chats with Zulu Alpha Kilo's Zak Mroueh, whose agency is charged with developing a campaign for Magazines Canada targeted to the ad community. And in Created, she looks at a new ad for Nissan Canada by TBWA Toronto.

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Because it's Friday, something fun...and food-related...and, in most cases, Photoshopped.

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And you thought it was over.

The election may be, but there are still interesting opinions about Obama's marketing and media strategies being aired.

Ad Age, for instance, observes that "what most miss or underplay are the ways in which the Obama campaign demonstrated its boldness, the trait that happens to be the most important for anyone trying to build a brand now, in a chaotic time when many will be tempted to shelve innovation and creativity to take up defensive postures.

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Canadian newspapers are increasingly attracting more readers. They're diversifying their content options and features to further appeal to consumers, and producing additional advertising opportunities in the process. But those aren't even the primary reasons you should be advertising on newspaper sites. An effort to sing the praises of a newspaper media buy wouldn't be complete without a nod to the nature of their audience.

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Pepsi has just launched a new campaign in the U.K. that sounds like tons of fun.

The soft-drink maker has printed one-inch pixelated images on Pepsi Max cans and bottles. These squares are 21st-century versions of bar codes--they're scannable areas of digital information.

The difference: Consumers do the scanning, and they do so by taking pictures of the images with their cell phones.

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