The Juno Awards was an annual private music industry awards ceremony for insiders, wearing tuxedos and gowns, until 1995. The organization that put it on was the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). They had this crazy idea that they should be making money from it rather than losing or at best breaking even. Enter Jacques… Read More »
How many times have clients asked us to change fonts, change colour shades, change layouts… I couldn’t count every time this has happened. Small adjustments get deemed important by those suggesting them. And in conversation become more and more important. Sometimes it allows people to think they have made some impact on the project. It… Read More »
US Historian Daniel Boorstin, in his book The Image, noted that “The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.” That was in the 60s. People’s obsession with celebrity is even more so today. Why are people so obsessed with celebrities? One theory is the loss of the village. Our population and communications… Read More »
One of the broadcast laws in Venezuela, back in the day, meant we had to shoot commercials using local Venezuelan talent. One of our clients, Revlon, was a stickler for having their commercials look as exactly like their worldwide creative as possible. Nevertheless, these had to be re-shot locally. One commercial to re-shot was for… Read More »
People in the U.S. like to treat their Constitution, and its associated Declaration of Independence, like religious works of biblical importance. Immutable. Virtually written by the hands of gods known as founding fathers. The high priests, the U.S. Supreme Court, spend a lot of time interpreting these documents for their laity. What is meant by… Read More »
We travelled to the farthest western edge of Canada. Past where the continent ends, there is an archipelago of islands out in the Pacific that used to be called the Queen Charlotte Islands. Now it is called Haida Gwaii. It is no easy task to get there. We drove from Vancouver up the Fraser River… Read More »
Quite often we see “one off,” “stand alone,” “one shot” ads. These ads are designed for a single purpose – an event, a special offer, a single purpose. But they really miss the boat. Any advertising for a brand or product needs to be part of a continuing dialogue with your target consumers. It advances… Read More »
I was driving along on a city street in my car, speaking, hands free, to a friend in California. As we were talking an ancient Ford Model T pulled in front of me. The Model T was in amazing condition and it toodled along in front of me as we pulled up to a light… Read More »
On October 17, 2018, the Canadian government legalized cannabis. The federal government left it up to the provinces to figure out distribution but it seems like no one really did the marketing calculations right. In Ontario, for example, orders are going unfilled despite a move to throttle demand by limiting distribution until next April. The… Read More »
On our second day in Haida Gwaii, we continued south from the floating camp in the zodiac toward the very southern tip of the islands. We planned to stay at an abandoned whaling station called Rose Harbour on of the few places for shelter in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site which comprises most… Read More »