When you watch a football game, you see officials watching the runners being tackled or run out of bounds. These officials then run out, grab the ball and place it on the field when they estimate it was advanced to. It is a field of 100 (US) or 110 (Canadian) yards, and the placement is… Read More »
We were pleased a few years ago when our Media Director advised us that she had negotiated a free promotion activation from the CBC. She got a promotional tie-in with Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) for our Subway client and, even better, it was to run during the highly rated Stanley Cup Playoffs. All… Read More »
As Super Bowls, Stanley Cups and other championships roll around, it is interesting to see so many people wearing the jerseys or replicant jerseys of their favourite teams and players. It is a new thing. Even putting names on the backs of jerseys is a relatively new thing and not all teams even add them.… Read More »
After a few hundred blog posts, for myself and others, I might have learned a little on how to put a good post together. So here are a few tips for anyone starting or considering putting a blog together. It is really quite simple if you stick to some easy rules: Have a Snappy headline… Read More »
In honour of November being Mustache Month for Prostate Cancer, here are two stories about how mustaches have screwed up commercial shoots for me. First case was a Mr. Clean commercial we shot. It was a typical Procter & Gamble commercial. Lady of the house uses Mr. Clean to leave her house looking bright and… Read More »
Often we hear arguments that ring sort of true when they otherwise should not. Some of these I call The Yao Ming Argument. It is when you take an exception and make it seem like the normal, the average. For example, as the US struggles with its messed up healthcare system, people continually point out to… Read More »
Everybody thinks they know advertising and can provide us with a critique of what’s good and what’s not. Rarely do I hear criticism that shows consumers understand the strategies we employ to get messages across. More often than not people evaluate commercials based on entertainment value. We don’t. I recall shortly after we had begun… Read More »
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 »
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 »
Which commercials do you believe? Too few! Many commercials are produced these days with little effort to maintaining the premise that their message is actually believable. Maybe we gave up trying to make them believable. But when commercials are more believable, they are more persuasive. There are three qualities that contribute to believability: expertise, trustworthiness,… Read More »