NIKE, TIGER & PAYBACK
Nike’s “Earl and Tiger” TV commercial has created a lot of reaction, good and bad, since it aired on April 8th, one day before this year’s Masters tournament. Reviewers have called it everything from creepy to ironic to brilliant. It certainly has elements of all [...]
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE SUPER BOWL?
Nothing's wrong with the game. In fact, it has been great the last few years, even for a non-fan like me. So shouldn't the marketing world be over-joyed about the world's biggest TV event, where over 30% of the viewers watch just to see the commercials? [...]
MARKETING XENOPHOBIA?
An innocuous little throw-away at the end of a story in Marketing Online caught my attention and jostled my memory the other day. It was a report on Molson Canadian’s new ad campaign from Zig. The article outlines how Zig’s new campaign evolves the iconic [...]
THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS
A couple of months ago, independent Toronto agency Cundari revealed the results of a self-rebranding exercise. The outcome was a revised logo and a new slogan, "It's the thought that counts." It's a nice tagline. The rebranding is all very familiar until you understand what [...]
RE-INTRODUCING THE POWER OF CREATIVE
It’s all too easy to become jaded about the creative side of the marketing business with time, even if you are a creative person. It’s easy to see how this happens: You see too many millions of dollars spent against weak or even silly [...]
INFORMATION-RICH, ATTENTION-POOR
Last month, The Globe & Mail ran an opinion piece on the state of today’s world, “Information-rich and attention-poor.” The basic idea, as you can guess from the appropriately descriptive title, isn’t ground-breaking news. But the author, Peter Nicholson, is President of an organisation called [...]
THE UNFORTUNATE GREATNESS OF MAD MEN
I recently forced myself to watch Mad Men because there are just too many references to the award-winning series coming up in everyday conversation these days. It even pops up in conversations about design. It is everything I feared it would be. We could have [...]
MAY I SPEAK TO A HUMAN BEING, PLEASE?
I understand the need to make businesses more efficient, but I get the uncomfortable feeling that there is a head-long rush to cut people out of customer contact at every possible opportunity. Even in customer service, and that can never be good for the customer. [...]
WHY I’M A TERRIBLE BLOGGER
I have this on good authority. The wonderfully-with-it young woman in our office who seems to know all about these things told me so. I’m not a good blogger because I don’t blog enough—it should be daily, allowing for occasional serious illness or family tragedy. [...]
ALL ATWITTER ABOUT NEW MEDIA
This March, George Parker wrote a wonderful article for the UK’s Brand Republic titled “The Twitterisation of the Adverati". [1] It’s a great read— in-going premise is right on target and the writing is Brit-witty and very entertaining. It’s a clever admonishment of ad agency people [...]
DENSITY OF THOUGHT
I’m embarrassed to admit I was never a fan of the Seinfeld show, despite the fact that I admire its phenomenal success. For some reason, I never sat through a complete episode. I’m sure if I did, I’d be hooked like most of North America [...]
THE COLLABORATIVE ARTISAN NETWORK
I want to work with artisans. People who care dearly about what they create, whatever product or service it is. Artisans exist well beyond the world of art - fine art or commercial art. They repair and maintain motorcycles, [1] they open independent cafes beside Starbucks [...]