At the Association of Canadian Advertisers Executive Forum yesterday in Toronto, Corus Entertainment president and CEO John Cassaday was inducted into the inner circle of Canadian adverati with a standing O honoring him as the newest recipient of the ACA Gold Medal Award. Accepting his award at a luncheon ceremony, Cassaday spoke about a life spent in advertising, and the importance of valuing and empowering the people around you. Since he was being recognized for his exceptional leadership within the industry, as well as in philanthropic endeavors, it comes as no surprise that from his Campbell Soup (‘better than a sweater’ ) and General Foods days, to CTV and now Corus, that this a constant theme. The other trait he was honored for – innovation – also came through in his closing remarks. He left the audience to mull over the two reasons a marketer can be fired: doing nothing; or doing something, but failing, and advocated on the side of always trying.

This dovetailed nicely with the morning agenda, which focused on media innovation. The keynote, delivered by Charlie Crowe, MD of London-based C Squared, went over the reasons that the old hierarchy is breaking down and the traditional model is dead, and pointed out the archaic nature of some of the thinking, including nuggets such as that while 24-39 may have once made sense as a demo, it certainly doesn’t now. He illustrated the point with a chart noting the widely divergent preoccupations within the span – such as the 24 year-old worries if he can afford a beer at the pub, while the 39 year-old family man wonders if he can escape out with the lads to grab a pint.

His premise is that with consolidation of media agency brands, the quantitative difference is gone, they have the same breadth and tool kit, and now need to differentiate their offering. That’s where the media innovation and creativity comes in. Crowe, publisher of media innovation mag Cream, went on to give examples of great media-driven creative from around the world – from Cotibin, a cold remedy in Chile that advertised on pharmacy line-up queue tickets during flu season, to a campaign for Chevrolet in Columbia that targeted cabbies over the taxi dispatch radio (selling 700 cars).

He summed up with a Top 10 Creative Tip list.

1. Remember McLuhan. His example of the medium being the message was a texting campaign for Virgin UK wherein the tag ‘the devil makes work for idle thumbs’ was stamped on the inside of rolling paper packs.

2. The world doesn’t want to see another ad. The example cited for this one was Huggies UK, which noticed it was hard to reach mums when they were inside minding baby, and that theatres were twiddling their thumbs in the morning, and that free movies for mums and tots (with nappy sampling opps galore), was a very good idea for getting around all that. It’s aptly called the Big Scream.

3. Tech is a means to an end. The brilliant example for this one is Greentone – a chainsaw ringtone for Greenpeace, which became a badge of honor for the green set.

4. Great creative media ‘fits’ with the essence of the brand. The stunt that exemplified this was Tough Jeans in Hong Kong, which took advantage of the plentiful bamboo scaffolding around the city, and used their jeans to tie the crossbars together.

The tips go on to exhort media owners to use their audience as part and parcel of solutions, for advertisers to get close to content (not just sponsorship), and to break rules and invent something. His final word of advice was ‘it’s only creative if it works’, and in areas where there are no metrics, go back a tip – and ‘invent something to prove it works!’

During a panel discussion post the keynote, when asked if all these niche media creative ideas make money for the media agencies, Crowe likened it to telecoms seeing droves signing up for Skype: ‘you have to respond.’ He added that a move to fees will facilitate change from the transactional model: ‘I don’t think agencies can afford not to look at this’, and to ‘charge proper money for the smaller funky stuff.’

Doug Checkeris, president & CEO of The Media Company, agreed that ‘the transactional biz gets harder every day with fragmentation’, and that ‘it’s important to focus on creativity,’ though cautioned against getting trapped in creativity for creativity’s sake. (He recently judged several media awards shows).

Richard Burjaw, VP Marketing Pepsi QTG Canada, said it is the job of the client to engage all their agency partners to come up with these ideas. And when the topic rolled around to getting the media sellers to play ball with ideas that are outside traditional ad corridors, he also suggested that it ‘might help for the client to play an active role in that conversation.’ On the flip side, Crowe commented on a new enlightenment among media owners in terms of going beyond a ‘ringing a bell when they sell a page’ mentality, and outlined their challenge as better understanding the brand essence and coming up with ideas that work with their media.

So, it seems creativity is everybody’s baby.

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