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RBC, Canada Life and Dairy Farmers sign on as NHL jersey sponsors
The 2022-23 NHL season will be the first where the league will allow sponsors to put a logo patch on jerseys, and three Canadian teams have signed partners.
The Montreal Canadiens came out first, announcing that RBC’s logo would be on the team’s home jerseys. While the bank will be focusing on uniting and supporting local communities with its sponsorship, the community of die-hard Habs fans was less than pleased about the patch.
The Winnipeg Jets also made Canada Life its jersey sponsor, extending the insurance company’s naming rights for the team’s stadium. Days before pre-season was set to begin, the Toronto Maple Leafs revealed that the Dairy Farmers of Ontario would sponsor both home and away jerseys with its “Milk” logo.
The NHL has provided guidance to its teams that jersey sponsorships can be signed at any point in the season. The Edmonton Oilers are the only Canadian team that has ruled out a jersey patch for this year.
Corus and Pluto TV lay out Canadian launch plans
Corus Entertainment has laid out its plans to bring U.S. free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform Pluto TV to Canada.
Pluto TV will be available beginning Dec. 1 with a preview of more than 20,000 hours of content at launch, including more than 100 “curated” linear channels in addition to video-on-demand (VOD) options. Corus will offer a slate of original Canadian programming, in addition to serving as the ad representative for the platform in Canada. The Canadian programs available at launch will include lifestyle and factual titles such as Love It or List It, Chopped Canada and Border Security, in addition to an array of popular U.S. franchises such as NCIS and Judge Judy. There are several FAST channels dedicated to genre-based features available at launch, including Pluto TV Comedy, Pluto TV Drama, Pluto TV Action, The Asylum (for “guilty pleasure” sci-fi and horror titles), Christmas 365, and Thriller 365.
Shane Cameron back at OMG as first-ever chief strategy officer
After a short time away, Shane Cameron is returning to Omnicom Media Group as the agency network’s first-ever chief strategy officer in Canada.
In his new role, Cameron will now work across Omnicom Media Group’s agencies and their key clients to tackle the challenges they face. He will utilize OMG Canada’s collective strategic planning skills and its Omni data platform. He will report directly to Cam Reston, CEO of OMG Canada.
Previously, Cameron was chief growth officer at American Challenger Development Corp, a U.S.-based company that was seeking to launch a new digital bank. Prior to that, he spent ten years in leadership roles at OMG’s Canadian agencies, including chief innovation officer at OMD and CEO at Hearts & Science.
UM wins AOR duties for PokerStars in Canada
UM has been named media AOR for online poker platform PokerStars as it ventures into the Canadian market. The agency’s primary focus will now be on building and scaling PokerStars’ position in the recently deregulated province of Ontario, while keeping PokerStars a salient brand in its home market.
Shelley Smit, CEO of UM, adds that PokerStars dominates the global stage for the online poker sector and is now dedicated to the new and fast-growing industry in Canada. “With our strong understanding of the ever-evolving media landscape and track record of delivering business results, we’re ready to help PokerStars lead the category into the future,” Smit says.
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Dentsu Quebec president Genevieve Guay departs agency
After 18 years with various agencies within the company, Geneviève Guay has left her role as president of Dentsu Quebec and CEO of Dentsu X.
Guay did say that she would still be “around the Dentsu halls” until the end of the year. A replacement for her roles has yet to be announced.
She was named president of Dentsu’s Quebec operations in 2020, retaining her previous title as CEO of Dentsu X, a role she had taken on roughly two years prior. Guay started her career at Dentsu with Carat in 2005, moving through the ranks in various roles at nearly every agency within the network.
Nine Postmedia newspapers cancel their Monday print editions
Effective Oct. 17, several Postmedia daily newspapers will no longer publish in print on Mondays. The affected outlets include the Vancouver Sun, The Province (Vancouver), The Calgary Herald, The Calgary Sun, The Edmonton Journal, The Edmonton Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Sun and The Montreal Gazette.
According to notices posted to the papers’ sites, “the decision reflects the rapidly changing news consumption habits of [their] readers, the needs of [their] advertisers and the escalating costs of printing and delivering a printed product.” The Monday edition will still be offered to readers in a digital format via ePaper, a digital replica of Postmedia’s printed products.
In 2018, four other Postmedia-owned papers (The Sudbury Star, North Bay Nugget, Sault Star and Timmins Daily Press) ceased publishing their Monday print editions and digital e-editions. The Windsor Star ended its Monday print and ePaper editions in 2019. All five of those newspapers continue to publish news on their websites on Mondays.
CHANGE
Blue Ant acquires connected TV marketplace Media Pulse
Blue Ant Media has bought Media Pulse, a Canadian market for connected TV (CTV) placements, to increase opportunities for advertisers and take a “logical step” in its FAST strategy.
Based in Canada, Media Pulse aggregates and curates inventory across popular and niche connected TV apps, platforms and multichannel video distributors. It will become a standalone entity under the Blue Ant Media umbrella. Mitch Dent, SVP, media sales and group publisher for Blue Ant, says that Blue Ant has already invested heavily in global FAST channel launches, so extending its capabilities in CTV for advertisers makes strategic sense. He further claims that Blue Ant believes that connected TV (CTV) is the most exciting space in the ad industry and an outstanding growth opportunity.
“The combination of effective 30-second advertising storytelling, specifically targeting ‘hard to reach’ audiences like cord cutters, is a market that has outstanding potential,” says Dent.
Overstory Media Group acquires Georgia Straight
Vancouver-based alt weekly The Georgia Straight has a new owner in Overstory Media Group, and it intends to bring the publication back to its glory days.
The Straight joins the company’s roster of local, community-focused publications. Overstory also says it plans to hire more editorial staff to support a return to focusing coverage on Vancouver-area arts and culture, a focus that had been eliminated amid the financial struggles of previous parent company Media Central. Farhan Mohamed, Overstory’s co-founder and CEO, also said the company would seek feedback from readers, partners and the community to help it find the best way to “redefine and rebuild the publication that’s lost its way over the past several years.”
Though independent for much of its existence, The Georgia Straight was acquired by Media Central in February 2020, just months after the company closed on the transaction of Toronto alt weekly Now. It was also just before the pandemic began, hitting Media Central’s finances and leading it to eventually file for bankruptcy in March 2022. At the time of the bankruptcy filing, Media Central said that both Georgia Straight and Now, as subsidiaries of the business, would continue to operate as usual, though debt holders sought to sell the publications to recoup some of the debt. Since then, staff have continued to publish, though former and current staff at both newspapers said they did so while being owed back pay.
