Restaurants nab gold: BBM Commercial TV Tracking by ad category in Toronto
Please open the attached link to view BBM’s Commercial Television GRP Trending. The charts track the top 20 TV advertising categories for the first six months of the broadcast season this year versus last year. Restaurants maintain the lead, followed closely by motion pictures and furniture stores.
Toronto’s top categories
A 135-foot sugar maple boasts a sign of spring in Montreal
Astral Media Outdoor’s highest billboard, a 135-feet high ad face facing Highway 15’s northbound traffic in Montreal, is boasting a sign of spring. The billboard, which touts the exit for shopping mall Carrefour Angrignon, depicts a sugar maple, and the creative was extended beyond the ad face to include the pole. The pillar is wrapped to look like the bark of the tree, while a sap bucket stands at the ready below. Julie Godin, marketing coordinator for Astral says the clients are thrilled with the unusual execution. Beauchemin Communication Marketing did the creative. The billboard is seen by at least 50,000 per day.
Canadian Family goes online
Canadian Family is now online. The new site, at canadianfamily.ca, houses family-tested recipes, parenting tips, style advice and product reviews for the typical Canuck family. Seven main content channels include: parenting, style, food, products, health, fun and connections. A monthly e-newsletter is also scheduled to launch within the next couple of months, says Sonia Giampietro, marketing manager for the pub. She adds that there will be sponsorship opportunities within canadianfamily.ca by way of online advertorials and the like.
Notes from the media landscape: Burger King to star in X-box games
Burger King has hooked up with Microsoft in a first-ever deal that will have a QSR’s icon as a video game star. Three games are in the works slated for end of the year, and in them, the King is an interactive Clint Eastwood. Distribution is via U.S. franchisees at a bargain $3.99 with the purchase of a meal. This is yet another foray into non-traditional media for Burger King. The Super Bowl earlier this year marked the debut of a TV ad that featured the chain’s singing and dancing ‘Whopperettes.’
BBM Media Snapshot: Canadians and debt consolidation
* 400,000 Canadians (2%) used a debt consolidation service within the last 2 years.
* 66% are between 25 to 44 years old.
* Their average personal yearly income is $51,700, which is higher than the national average of $39,500.
* Atlantic and Prairies have the largest incidence of those using debt consolidation, 1.7 and 1.6 times respectively, compared to the national average of 2%.
* 20% have no RSP.
* 74% of those using debt consolidation own their own house.
* Mortgage (65%), followed by personal overdraft protection (63%), personal line of credit (44%), and automobile loan (44%) are the credit services they are most likely to have.
* Last year, 23% changed their job (2 times the national average) and 16% specified that they were laid off (3.4 times the national average).
* Their top 3 media by yesterday exposure are: radio (80%), TV (78%), and Internet (59%).
* Those who use debt consolidation services are 1.6 times more likely to prefer classic hits and AOR/mainstream rock, when comparing their favourite radio formats to national averages.
Source: BBM RTS Canada Fall ’04 / Spring ’05, individuals 12+
The preceding information is from BBM RTS, a syndicated consumer-media survey of over 60,000 Canadians, conducted twice a year by BBM Canada. For more information contact Craig Dorning of BBM Canada: cdorning@bbm.ca.
History to air Da Vinci Code programming
History TV will air a week of Da Vinci Code-themed programming nightly from May 8-11. Sponsors for this programming strand include Capital One, Mazda and The DaVinci Files. As part of their sponsorship deal (done direct), the brands involved will be included in tagged promos on all Alliance Atlantis nets, plus placement in online media supporting the event on Nationalgeographic.ca and Historytelevision.ca. The week-long themed programs will also be promoted via print ads in various commuter papers in Toronto and Montreal. In the latter, transit ads will also appear. Radio spots in seven markets across Canada will also be in rotation.
Monday, May 8 at 8 p.m. sees Beyond the Da Vinci Code, a one-hour long special that questions the existence of Christ’s wife and a holy bloodline. Then on Tuesday, May 9 at 8 p.m., The Real Da Vinci Code is hosted by Tony Robinson. Digging for Truth: The Da Vinci Code Bloodlines tracks the holy bloodline through the ages on Wednesday, May 10 at 9 p.m. And on Thursday, May 11 at 8 p.m., Secrets of the Dead: Shroud of the Christ explores a relic found in the 1350s. At 9 p.m., follow former monk Mark Dowd as he untangles fact from fiction in Opus Dei and the Da Vinci Code.
Greenfield named managing director at Tribal DDB in Toronto
Chris Greenfield has been appointed managing director at Toronto-based Tribal DDB. Prior to this post, Greenfield lead an internal group at Canadian Tire, which fostered a culture of innovation and creativity. Greenfield was also acting president of online advergaming firm, Fuel Industries. As managing director, he is responsible for people development, client management and revenue growth.
PMB Factoid
Game show watchers; by region
Axe Dry sponsors a TV show – with no product placement
If the Axe brand were a guy, he’d likely be full-on with the ladies. And so wouldn’t he be best to teach guys 18-24 about how to dodge the ‘Gamekillers’? The iconic personal care brand is set to launch the Gamekillers campaign in Canada in support of the launch of new antiperspirant, Axe Dry. Gamekillers is based on the notion that there are characters in life that keep guys from hooking up with girls. Visit Gamekillers.com and you’ll be introduced to characters such as the One-Upper, or the Mother Hen or the Mess. The site also features downloadable ringtone, mini-movies and desktop backgrounds. Central to the campaign is a branded Gamekillers reality TV special originally produced for MTV in the U.S. by Bartle Bogle Hegarty and @radical.media (both of New York). In Canada, Gamekillers will air on Saturday, April 22 at 10 p.m. on the Comedy Network. And while the show is sponsored by the brand, don’t bother searching for Axe Dry to make its expected appearance in the background. Instead, two TV spots (called ‘show-mercials’) were created around the program to mimic the look and content of the show – animated vignettes that detail the do’s and don’t’s when confronted with a Gamekiller, followed by the tag line: ‘Keep your cool. Axe Dry.’
Starcom unleashes interactive, online Lego campaign
SMG is doing its part to foster an online community among long-time client Lego’s target of boys 6-11. As part of an awareness strategy for the toymaker’s new Bionicle action figure line, the agency created integrated advertorial within YTV.com and an online badge-earning promo within Bolt.com. On YTV’s site, a leaderboard ad bearing the creative for Piraka (the Bionicle ‘gang’ name) blasts a hole in a game button within the site. Click on the button and you’re redirected to the Lego Bionicle site. ‘The banner interacts directly with the content,’ says Kevin Hung, supervisor at Toronto-based SMG. ‘And we’ve received positive feedback and a general sales lift for Bionicle.’
On social networking site Bolt.com last week, SMG released a five-week online badge program whereby kids earn a different badge each week (to customize their Bolt.com profile page) if they correctly answer questions about the Piraka gang. Of course, to answer correctly, they must visit the Bionicles site to find out more about the characters, creating a dialogue between brand and demo, says Hung. In the first 12 hours, the Bionicle campaign on Bolt.com experienced a 54% user participation. Creative and media were handled by SMG.
Traffic grows in Ontario and the west
Traffic now has its outdoor ad displays on 50 shopping centre properties across the country thanks to a newly-signed deal with Montreal-based development and management firm Ivanhoe Cambridge that calls for installations on site at 11 shopping malls in Ontario and B.C. Traffic has offices Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal and specializes in indoor and outdoor products for shopping centres. It is part of Media Group, which also owns SPEED Promotions. Ivanhoe Cambridge, also operates in the U.S. and Europe.
Entertainment and retail categories battle for gold – Eloda analysis for April 7-12, 2006
Entertainment and retail categories are in the midst of a spring push. The former stole 16% of the TV ad variety pie for the week of April 7-12, while retail grabbed 17%. And in a comparison of most new TV ads between the French and English markets last week, categories public service and entertainment each tallied at 24%, while in French Canada, entertainment and automotive tied at 14% apiece. Check out others topping the charts, and which brands had the most new spots. This info was gathered through Montreal-based ELODA’s online TV ad tracking, auditing and viewing services. All data supplied is based on the ELODA recording grid.
http://www.eloda.com
Ikea leaps up the charts: Top radio ads – Media Monitors for April 10-16, 2006
Ikea leapt up the charts in last week’s race for brand with the most spots on rotation on Toronto airwaves. The home furnishings brand climbed its way from number 455 all the way to number three. At the top sits Sears Canada, with RBC stealing the silver. Check out others topping the radio charts by category and brand in the Toronto market for the week of April 10-16, 2006.
http://www.mediamonitors.com
Sweetmama to give birth to new online newsletter tomorrow
The folks at Sweetspot.ca are set to give birth tomorrow to a spinoff weekly e-newsletter product called Sweetmama.ca. ‘The newsletter will come out on Wednesdays,’ explains Lisa Nash, director of sales and business development. ‘And in the fall, it will go up to twice a week.’ Sweetmama has already garnered more than 2000 opt-ins, she says. Nash explains that Sweetmama (aimed at new and expectant moms) will start off as a national edition but the company hopes to localize it in the fall, following Sweetspot’s model, which has Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver editions. When pressed for a key differentiator, Nash says: ‘We’re all about tangible shopping with a fun angle. There are a lot of sites with advice for moms right now, but we’re all about consumption. We always feature something you can purchase.’ Opportunities for advertisers include banners, text links and sponsored links.
