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.
Notes from the media landscape: Land Rover creates a Web TV channel
Land Rover is going beyond traditional marketing with the launch of a branded Internet TV channel entitled Go Beyond TV. The site will eventually play host to an online community where Rovers can upload their own adventures. Original content segments include real people living real adventures, with content culled from partners Discovery Channel and BBC, including a feature on Lance Armstong among others. Viewers will be redirected from the landrover.com site to Go Beyond and later, the channel will be a standalone. The effort has The Young & Rubicam Brands at the helm, with input from Mediaedge:cia and MindShare.
Bravo! debuts Mozart series
Bravo! is celebrating Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday with a six-part series on the famous composer told through re-enactments and musical vignettes. Portraits of Mozart will debut on Saturday, May 6 at 7 p.m.
HGTV takes it outside with two new series
Designer Kelly Deck brings the indoors out, creating outdoor versions of a living room, family room or kitchen. Take It Outside premieres on Tuesday, June 6 at 8 p.m. Then, beginning on Sunday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m., the pros show HGTV viewers how to solve common landscaping problems such as adding privacy, colour and shape to a garden on Landscape Solutions. Both shows are 30 minutes long.
Event
AdAid
June 13
Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
416.778.7922
AdAid is a party and silent auction to benefit Medicins Sans Frontier on behalf of the survivors of the Pakistani earthquake.
CRTC takes hands-off approach to mobile TV
The CRTC has ruled that mobile TV services offered by Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, and Telus Mobility are exempt from regulation under its New Media Exemption Order.
Additionally, the Commission is asking for input from Canadians on its proposal to exempt mobile TV services delivered and accessed over the Internet. This is all very good news for Canadian advertisers and consumers says Nick Barbuto, director of interactive solutions at Cossette Media in Toronto.
Yellow Pages deploys offbeat OOH
Cossette Montreal is painting the town yellow for Yellow Pages in a tongue-in-cheek OOH campaign touting the company’s online directory at YellowPages.ca. The agency has deployed innovative media at Montreal and Calgary airports. One execution, entitled ‘sleeping dummy’, has a mannequin sprawled out on a bench. A nearby sign bears the YellowPages.ca ad www.5 star hotel within 5km.ca. In Montreal’s Trudeau airport, a beat-up yellow suitcase sits within the luggage carousel with the message: www.une valise neuve ça presse.ca (nearest luggage store). Other executions include 1,500 luggage trolleys bearing campaign creative. Meanwhile, across Canada, the brand has deployed Zoom media messages including stickers on mirrors and in gym locker rooms bearing appropriate messages such as www.dating service because I’m looking pretty darn good.ca, among others. Across Canada, Yellow Pages has also bought 10′ x 20′ highway billboards, as well as transit shelter ads. Cossette Media planned the buy.
Rogers Wireless adds AskMeNow ad opps
Rogers Wireless Blackberry users can now know it all with AskMeNow, a mobile information service providing content such as headline news, sports scores, weather, stock quotes, directory assistance, directions, flight times, and hotel information. Darryl Cohen, CEO of AskMeNow, says the company is already working with Canadian ad firms, and marketers interested in advertising will soon be able to access a sign-up page from its Web site (askmenow.com). AskMeNow is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ocean West Holding Corporation in Irvine, CA.
As much Canadian content as possible is being added to the system. Temperatures and distances are metric; sports scores for the NHL and the CFL; Canadian postal codes for directory assistance and directions as well as stock quotes from the TSX are already available. AskMeAnything is a proprietary Internet-based feature of the service that allows users to literally ask anything (in natural language) via text messaging – and it’s available to customers roaming in one of any 80 countries. The answer is sent back and the 75-cent fee for each question is added to their monthly Rogers statement. A text ad message one or two lines long accompany each question answered. No ads are sent independent of an answer and are only sent in the body of an answer, and therefore only when a user has opted to receive an answer. All advertising featured on AskMeNow in Canada will either be from Canadian companies or from multinational organizations that target consumers in Canada. Content sponsorship opportunities are available but currently ads can only be text format. Video capabilities will be added within the next 12 months.
Transcontinental moves in-store with Enixa digital displays
Transcontinental has purchased a majority interest in in-store digital advertising company, Enixa Media of Montreal (enixamedia.com). With the influx of cash, Enixa will be expanding from 400 in-store digital ad displays to approximately 2000 flat screens across Quebec over the next two years. Enixa displays are currently in 45 Metro and other grocery outlets but expects to be in about 200 grocery and other retail stores at the end of its growth spurt.
Edmonton gets a new Avenue
Edmonton will boast a city magazine of its own in mid-August. Odvod Publishing, producers of Calgary’s Avenue magazine, will produce an Edmonton version boasting the same name. Publisher Orville Chubb says planned circulation is at 30,000 and copies will be distributed as an insert in the National Post, as well ‘as a free pickup throughout the city.’ Avenue will publish six times a year and Chubb says their goal is to increase frequency once they’ve determined advertisers’ and readers’ level of interest. The new mag targets 35-55 stylish urbanites and will likely net a slightly female skew. A full-colour ad page costs $3108.
Nielsen Media Research Spend Trend: Apparel
Dailies and TV neck-and-neck in race for fashion dollars
Except for 2003 when TV grabbed more than twice as many ad dollars as the dailies, the two media have pretty much shared the lead in the apparel category. Magazines have also been strong in this category over the past several years, particularly in 2005 with nearly 24% of the ad spend pie.
Bravo! unveils new Friday night movie strand
Bravo! is introducing a new Friday night movie timeslot beginning May 5 at 9 p.m. Movies on tap include Secretary on May 5, and the Ben Kingsley feature Sexy Beast among others.
OLN to produce doc series on oil rigs
Production has started on a new, half-hour, 13-parter doc series that explores life on an Albertan oil rig. The series, entitled The Rig, chronicles the members of the rig as they risk life and limb. A broadcast date is yet to be announced.
Brem joins St. Joseph Media
Toni Brem has been appointed as the new communications manager at St. Joseph Media, where she will manage communications, sponsorships and marketing initiatives for FASHION Magazine, FASHION18, Wish, Gardening Life, WEDDINGBELLS, and MARIAGE Québec. Prior to this post, Brem was promotions supervisor for Citytv and CP24.
PMB Factoid
Video game systems in the home; by occupation
