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Cheeky e-newsletter launches

Toronto-based creative agency The Artist Group launched Cheek Weekly yesterday, a free online newsletter touted as a guide for ‘beauty queens, fashionistas and culture cravers everywhere.’ It drops into subscribers’ inboxes once a week with the latest in celebrity beauty and fashion trends, application tips and product reviews. Reach for the first issue is 25,000 per week with the initial list of staffers’ friends and business contacts already spreading virally to that number.

Julie Miller, agency director at The Artist Group (an agency that reps photographers, stylists, and makeup artists) and Cheek’s head of business of development, says the newsletter will take a light look at a combination of beauty, fashion and cutting-edge popular culture. Miller says her audience is North America-wide. The site will offer advertisers ‘a number of integrated and customized advertising solutions such as banners that click through to the advertiser’s site.’ Miller says: ‘We’d like to keep the mainframe more editorial but there will be other opportunities to tie into product placement and subscriber contests. We’re open ideas to how to stretch the click-through.’ Cost for these ventures varies. A vertical banner is $350 while a sponsored link combo is $650. Miller says the target market is wider than one might expect. Age-wise it runs the gamut of adults and there isn’t even the expected female skew. She says men are more interested in grooming products these days but even the ones who aren’t, will like the cultural edge.

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BBCK takes its basement on the road

Teen-skewing net BBCK has taken its recreated 70’s-look basement on the road. The 24-stop BBCK Basement Tour made its debut in both Toronto and Vancouver last weekend. The campaign has also brought in retail chain HMV as partner in the ‘Kause a Rukus’ contest, which gives away a party trip to London and Paris. Five HMV superstores will also play host to the BBCK video kiosk, a screen that will loop BBCK programming. The net targets teens 15-17. Youthography masterminded the media buys, with creative done in-house.

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MIC’s K.I.S.S. pick of the week: Softlips campaign targets prom queens

Softlips is using prom season to target prom queens shopping at Fairweather. Vaughan, Ont.-based SitesMedia, which owns a network of ad faces in retail fitting rooms across Canada, will host creative for the month-long campaign in the chain’s fitting rooms. Fedele Naccarato, GM at SitesMedia, says the Softlips spot will be on 182 of his 10,000 ad faces nationally. ‘This is a great vehicle for this brand.’ Ffig Communications, created the Softlips campaign with media buys by Gaggi Media, both of Toronto.

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Notes from the media landscape: adBay? Wal-Mart bids for online TV ad auction

Wal-Mart is spearheading a test of an online eBay-type auction system for the buy, sell, and trade of TV ads in the U.S. Earlier this week at Association of National Advertisers’ Advertising Financial Management Conference in Naples, Florida, Julie Roehm, the retail giant’s SVP, marketing communications, outlined the idea and called for an advertiser investment of $50 million U.S. to buy the ‘media stock’ needed to test the online system. Other major marketers supporting the idea include Hewlett-Packard, Masterfoods, Microsoft, Philips, and Toyota’s Lexus USA.

At the conference, eBay presented an online platform that could be used for the media marketplace. TV would likely be the only medium used for the test although all of the details have not yet been worked out. The group still needs to decide whether the auction would operate by having the marketer or its agency bid on the available inventory meeting their criteria or whether it would be a reverse auction with media sellers responding to requests for proposals.The plan calls for the test to be up and running early next year.

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Nearly 90% of adults find SMS too cumbersome, difficult to use: Study

A new U.S. study from MRI (Mediamark Research Inc.) doesn’t hold much hope for the use of SMS short code messaging to expand beyond the young demographic. Even amongst 84% of SMS users, this technology – currently being used by many marketers as a response element in advertising and promotions – is said to take too long, is a real hassle to use, hard to remember, or that they had little interest in the offers they see using SMS as a mobile response. MRI tested SMS and a new faster StarStar technique (**) with 600 adults aged 18-65+ using print, TV, and radio advertising with mobile response components. Not surprisingly, younger consumers are more adept at SMS but overall, twice as many participants – 90.8% – successfully responded using the StarStar call number (** plus a couple of digits) than were successful with the SMS text-to-number task. Other findings include:

* Respondents who prefer the abbreviated StarStar technique are, on average, four years older than respondents who prefer the SMS text-ing routine (47.2 vs. 43.2 years)
* Among all respondents who prefer the StarStar approach, 35.4% do not know how to send text messages while 77.8% of respondents who do know how to text (and 78.5% who don’t) prefer the StarStar call technique.
The study was conducted for California-based technology company Zoove Corp. (zoove.com) the company behind the StarStar system. Tim Jemison, Zoove CEO, says that the StarStar technology will transform mobile marketing by broadening its appeal to demos and increasing response rates for mobile campaigns because of its simplicity.

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Nielsen Media Research Spend Trend: Gardening

TV blooms with gardening dollars
Spending has been fairly consistent in this category over the past several years with TV getting the bulk of dollars, followed by dailies and magazines with radio a strong fourth contender in the mix.

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Popstar lookin’ for love

Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb is turning her quest for Mr. Right into a reality TV show. The 37-year-old is single for the first time in 12 years and wants to settle down and start a family. Her quest is chronicled in an eight-part series, #1 Single which will air Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on the Life Network, beginning July 5.

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CHUM hires McCarthy

Jeremy McCarthy has been named affiliate marketing manager, handling all national marketing projects with CHUM’s cable, satellite and wireless affiliates. McCarthy has previously held posts at Alliance Atlantis, Bell ExpressVu and SEGA of Canada.

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PMB Factoid

Reward club participation; by gender
http://www.pmb.ca

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Christian group leverages DaVinci Code buzz with faith-based media

Campus Crusade for Christ Canada is selling Jesus via a multi-platform campaign that leverages the buzz around the upcoming film, The Da Vinci Code. And while some faith-based groups are advocating a ban on the film, this evangelical group, based out of Langley, B.C., is instead encouraging folks to watch the film as a way to start a dialogue about Jesus Christ. Elements in the campaign include an online blog at discussdavinci.com, DM pieces aimed at church leaders throughout the country, a 20-page magazine, cards touting the blog site, as well as radio, print and theatre ad buys.

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Some Canadian kids online as young as three: AOL Canada/Leger Marketing survey

AOL Canada released stats in support of its annual Online Safety week yesterday and found that 22% of Canadian kids 8-12 would rather be online than outside. The poll is conducted every year by Leger Marketing has also found that:
– the average Canadian child is online for the first time at six years old, though 20% of parents say their child was three or younger the first time
– 42% of kids (8-12) want more time online
– 31% of kids spend up to two hours online, but 7% surf for more than three hours
– Online activities for this group include: playing games (85%); surfing fun Web sites (43%); chatting on IM (43%)
The study surveyed more than Canuck parents across the country, in addition to the same number of kids between 8-12 years old.

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CSI still on top: BBM TV Top 30 for May 1-7, 2006

For a list of the top 30 TV shows for the week of May 1-7, 2006, according to BBM, please click the links below:
National
Ontario
Quebec
Toronto
Vancouver

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Entertainment and alcohol are tops with the French – Eloda ad analysis for April 28-May 4, 2006

Last week, English Canada had entertainment as the top category. This week, it’s public service at 25%. Atonement perhaps? The French are making up for lost time with the entertainment category trumping all things at 33%, with alcohol and building products equal at 11% 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

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MI3 ad spots hit the top 10: Top radio ads – Media Monitors for May 1-7, 2006

Paramount Canada’s Wonderland is once again paramount this week in the race for brands with the most radio ads in rotation in Toronto. New to the charts are the spots touting Mission: Impossible 3, which leapt up from number 183 to number six. Other new brands to the top 10 include: Altamira Financial (at number three), Dairy Farmers of Canada (at number five), luxury auto brand Infiniti and ING Direct. Check out others topping the radio charts by category and brand in the Toronto market for the week of May 1-7, 2006.
http://www.mediamonitors.com

Rank by Brand
Rank by Category

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Yahoo! bulks up search advertising

Yahoo! plans to start a country-by-country roll-out of its redesigned search advertising platform this fall. The new platform includes a campaign management app that allows marketers to launch search advertising campaigns across the Yahoo! network much more quickly and make management of those campaigns easier.
Features include an intuitive control panel, enhanced geographic targeting, fast ad activation, ad testing, visible quality index, share of clicks forecasting, and goal-based optimization.
Future versions will include additional distribution options and targeting based on factors such as demographic information or online behaviour.