Events
Oct. 6
Power Conversations: Talking with Clients the Right Way
The Ontario Club, Toronto
647.393.9649
ama-tor@allstream.net
The Toronto chapter of the American Marketing Association presents this breakfast roundtable on how to engage customers in two-way conversations and leverage the learning to better satisfy the customer. Panelists include Lynne Dabols, marketing manager, global banking, IBM.
Oct. 13
NABS Sociable
Cherry Bay Beach Club, Vancouver
info@thesociable.com
www.thesociable.com
The National Advertising Benevolent Society helps ad folk in need. Zoom Media is hosting this evening of drinks, music and good company with all proceeds going to NABS West.
Ad Week: advice on doing digital better
The flocking to online marketing continues apace – stats presented at the OMMA conference that wrapped yesterday in NYC, point to 85% of all advertisers planning to increase their online ad budgets this year.
Keynoter Peter Weedfald, Samsung Electronics SVP consumer electronics and North America corporate marketing, an advocate of a strong online presence, points to a reason driving this migration, pontificating that ‘we’re in the ADD economy, even the ADHD economy,’ and given that ‘there’s no time for anything,’ this has changed our persona. ‘We’re in the maelstrom of change.’ And for a brand launching 180 new products across North America, with winnowing shelf-time windows, a strategic online presence across a myriad of top sites has been a key component in the plan for coping.
CTV and MTV to partner
CTV and MTV have partnered to up MTV’s presence in Canada, expanding CTV’s reach into the youth market, and all its promo and digital tenets. Media buyers are viewing the new deal in a very positive light.
Helena Shelton, VP, broadcast operations of MBS/The Media Company, says, ‘CTV’s partnership with MTV is very smart. They will now have huge inroads into youth targets. The big question is: they say there will be a block of MTV programming on CTV main channel, but they are so strong and (have) full simulcast, where can they possibly put this block that makes sense?’
Hockey sells for Zero and Blue
Hockey’s back and the fans – and the brands – are feeling the excitement. Take Coca-Cola Zero. In an afternoon event yesterday, the brand-new Coke with zero calories hosted the World’s Largest Air Hockey Tournament in Toronto’s Dundas Square. On the guest list were Toronto Maple Leaf alumni Wendel Clark, Nick Kypreos and Darryl Sittler. Also on hand were world air hockey pros Danny Hynes (ranked number one in the world) and Andrew Yevish. The air hockey puck dropped and in the match between Clark and Hynes, it was a clear win for the air hockey champ against the former Leaf. Torontonians got in on the action too, with up to 500 people in attendance, watching and playing air hockey and sipping the new beverage.
So why pitch a decidedly male-skewed sport like hockey with a brand that’s zero calories? Ironically, Coca-Cola Zero is aimed at young males. ‘Our research shows that males wanted the same Coke taste but with no calories. So we came up with a formula to fill that need,’ said Andrea Young, group brand manager. ‘[Hockey] is the perfect tie-in because of its passion point. Men love hockey and it’s a perfect fit for our demo.’
The launch of the new Coca-Cola Zero will be supported by O-O-H and TV executions as well as sampling at various NHL games and at colleges and universities across Canada. Cossette in Toronto, with Maverick handling PR, did the ad campaign and media buys.
In yet another hockey-tied promo, Labatt Blue is releasing a special edition Hockey’s Back 15-pack case. The specially marked cases will be outfitted in their own hockey jerseys to herald the game’s return and will be available as of Oct. 3 in beer stores across Ontario. The promo was created by Toronto agency Grip, with print and TV buys managed by M2 Universal.
Flash Media-Retail: Vice launches Japanese brand
From its Montreal punk rag roots to its current NYC-HQ’d constantly morphing media entity (publishing, film, records, TV, fashion, online), Vice has come a long way. And it’s the media brand’s many facets that has enabled its most recent marketing partnership, a form of flash retail with Japanese fashion retail brand UNIQLO. This month, Vice emptied its Soho store of its diverse range of designer lines, books, etc. and remade the shop into a UNIQLO store. The brand is set to expand into the U.S., and this marketing effort was a precursor to opening its 10,000 square-foot mega SKU stores in New Jersey.
The Vice team edited the hundreds of items in the line to a few well-chosen basics that would appeal to the Vice audience. And the edited collection is on pace to do the greatest gross retail figures since the store opened, according to Ben Dietz, director of business development. For UNIQLO, the effort was valuable as PR alone, to give Manhattanites – not to mention tourists – a taste of the brand, which has also launched in the U.K. The retail experiment lasts just for the month, and while the strategy called for consumers to discover the UNIQLO branded store for themselves, various PR events, including some for media, were held at the location, culminating in a closing party at the end of Ad Week. Dietz says it’s a strong possibility Vice would do this for other brands, and likes the fact that the regular store reinventing itself overnight keeps consumers on their toes.
On TARGET: Instant memories with digital cameras
Since first hitting the consumer market in the beginning of the nineties, digital cameras have definitely made their way into urban Canadian homes. With 46% of the Valuable Active Crowd owning digital cameras, the technology is gaining widespread acceptance and is no longer reserved to just early adopters.
Media habits
TARGET results also reveal that digital cameras are cannibalizing time usually spent watching television. On average, urban and active Canadians owning a digital camera are watching 12.8 hours of television per week, compared to 14.1 hours for those not owning the device. Digital cameras do not impact significantly on the average number of hours spent listening to the radio.
Levi’s to sponsor Exclaim! music tour
Youthful music rag Exclaim! has announced jeans giant Levi’s as a major sponsor in its first annual Four for Fall Cross-Canada Concert Tour. Kicking off on Oct. 17 in Waterloo, Ont., the tour brings together musical acts Luke Doucet, the Fembots, Whitey Houston and Shout Out Out Out Out across the country. To support the tour, Levi’s is giving away merchandise for lucky winners at each show as well as a CD featuring tracks from each of the artists on the tour. Automaker Toyota is also a sponsor, though details regarding their involvement were not made available. This is the first time Exclaim! has partnered with both Toyota and Levi’s brands. The deal was brokered by Toronto-based agency GEM Group. Exclaim! targets 18-34s with a male skew.
National Geographic debuts five
November’s a hot month on specialty net National Geographic. Saturday, Nov. 5 sees the premiere of Going to More Extremes: The Silk Route beginning Saturday, Nov. 5 at 9 p.m. The hour-long series follows Oxford University prof Nick Middleton as he explores hostile lands. The exploratory 13-part series Naked Science debuts on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 8 p.m. Fearless, which makes its debut on Wednesday, Nov. 16, is a series on ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. The day after, on Thursday, Nov. 17, the four- part natural disaster series Catastrophe strikes at 9 p.m. Finally, on Saturday, Dec. 3, Amazing Moments airs for the first time. The series combines moments of discovery, adventure and rarely seen animal behaviours.
Fat Actress preems on W
Kirstie Alley plays a version of herself in the comedic half-hour Fat Actress. The series premiers on the W net on Sunday, Nov. 6 at 10 p.m.
ATN adds four new channels
Newmarket, Ont.-based Asian Television Network (ATN) is adding another four digital channels to its existing lineup of 11. The new channels, ATN Zee Cinema, ATN Zee Gujarati, ATN Aastha and ATN Bangla, will launch on Oct. 13 and be available round-the-clock on Rogers Digital. The net will also be adding India’s most popular English news channel, New Delhi Television (NDTV) to its lineup by late November, says Byrne Fulton, CFO at ATN. ‘We’re open to looking at any avenue,’ says Fulton about sponsorship opps. ‘We’re a small but growing channel and we’re looking at anything and everything.’
New additions to CCO sales
Alek Borscevski has moved to Toronto-based Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO) as account executive from Canwest MediaWorks where he was a national account manager for Dose magazine. Before that he was in sales with Pattison Outdoor and Brunico Communications. Sam McGuire has been promoted to account executive from CCO’s marketing department where he created promotion and marketing tools for the company. CCO properties include mall and airport advertising, spectaculars in downtown Toronto, interior and exterior signage at the Metropolitan Toronto Convention Centre, and transit shelters in Ottawa.
Murgatroyd buzzes into The Hive
Courtney Murgatroyd has joined Toronto-based experiential marketing agency The Hive as senior account supervisor. Her primary responsibility will be to lead the Molson Coors account. Murgatroyd was previously at sports marketing shop International Management Group.
Ad Week: ‘Only Connect’ thesis meets ‘Measure that!’ reality
NYC: It’s Advertising Week in New York City, and the realization that the consumer is in control – and that no one’s business model is geared to dealing with that – is coming up. A lot.
One of the first events of the week-long agenda of conferences, awards and parties, was Forecast 2006, MediaPost‘s annual confab on The Future of Media, suitably held at the Marriott Marquis, plunk in the middle of Times Square, the ultimate clutter zone.
Ad Week: Forensic study reveals multi-media use
The themes of responding to the consumer being in control of media, the need for more targeted plans and more elegant metrics kept cropping up during the panels and presenters that took the podium during Forecast 2006, MediaPost‘s annual conference on The Future of Media. One fascinating research project was presented – the Middletown Media Studies – that seems to hold the key to at least part of that puzzle.
Mike Bloxham, director of testing and assessment and Robert Papper, telecom prof of Ball State University Center for Media Design, unveiled some top-line findings from a deeply forensic media consumption study conducted on 400 Indiana consumers, 18+, over the course of a week. Researchers observed the Muncie and Indianapolis subjects from as early in the morning to as late in the day as permissible, logging their media consumption in 15 second intervals, in context of the person’s activities – eating, watching kids, etc. They went shopping with them, they went to work with them, and they logged it all. With over 5,000 hours of observations and 1.2 million data records they believe it to be the largest observational media study of its kind.
