Gerardo Marinas has officially taken up the post of managing director at MPG Canada (MPG/Maxxmedia). Marinas is new to Canada and has been working in a variety of positions with MPG Global for seven years. He was most recently SVP of international coordination, which involved streamlining operations across countries and markets. Before joining MPG in 1998, Marinas was marketing manager for Pepsi Cola in Madrid and was brand manager for Unilever’s AXE deodorant and other fragrances. He is fluent in Spanish, German, English, French, and Italian.

In a surprising move late last month, David Chung, long time president of MPG/Maxxmedia, departed the agency to make room for Marinas. Chung, a 30-year veteran of the business, joined Vickers & Benson in 1996 to establish Maxxmedia as a media planning and placement subsidiary of the company. At that time, V&B had sold its 50% stake in Genesis Media and hired Chung to bring the media component back into the agency. Prior to V&B, Chung was SVP, national media director at Lowe SMS, which had recently been merged into Roche Macaulay & Partners, and had also held senior media positions at J. Walter Thompson, FCB, and MacLaren:Lintas (now MacLaren McCann).

September 20
Media in Canada Forum: What’s the Plan
York Event Theatre, Toronto
416.408.2300 x313
www.mediaincanada.com/forum/2005/

Presented by strategy and Media in Canada, the forum will assemble a group of leading media and marketing representatives to offer their insights and share tangible solutions for the challenges media agencies and marketers are facing. Keynote is David Verklin, CEO, CARAT Americas, speaking on ‘The Crackle of Change.’

People who have taken a European vacation in the past three years are heavy readers of PMB publications.

How current are those Snapshots?
Really enjoy the BBM Media Snapshots. Just wondering, though, if you have any that are more recent (if I understand the copyright credit, the info could be one to two years old). If that’s the most recent info, how accurate do you feel it still is? (We have clients who question the current validity because of the age of the study.) Look forward to your response.
Thanks.

Jim Norman, CD, The Norman Agency

Response from BBM
Thank you for your enquiry and kind comments on our BBM Media Snapshots. As product manager for BBM RTS – the survey on which BBM Media Snapshots are based – I am pleased readers like yourself find them interesting and useful. We, the RTS team at BBM Canada, have a lot of fun creating Media Snapshots.

Now to your concern regarding the age of BBM RTS data. As a syndicated survey, BBM RTS is updated every six months making it, to the best of our knowledge, the most up-to-date survey of its kind in Canada. Our current release, BBM RTS Spring ’04/Fall ’04, is made up of data collected between April 2004 and February 2005 and was published in May 2005.

Another point to keep in mind is that most consumer category profiles simply do not change that quickly. Since your enquiry came in on the inline skater BBM Media Snapshot, I’ll use that as an example. In our current release (Spring ’04/Fall ’04) 3% of Canadians participated in inline skating regularly and are split (51%) male and female (49%).

Looking way back to our Spring ’00/Fall ’00 release shows almost an identical profile: 4% of Canadians inline skating regularly and split (53%) male and female (47%). These incidence numbers may seem low but we are profiling just the regular skaters; if you add inline skaters who just participate sometimes the numbers go up to about 16% of Canadians.

Some consumer categories do change more quickly than regular inline skaters and you are right to look at the collection date of any published survey results since any survey is a snapshot in time. In the case of BBM RTS, we believe you have the most up-to-date syndicated media-consumer survey available to Canadian marketers.

Thank you again for your interest and readership of BBM Media Snapshots in Media in Canada.

Craig Dorning, survey product development manager, BBM Canada

Nothing says summer like the steady flow of beer-and-babes advertising on TV every year, so it’s not surprising that television is the only medium that experienced increased spending from this category over the past four years. Beer and alcoholic cooler marketers put 47.7% of their total spend into TV in 2001, 54.0% in 2002, moving to a high of 61.4% in 2003 before pulling back slightly last year to 59.3%.

The bulk of the dollars are spent supporting domestic beer brands, ranging from a high of 71.0% of the category spend in 2001 to a low of 58.3% in 2003, rebounding to the 2002 level of 64.4% again in 2004.

The Ontario Community Newspaper Association’s Board of Directors has appointed Bill Laidlaw as its new executive director, effective Aug. 2. He replaces Don Lamont who departed the association in April.

Laidlaw’s CV includes stints in general management, human resources and public affairs at such companies as The Bay, Royal Trust and as CEO of St. John Ambulence of Ontario.

Aug. 25
Media for the Non-Media Marketing Professional
The Media Company, Toronto. 416.644.3748. www.the-cma.org

This Canadian Marketing Association conference, expanded to a full day this year, explores the B2B world and focuses on dealing with increased competition, tougher regulations and tighter, more accountable budgets.