Toronto printer "quotes" Jian Ghomeshi on mailer

Jezebel 

Using, or parodying, a famous quote is one of the laziest creative tricks in the book. But Toronto's Corktown Printing Co. decided to take it in an extra-creepy direction by doing a word-for-word sendup of Jian Ghomeshi. 

The ex-CBC radio host was fired over accusations that he hit, choked, and otherwise abused women on dates going back years. 

When he was first fired, Ghomeshi wrote a Facebook rant outing himself as a BDSM enthusiast, and painting himself as a victim of corporate prudery. Part of it read:

Let me be the first to say that my tastes in the bedroom may not be palatable to some folks. They may be strange, enticing, weird, normal, or outright offensive to others. We all have our secret life. But that is my private life. That is my personal life. And no one, and certainly no employer, should have dominion over what people do consensually in their private life.

Here's the inside of the Mailer:

Jezebel 

Ghomeshi's attempt at rallying sympathy was quickly overtaken by an expose of his non-consensual abuse of women on dates and sexual harassment of colleagues. Since then, several women have come forward to media with creepily similar stories about his violence, including Trailer Park Boys actress (and RCAF Captain) Lucy DeCoutere and author Reva Seth.

Jezebel reports that a spokesperson for Corktown didn't see any problem with the mailer. "It's a little satire," she told them. "There's no intention for it to be offensive."

The mailer was created by Toronto's Agency Next Door, and has been featured on their Facebook Page for more than two weeks.

There was just an intention to make light of a high-profile case of violence against women. Nothing offensive in that, is there?

Toronto Yellow Pages billboard celebrates multiculturalism by negating it

Facebook friend Audra Williams shared this photo of a Yellow Pages billboard in Toronto.

Funny, eh?

If you just answered "yes" I want you to look in the mirror. Are you a white person? A man? Of "generic" (primarily British or Northern European) ethnicity? Are you from the 1950s? Do you live in a goddamn bubble?

Because let me tell you, I'm pretty sure the creative team who thought this up, and anyone who approved it, were at least two of those things.

This billboard, posted publicly in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, is a problem for me. It reads as a conversation between one white guy like me and another, and in doing so it casts everyone who grew up with Vietnamese, Cuban or Central/South American food into the category of "others".

In rattling off a joke about multiculturalism, the ad actually negates the very people who make Toronto multicultural: "Vietnamese restauranteur, we love your exotic soup, but you're not really one of us."

I have no doubt that the agency team meant well, or at least thought they did. They were just so out-of-touch with the reality of Canada that they thought is was OK to have a major brand jokingly exclude a large number of the people who walk by its billboard, just because they didn't grow up on peanut butter sandwiches.

I won't even get into the sexist implications of "mom" making all the food, because it's just a lazy cliché.

UPDATE: Audra got them to agree to pull it

john st. Creatives want the world to know Toronto is #MORETHANFORD

The Rob Ford saga has continues to provide the world with its recommended daily allowance of Schadenfreude as the elected Mayor of Toronto vows to keep his position despite admissions that he bought and smoked crack in office, having had numerous lies to Council exposed, misuse of City funds, and accusations of being a dangerous boozer and a general nasty guy.

Poor Toronto. In terms of municipal PR, Mayor Ford is worse than SARS. But somehow I doubt the Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Rush will come to the aid of the shamed megacity.

Its advertising community, however, has. Two art directors at john st., Hannah Smit and Marie Richer, have slapped together an online campaign, #MORETHANFORD, to show all the things about Toronto that don't revolve around the Mayor in a drunken stupor:

According to The Globe and Mail:

The women spent two days asking everyone around them what they love about the city, and then scoured video sharing sites YouTube and Vimeo looking for footage that represented those examples. They then edited together a compilation, set to the song Live in this City by Toronto musicians Dragonette. (Every video sampled is credited and linked to in the description, and Ms. Smit says they have not had complaints from anyone asking not to be part of it.) 

The website asks people to tweet things they love about Toronto, or to even allow the campaign access to their Twitter accounts to send out messages more widely. It also tracks which hashtag is winning, in terms of the amount of conversation on Twitter: #RobFord or #MoreThanFord. It’s an imperfect measure of course, since many of the people talking about Ford are not on Twitter, or even on Twitter are using different hashtags such as #TOpoli or no hashtags at all. But it’s not meant to be scientific: the message of the campaign is about starting a new conversation, Ms. Smit said.

Not an exciting video, being a montage and all, but I feel their pain. I live in Ottawa. Being branded by bad politics is nothing new to me.

See more at the campaign site..

E-bikes marketed to environmentalist stalkers

I did not know this was a desirable target audience...

Via Ads of The World

These Open vagina ads crack me up

Oh, sorry if you came expecting something different. I meant to say "these vaginal moisturizer ads by Toronto creative shop Open are actually funny. And while many products have exploited the v-word in this Year of The Vagina, these ones are actually kind of appropriate.

Check out this one:

And...

As Adfreak's Rebecca Cullers explains, this is a very different campaign than all those horrible douche, whitening and tightening ones, because the product is actually useful:

...there will be no feminist outcry here. The product is well positioned, the copy is sassy and targeted at older women who are quite familiar with the suggestion that age has rendered them sexually inadequate. In fact, I'd say Damiva has a perpetual market so long as it's easier to buy a pill than to explain to your "honey" what constitutes adequate foreplay. But before all the pre-menopausal women in the house go hog wild trying to relive the carefree, lubricated days of their youth, know that Mae by Damiva is not compatible with latex condoms.

I'd love to know if this was the work of a female creative team. Anyone?

Original tip via Adrants 

Awkward Toronto Branding: Glory Hole Doughnuts

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Mammoth Erection in Toronto #FdAdFriday

My teenage niece, Tess, spotted this rather obtuse branding on a walk with her mom in Toronto:

For those of you on mobile:

Yes, that's right. Mammoth Erection is a real scaffolding company, with a URL that must attract lots of disappointed web traffic.

They even have a (surprisingly modest) cartoon mascot:

Well, okay then...

The most confusing thing I have seen all week

Fortunately, it's only Monday morning.

It's an ambient idea from CP+B Canada, for Tourism Toronto. But what is it?

According to the submission on Ads of The World:

"In order to curate the vacation photos Toronto visitors take and put online, we unleashed 21, 8-foot snowmen designed by top contemporary artists and placed strategically at key tourist spots in the city. When you take a photo with the snowmen, a famous Toronto scene is featured as the backdrop. And to encourage the photos would be shared, Tourism Toronto is donating $2 to Starlight Children’s Foundation for every snowman photo uploaded to the campaign’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/visittoronto, up to $50,000. And, we’ve integrated each photo takers’ network, by offering another $1 for every ‘Like’ each photo generates, further expanding this campaign’s reach. To date, more than $24,000 has been raised."

I would like to point out that this submission comes from a country in which English is frequently spoken. "In order to curate"? Okay, that's just shitty jargon. But the rest of the write-up is similarly convoluted.

They set up giant snowmen in popular Toronto tourism photo op sites, then provided a fundraising incentive to share them on Tourism Toronto's Facebook page and get their friends involved. Was that so hard to say?

I am amazed that such a famous agency brand would leave the adblog PR to someone who don't write good.

But the most confusing thing about it all is this:

Why does the snow"man" have a vulva?

Sex, lies, and the politics of hate

Remember last week's awful ad (new window) from the "Institute for Canadian Values" about Ontario's proposed sex ed curriculum? With its blatantly anti-GLBTQ message and manipulative imagery, it even got the National Post to apologize for running it in the first place.

Well, there's another one. A pamphlet. And according to Torontoist it was paid for by Ontario's Progressive (ha!) Conservative Party:

The Globe and Mail gives Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak's defence of the publication:

When asked if he supported the message, Mr. Hudak turned the question around on the Liberals and suggested the party was out of touch with mainstream voters.

“My little girl Miller – it’s her birthday today – is just four and she has started JK,” he said. “The notion that Dalton McGuinty thinks a priority in education is sex-education curriculum starting at Grade 1 when they should be learning their ABCs and how to tie their shoes is another example of how Dalton McGuinty has lost touch with mainstream Ontario.”

The Globe has also endorsed the Liberal Premier, Dalton McGuinty, for re-election on Thursday's provincial vote.

Interestingly, the quotes in the ad are not from any proposed provincial curriculum, but rather from a Toronto District School Board booklet on "Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism".

And as CBC points out, the copy is full of misrepresentations and outright fabrications.

The flyer includes one quote from the document —"cross-dressing for six-year olds"— that can't be found anywhere in the TDSB document. The flyer also says the quotes are taken from the K-12 curriculum. But the quotes are not included in the curriculum, only in the anti-homophobia resource guide.

This election campaign was already ugly. Now it's evil, too.

(Thanks to Martha W. for the tip)

Some sweet retro work for vintage clothing

When I was a teen in 1980s Kingston, Ontario, going vintage clothing shopping in Toronto was kind of a "thing". So this nice bit of work in I Believe in Advertising gave me a smile:

I was in the market for skinny ties myself, but it reminded me of some old friends.

There are three more ads in this series from Grey, TO, but they're not as elegant. See them at IBIA.

Toronto Argonauts accidentally make a bad joke

CBC reports that this season-opener ad for Toronto's football team has been pulled due to complaints:

Toronto city councillor Mike Layton wrote a letter to the Argos president Bob Nicholson, stating:

“While I understand the intended meaning, my concern is the unintended consequences. In the context of domestic violence, the ad insinuates that domestic violence in the home is acceptable or normal. The ad may also trigger traumatic responses in the many survivors of domestic violence who are courageously moving forward with their lives.”

David Bedford, the Argos' VP Marketing replied, "It's very clear it's a football player in a football uniform talking about promoting the opening game for a football team. I think it's pretty common knowledge that football is a contact sport and a physical game."

He did, however, add:

"We didn't look at it in the context of domestic violence and we probably should have, given that we've had a handful of complaints."

It's pretty understandable, both how the ad got approved and why people complained — especially considering the links between pro sports and domestic violence. Perhaps we can just chalk it up to learning experience.

Back to the future

The Year 2000 was a busy one for me. I was blissfully courting the woman who would become my wife, and lobbying for my first Creative Director position. So somehow I missed everything that was going on in Canada 11 years ago...

(Click to make readable) Imagine how much metropolitan Montreallers loved having their city renamed "Ville Trudeau". (After all, they were so pleased about the renaming of Dorval airport!) But at least they are bigger than superburban Oshawa-Toronto-Hamilton.

Artificial light? When did they invent artificial light? And putting kids into lunar exile sounds like a great idea (at least between the ages of 12 and 19)

Amazing! In the old days, we had to make do with 2-D murals of tacky vistas.

Breakfast pellets? Shopping on the videophone? Now there's a reality I can identify with.

George doesn't really like soy steaks, but he humours Madge so that he won't end up having to get his jollies with the robot or the suction chute.

Travel agent?

Hey cool! That guy can Skype with his watch!

Fred would later go into hiding, and change his name to Larry Wachowski.

I wish I had memory playback. Maybe I'd recall when the computers took over, or what I did with my iWatch.

The cartoon was published in the Montreal Gazette in 1969, and was posted in BoingBoing this morning. Its original online appearance was in Paleofuture. Great find!

1. Parade in underpants 2. ? 3. Fight cancer

Yesterday, I responded to a Facebook ad to strip down to my underwear for a good cause. (Who wouldn't?) It landed me at The Underwear Affair, a 5-city Canadian fundraising event "to fight cancers below the waist" (prostate, ovarian, and colorectal).


(More pics here)

The event takes place in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. Being an Ottawa guy, I clicked on my local link to find out more. It's going on here this year on September 11 (odd choice) and has two events, a 10K run or 5K walk, for participants of all ages. The recipient is the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation.

The idea of the event is to be as fun, sexy or silly as possible.



(This one's from the original American version, in L.A.)

The Ottawa launch event, held on Sparks Street, is on YouTube:



As is the (stealth? 17 views?) promo video:



They also have a national Facebook Group and Twitter feed. The main corporate sponsor is Mark's Work Wearhouse.

So, will you get yer gitch on and join the cause? There is certainly no shortage of opportunities to do silly things to fight cancer. This particular one seems to have a lot of support out west, although the Ottawa media uptake seems a little underwhelming so far.

But then again, one should never underestimate the powerful combination of partial nudity and an important cause.

Colder than Toronto's sense of irony

The rule used to be simple: making fun of the weak is mean, but making fun of the strong is expected.

It seems nobody told a few Torontonians that. Because their feelings were hurt, Coors Light has pulled this outdoor campaign from Vancouver:



This was just the latest in a long-running "colder-than" campaign that began with headlines like "Colder than Kim when you called her Kate" and has since moved on to regional variations:



The amusing part in all this, as the Vancouver Sun points out, is that the ad was actually created in Toronto by Draftfcb.

So, whatever happened to Canada's self-deprecating sense of humour? As one T.O.-based commenter on the CTV coverage noted, "People need to grow a backbone and stop whining so much."

...or at least get in on the fun. I'm just sorry I missed the deadline on Coors' colder than copywriting contest. I would've suggested something biting about Ottawa!