Canadian Tire incorporates global warming into its marketing plan

So, this is interesting.

Canadian Tire sent me this promotional e-mail for their "Pre-winter Advantage Program," which encourages customers to buy their snow tires as early as possible.

I guess the trend towards shorter and milder winters is perceived as a threat to tire sales. So interestingly, they're offering a full rebate to earlybird customers if the temperature on the first day of winter (December 21) is 10 degrees celsius (50 Fahrenheit) or above.

In other words, the famed Canadian brand is asking me to bet on a green Christmas season. I'm not sure that's such a great idea, considering that this winter is supposed to be an icy throwback. But I suppose at least I'd beat the rush for installation.

Bra ads on coffee cups make terrible pun

Reminds me of this:

Actually it's... it's quite, you know... typical behaviour when you have this kind of dysfunctional group dynamic. You know, this kind of co-dependent, emotionally stunted, sitting in your stupid coffee house with your stupid big cups which, I'm sorry, might as well have nipples on them, and you're all, like, "Oh, define me! Define me! Love me, I need love!" - Friends Episode 1.13 ("The One With The Boobies")

Well, there you go.

Ads by  glow, Germany, for Blush Lingerie. Via Ads of The World.

A pants-shittingly good DM

This Brazilian direct mail campaign by Publicis invited journalists and bloggers to the 10th anniversary of Hopi Hari Horror Hour, a scary themepark.

The copy that came with the gender-specific gift below says, "You'd better be prepared."

Is it just me, or do Brazilian men's underpants look like women's panties?

This is perfect old-school direct marketing: A simple but true insight, executed memorably. (Plus, a day with free underpants is always a good day.)

If you're interested, here's the show. Rammstein has never seemed so... Broadway.

Tip and pics via Ads of The World

Wonders of Ancient Advertising

We often like to crow to our clients how the latest digital tools let us access audiences in increasingly personal and customized ways.

But previous generations of admen were no less determined or innovative; the tools they used just involved a lot more hard work.

My Mom recently passed me down these two postcards, which her father had kept from the time when his first employer (a jeweller in Prescott, Ontario) received them in 1938. (Click images to see larger versions.)

The front of the first card is cool enough, with its epic 1930s illustration of one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. But it's the back that really intrigued me:

It's promoting a Shell garage in Prescott, to a small business owner in Prescott. That's simple enough. But Shell went to the trouble not only to personalize the message, but to have its stamped, sent and postmarked from Italy. In an era when international travel was prohibitively expensive (and dangerous, since World War II was brewing), this little piece of exotica that mentioned advertiser and recipient by name must have been extremely impressive. Easy for an international company to pull off, sure. But that was a more innocent time.

There was another one, too:

This was sent from Turkey, featuring another Wonder (and one that still exists, in part). It must have had a similar effect.

My Grandfather was a passionate stamp collector, so he probably kept these for their philatelical value. I can only assume the campaign was intended to include all Seven Wonders. (You'll note there was a booklet, too.) Whether all seven were ever sent remains a mystery to me. But I do know that within a few months, we were at war with some of these places.

A great reminder that nothing can stop a determined advertiser, and that there is nothing new under the sun.

You're gonna love my nutty infomercals

Working in various agencies (and freelancing) in a smaller market like Ottawa, you get your share of bizarre or disturbing clients coming through the door — like the guy who wanted me to brand a porn version of Netflix, or the domain registration entrepreneur who asked me to create an ad that had a 100% chance of getting publicly banned. But even though I've seen my share of hair-brained entrepreneurs, I've never had to do an ad that would cause me to hang my head in shame.

Which is why I was so curious about the online infomercials featured in Huff Post's The 15 Stupidest Products of All Time. Some I had seen before, like the Tiddy Bear, although I had always assumed it was a joke:



Related products, like the Kush Support, are too dumb to be made up:



And yet others, such as the Aspray and Comfort Wipe, are just plain gross:





But as amusing as these are, you still have to stop and think of the incredible amount of work it is to shoot a TV commercial. I just got home from a shoot in Montreal for a real client. But no matter how ad-hoc or low budget the production, several teams of people still had to sit around through pre-production meetings, video shoots, and offline approvals trying to maintain straight faces while talking about boobies and butts, jiggles and stinks. It must've been like a Kindergarten playground.

How do they do it? One can only assume alcohol is involved, but how depressing would it be to meet with a Creative Director and show her a reel like this? Hell, if you showed her your award-winning work for The Back Up, she might even back slowly away and call security.



So my question is, are there any adpeople out there who have actually worked in the infomercial genre? And how's that working out for you?

Does click-through matter?

As far back as the turn of the century, there were people saying it doesn't. But over and over again, I see clients evaluating online campaigns for click-through rates. But in many cases, the ads themselves are not designed to generate clicks.

Here's the problem — there are two basic kinds of banner ads out there:

1) Awareness/branding

These ads are really just billboards on the (I cringe as I type this) "information superhighway". They act just like outdoor ads, because they only want to make you aware of a new movie, basic message, or consumer brand.



This is pure branding. They don't really need you to do anything besides look, and realize that this is part of an integrated campaign.

2) Direct marketing

These ads are the junk mail of the Internet. They show up uninvited on your homepage, and they want to entice you to act. "Punch the monkey and win a prize!" "Find your best insurance rate!" "Meet hot singles in your area!" Or maybe just finish up your education.



If these ads seem more lurid and crass, it's because they are. Direct marketing is designed to get you to act, and the creative will use any trick in the book to get you to open that envelope — or in this case, to click the ad. They're like a desperate salesman with his foot in the door. Billboards, on the other hand, can take a higher road — whatever the medium.

Both kinds of banner ads are valid marketing strategies, but they can become marketing tragedies if you don't know which kind of banner your ad is supposed to be.

This is something that's particularly difficult in government social marketing, when the message is simple enough to be effectively communicated in a flash, but the campaign is evaluated on how many users click though "for more information".

Billboard or junk mail? It's your call. But you have to make the right one early on, before your objectives come back to haunt you.