Attended the Marketing Awards and I now get the difference between us and them. When I say ‘us’ and ‘them’, I mean Halifax and Toronto. Here (I’m sitting in a Starbucks off Queen St. W, TO), they are frightened and paranoid. This manifests itself as cranky and critical. [...]
Events
Bill Clinton asks Halifax: How can we make a difference?
I am ashamed to admit that I wasn’t originally planning to attend Bill Clinton’s speaking event yesterday. Having seen him when he spoke here in 2006, I derisively thought I really didn’t need to see him again. How wrong I was. [...]
Events
A position for success
While many organizations are debating whether or not the recession is affecting us here in the Maritimes, retailers know exactly what the score is. Before last weeks ‘I’ll Buy That’ retail forum we asked many of our retailers how things were faring and here are some of the answers: [...]
Events
Recession is a state of mind
I’m very happy to report that we held our first (and hopefully annual) I’ll Buy That Retail Forum last Thursday afternoon here in the Brewery. The Labatt Beer Institute was a marvelous host and I like to think that people stuck around for more than a free beer or two at the end. I was thrilled with the turnout as we had over a dozen clients in attendance. They were treated to three excellent speakers who covered a wide range of topics. First, Christine James from the Canadian Retail Council gave us an update on what is going on in her world. Although her presentation touched on a number of issues that were of great interest to the retailers in the audience, it was the current credit card and banking issues that generated the greatest discussion. Christine said she is available to any of you for more information on these or any other issues atlantic@retailcouncil.org. [...]
Branding
Re-branding the arts
I’ve been called many things in my days; a traditionalist being one of the more benign. Which brings me point blank to the subject of my blog. Lately I’ve seen an ever-worrisome propensity of marrying what I deem the higher arts — opera, dance, symphony, visual art — with the more base “art” forms — including, but not limited to, pop music and reality television. [...]
Projects
Face-to-face with trampoline
On a day-to-day basis, I work as a web developer. And, even though a person in that capacity has to be quite creative from time to time to deal with all the strange quirks of Internet Explorer, in general it’s a fairly technical and routine job. Luckily, trampoline allows their staff enough space to pursue their passions and keep the creative juices flowing. So, in an effort to get me away from my computer screen and create some face-to-face time with the rest of the staff, they recently commissioned me to take new photographs for the online staff biographies. Below, I’ll go over the experience in a sort of tutorial style for those of you who are interested in taking portraits themselves. [...]
Events
Everything is negotiable. Everything.
As promised on Monday, here is quick re-cap of Peter Korecki’s presentation at our I’ll Buy That event last Thursday. Earlier in the week, I talked about “recession” being a state of mind. Peter, who is the president of Pierceys Building Supplies, would rather think of it as a re-strategizing period, or maybe a market-evaluation opportunity and definitely a staff re-programming exercise. Peter told us that if we get nothing else out of this time of crises we need to realize that “Everything is negotiable. Everything!”
Media
The power of print
If repetition is the way to get an idea into people’s heads, then D.B. Scott succeeded in letting us know that power of print is far from dead. At the MagazinesEast2009 presentation on the Power of Print, I realized that magazine advertising can have a unique effect on consumers, one that is still unrivaled by their media counterparts. I started thinking about the influence of magazines in my own life and realized they are the one source of information I willingly buy into with my undivided attention. [...]
Design
The woes of the washroom sign guy
For many years, a common icon has been discriminated against and taken for granted in our society. We seek him out when the urge overcomes us and he helps us to locate our final destination. I am talking about the Washroom Sign Guy. [...]
Flickr
