Everyone and their dog has a blog these days. While the dogs usually don’t have much of anything to say, most humans seem to think that their myriad musings will be of interest to millions of other people. Welcome to web 2.0, where, if you so choose, all your “friends” can instantly know such vital information about your life as what you’re having for dinner tonight; where hundreds of kids think their particular take on the mentos/diet coke fountain is worth sharing; and thousands rush home from their vacation to post complaints about the less-than-satisfactory softness of the hotel’s bed.

Andrew Keen, in his recent book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture”, argues that untrustworthy, unprofessional, banal amateur content threatens to swamp quality, valuable information and entertainment. Then again, some would say that the user-generated nature of today’s web is connecting people and communities in a way that would never be possible in the physical world; it democratizes the creation of and access to information; and it broadens the base of knowledge available on the web.

Whichever opinion you tend to be of, welcome to trampoline’s new blog. You can either choose to trust our musings on advertising, marketing, and design, or dismiss us as non-experts in the field (we’d argue with you on that one). You can enjoy our witty observations and curious monologues about the goings-on in the industry, or you can complain that we’re not as entertaining as Jerry Seinfeld. You’ll take away from this whatever you want; just check us out now and then for a quick taste of what’s going on in the ad industry. For our part, we’ll try to limit posts about our bowel movements, and we’ll never put up a video of one of us pretending to be in a light sabre fight.

Deal?

A graduate of both the Film & Television and Media Copywriting programs at Toronto's Humber College, and a multi-award-winning copywriter, Brad Dykema has worked at advertising agencies across the country and beyond. Brad's career has taken him on a journey from his native Toronto's Communique Group to Vancouver's high-profile PJDDB, to Amsterdam, where he joined the ground-breaking StrawberryFrog, and then back to Canada. Throughout, Brad's work has consistently been recognized for getting clients noticed and achieving their objectives. Since settling in Halifax, he has established himself as one of the region's most award-winning copywriters, collecting dozens of Ice Awards for work done at trampoline, Extreme and Colour. The extensive list of clients Brad has worked on includes notables such as Nova Scotia Tourism, New Brunswick Government, Microsoft, Sun-Rype, Alexander Keith's, McDonald's, Telus, Credit Suisse, Atlantic Lottery, EastLink, Workers' Compensation Board, and Aliant. His work has been recognized with an impressive list of awards from Marketing, Bessies, New York Festivals, ICE Awards, Extra Awards, Advertising and Design, London International Advertising Awards, Archive Magazine, Applied Arts and more.