awesome marketing

Advertising is poison gas

March 14, 2011

Tweet The movie Art & Copy is a powerful film about advertising and inspiration. It reminded me why I love the world of marketing and the opportunity to create change. “Advertising is poison gas” is a line from the movie by George Lois who launched “I want my MTV” and Tommy Hilfiger. It’s supposed to [...]

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Roll-up-the-rim-to-win-sweet-profits-at-Tim-Hortons

February 24, 2011

Tweet There is a bit of marketing magic about the Tim Hortons Roll-Up-The-Rim-To-Win contest. The competition is now in its 25th year and continues to bankroll the company to great success. In 1986, the top prize was a snack pack of Timbits! These days the top prize is a car, 40 of them. Despite a [...]

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Marketing Communication is more than words and pictures

January 27, 2011

Tweet Excellent Marketing Communication is about presenting the core value proposition, clearly and passionately. That’s why I love this clip from the BBC’s The Joy of Stats. In just 4 minutes, Hans Rosling takes your level of understanding of health and lifespan from 1st gear to hyper-speed. This is what effective communications does. He makes [...]

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Top 5 marketing strategies for a country

January 20, 2011

Tweet What is the strategy for marketing a country? You’re not selling hotel nights, or airline tickets, or destination packages. You are encouraging people to spend their vacation dollars on your country, rather than another one. I think there are five key marketing strategies to successfully promote a country. Define your target markets. The world’s [...]

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How to market the Olympics

December 8, 2010

Tweet Canada’s success at marketing the 2010 winter Olympics came from considering the event as a platform from which to market the whole of Canada. According to Michele McKenzie, CEO at the Canadian Tourism Commission, it had a four-year tourism strategy which is only now entering its final phase. In her words, “First, paint enticing [...]

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The difference between knowing stuff and being able to communicate it

November 23, 2010

Tweet There’s a great article on the BBC web site about diagrams that changed the world. It shows how complex ideas have been explained through pictures that transformed the way people looked at things. From Copernicus’ diagram that visually put the sun at the centre of the universe – a revolutionary idea at the time, [...]

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When does “free” cost you?

November 16, 2010

Tweet I was offered a free month’s upgrade to the Premium version of some freeware that I use. The challenge is that I have to hand over my credit card information so that the software company can automatically start billing me from day 1, month 2. I like the freeware. I like the idea of [...]

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How much is tourism worth?

November 9, 2010

Tweet Canada is now ranked as the No. 1 country brand in the world by FutureBrand. Pretty awesome achievement, when you reflect that Canada was ranked 12th in 2006. It is said that cities like Paris & Rome are visited at some point by most people who travel, but that Canadian cities are a little [...]

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Is Dragons’ Den driven by greed?

September 23, 2010

Tweet Dragons’ Den is back on CBC. It’s the only prime-time TV show committed to business entrepreneurs. The premise is that people go on the show to sell their fledgling ideas in order to try and get investment dollars, in return for which they will give up a stake in their companies. Some of the [...]

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Welcome Back!

September 5, 2010

Tweet I started writing my Train of Thoughts blog in 2005. Over the next 2 years I wrote about 400 blogs on subjects as diverse as management styles modelled on The Godfather, to almost excellent service experiences, to the Panasonic Viera ad, which I loved. It was a blast and it was great to interact with people and [...]

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