Obay Buzz Goes Offish

It’s tricky (tricky, tricky, tricky) pulling off an “It’s Coming…” campaign. You know the ones. Some vague, non-sequitur ad that doesn’t mention a product or a brand but instead leaves you scratching your head and wondering “What was that all about?” “It’s coming…” campaigns double down on a bet that the audience will take notice, [...]

“The Big Game” Advertisers Win Big with Earned Media

If you remember, it’s called “The Big Game” of course, because the NFL cried trademark over the name “Super Bowl” and forced advertisers to dive into the land of vague associations. But that’s for another post.
 Marketing Magazine reports that the $2.8 million price tag for 30 seconds of commercial real estate during Pigskinapolooza also came [...]

Why promote the product when you can promote the business model?

Spanish apparel retailer Zara is changing their business model, incorporating more just-in-time merchandise in an effort to stave off the competition from discount retailers, says the Wall Street Journal. It’s a business story and a great one to tell. Zara admits to a previous failing and then promotes how they plan on improving. The story [...]

NBA Slam Dunks With Social Media

At summer camp we used to call the thrice-a-season dances, “socials.” As kids, we’d frantically search for a clean shirt as we poured mountains of gel in our hair while we mentally practiced the line dance for “Cotton Eyed Joe.”
The topic of social media, previously discussed in this space, is a lot like my socials [...]

Loyalty: A two-way street. With speed bumps. And roadblocks. And detours… Loyalty: A lot like The Amazing Race

Daniel Tisch, writing for PR In Canada, discusses loyalty and journeyman-ism. His thesis is that young PRtists lack loyalty and are looking to job hop their way to the top. As the self-proclaimed mouthpiece for PR youth in this fair nation, Stractical responds:
Journeyman or star? In PR, it’s about talent, effort and loyalty
If you want [...]

Get Out Your Editorial Calendars: It’s Valentine’s Day

Here’s a story about the best places to snog in Canada. The article doesn’t really matter though. What matters is it’s Valentine’s Day which means love is in the air and love is in the ink.
Besides driving up the price of heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, Valentine’s Day, like Mother’s Day and Halloween, create opportunities to [...]

A Portrait of Online Job Searching as a Young PRtist

The overwhelming (okay, maybe it was merely whelming) response from my call for topic suggestions concerning job searching was to profile some online job listing services. While by no means an expert, I will humbly attempt to satisfy this request without assigning the now-ubiquitously arbitrary Stractical Points for merit.*
(*Fear not, Stractical Points will return shortly)

1) [...]

The Axis of a Shreddie

From AdNews:

Kraft Canada has begun a marketing campaign for its Shreddies brand of breakfast cereal. The campaign, called “Diamond Shreddies,” was developed by Ogilvy & Mather. The creative features images of the square pieces of cereal turned 45 degrees to form diamond shapes. The campaign purports to introduce a new diamond-shaped variety of the product. [...]

Marketing and PR: Not ready to make nice?

After reading an insightful post on Gary Schlee’s blog about the increasingly cozy relationship between marketing and PR, I decided to post a comment. Read the post then come back and follow along below:
I believe the differences between PR and marketing are largely artificial. That is to say, PR is a specific aspect of marketing [...]

PodCamp Toronto: February 23-24

An event I just learned about, PodCamp Toronto is going to be some sort of meet up for podcasters with a strong PR angle. Not a whole lot of details on the site right now (the downside of wikis?) but I’ll be checking again to see who’s presenting.