All Brand – marketing stuff that’s good for you
Calvin Leung is a staff writer at Canadian Business. Prior to joining the magazine in 2005, he marketed Breyers ice cream and Sunlight laundry detergent for Unilever, managed sales accounts for Procter & Gamble and worked as an award-winning freelance copywriter for such clients as Panasonic and Canada Post. He is a graduate of the Honours Business Administration program at the Richard Ivey School of Business and holds a B.Sc in microbiology and immunology from McGill University. His blog, “All Brand – marketing stuff that’s good for you,” covers lessons learned from the country’s best and worst brands.
Canadians drink a lot of Corona. It's the best selling premium imported beer in the country. It commands a 26% share of its category, in which Heineken is number two and Miller Genuine Draft number three. Last year, we bought a whopping 8 million cases of the beverage.
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Gary Prouk is known in the advertising world for having strong opinions. A former creative director at DDB Canada and co-founder of the Toronto office of Scali McCabe Sloves, he says international holding companies, such as WWP, Interpublic and Publicis, have ruined the industry. The problem, he says, is the ...
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Your company is desperate for customers. Every dollar counts. Jobs are on the line. Yet now could be the best opportunity to lose a sale. That's one thing I picked up from Roy Osing, the former chief marketing officer for Telus and author of the new book, BE DIFFERENT or ...
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Maybe it's my new vegan diet that's heavy on brain-shrinking tofu or perhaps I recently suffered head trauma while sleeping. For whatever reason, I just don't get the Kia Forte ads. Publicis created them. Check them out:
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I consider myself to be a savvy shopper. I do research online, speak to friends for recommendations and will often ask salespeople for a deal. But when presented with multiple options, I may subconsciously have a preference for the first one. That's what I discovered after talking to Antonia Mantonakis, ...
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Ever see that movie Roger Dodger? It's about Roger Swanson, an arrogant and morally bankrupt copywriter who gives Nick, his virginal 16-year-old nephew, a crash course in seduction during a night in New York. Swanson has plenty of outrageous lines. Among them are these on advertising:
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Picture this: You hire a contractor to gut your kitchen. He tells you the job will take three to four weeks. It takes him twice as long to finish 95% of the project. (I know this is kind of an industry standard, but that's not an excuse in my book). ...
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Back when I marketed Breyers ice cream, I learned about creating appetite appeal in our packaging and advertising. That made perfect sense to me. After all, you want people to eat your product. It's the reason why The Keg shows juicy steaks with perfect grill marks in their ads and ...
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A company's best customers don't just buy its products or services; they rave to their friends and family members about their experience. Colloquy, an educational division of LoyaltyOne, which among other things run the Air Miles Rewards Program, calls these people "Word-of-Mouth champions." Based on recent research by Colloquy, these ...
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Rob Guenette is like a rock star in Canada's advertising industry. He gets tons of ink from the trade mags (he was recently on the cover of Strategy). He's the CEO of Taxi, an ad shop that wins heaps of awards each year. Over the phone, at least, he sounds ...
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