What would happen if a bank president disregarded almost every social media lesson learned the hard way by other brands? He might end up like Gord Nixon, who has finally felt compelled to apologize for RBC’s outsourcing of 45 Canadian IT jobs to India. The outsourcing and offshoring of labour is, of course, an uncomfortable [...]
If I had to craft a brand strategy for Canada right now, I’m not sure I could do it with a clear conscience. Somewhere around three minutes and 43 seconds of this video, Simon Anhalt, the originator and world’s leading practitioner of nation branding, identifies environmental leadership as one of the top three drivers [...]
There is a fundamental problem with how we showcase our interactive design work – we can’t. Well, not accurately anyway. We place screenshots of our work in our portfolios and see them in print magazines right next to the annual reports and billboards that go along with them, but without actually visiting the website and [...]
When the Internet knocked the stuffing out of traditional advertising, I assumed that design would become our industry’s new dominant discipline. And indeed, that pretty much came to pass. But something else has happened, too: Advertising, it seems, has now fallen to third place, right behind good old-fashioned publicity stunts. That humbling thought occurred to [...]
Human communication is fundamentally verbal. We talk, we listen; we read, we write. All businesses are referred to by their names (their visual identities notwithstanding), as are their products and services. And while much of what is spoken goes in one ear and out the other, once words are fixed in media, especially print, they [...]
A few weeks ago, an industry article was posted, quoting writers saying things like this: “Our copywriting muscles have withered … The punchiest headline-writers need to be able to produce long copy as well, and I fear that a whole generation has lost the ability to do that.” The only surprising thing about this piece [...]
Late last year, I gave a brief talk proposing that our stature as creative people is in serious decline. Anyone with an Internet connection can say how much they hate an ad or a piece of design. If enough of them say it at once, our work is withdrawn and is never seen again. I [...]
Last week, the Globe and Mail’s wine critic, Beppi Crosariol, waxed rhapsodic about a small batch Canadian whisky, suggesting it might just be the Canadian equivalent of a fine single malt or bourbon. The whisky in question was Corby Distilleries’ Lot No. 40, a product that actually launched back in the late 1990s, but failed to gain traction in [...]
The Clash put to melody the question every creative person asks themselves at a certain point in their career: Is it time to move on? At the end of every year, you want something to show for it, creatively. Your book is your currency. If a year ticks by and you have bupkis, it’s time [...]
How long has it been since you’ve raised your rates? Too long, probably. If it’s time, December is the best month, especially for existing clients. So don’t let it slip away. If you’ve never raised your rates or if you’re nervous that existing clients will disappear at the whiff of a rate increase, then you [...]
