Heard the hoopla over the Kate Holmes – Tom Cruise romance? It’s affecting their careers — specifically the movies they have out this month. You might think that translates into a boost, but think again. Cruise’s PR is backfiring, resulting in mocking from the press and the public. Even the studio execs want Cruise and […]

Gone are the days when TV viewers could wait till the commercial break to grab a drink, break for the washroom, or flip channels. Advertisers have dumped the traditional 30-second spot for ads that run for anywhere from one second to five minutes. Whether short or long, non-traditional ads thwart channel surfing and PVR and […]

The secret behind Beware the Heat” is out. It’s a campaign for 7-Up, a PepsiCo beverage. I wasn’t bang on with my prediction that the ad was for Pepsi, but I got 90% of the way there with a guess for a PepsiCo drink. I learned the news through an email I opted to receive. […]

Wal-Mart’s new Ohio store caters to the Amish. Complete with hitching posts for horse-drawn carriages, plain fabric, blocks of ice, and non-electric appliances, the store opened to the public this week. Talk about taking mass products to a niche market! Wal-Mart, one of the world’s biggest retailers, recently committed to save one acre of wilderness […]

“Beware the Heat” commercials are airing across Canada. The ads show a parched, 20-something guy in a gritty city during the dog days of summer. It’s obvious that the guy is hot and thirsty, but the ads mysteriously close with “BewaretheHeat.com”. The BewaretheHeat.com site shows the ads, but tells little. The campaign is designed to […]

B2B marketing consultants have their own version of the deadly sins, according to Rick Whitmyre. Five Deadly Sins of Marketing are forgetting the audience, jumping over strategy to tactics, expecting miracles from creative, underestimating your website, and misunderstanding public relations. I know from my own experience that less experienced marketers tend to think marketing’s all […]

Last December, I mentioned that The Vancouver Sun had run a story on a little girl poisoned by GHB her father had brought home from a party. Despite a publication ban on the family’s identity, The Sun provided enough details that anyone with a web connection or a knowledge of Kitsilano could identify the father. […]

Movies for Babies and Parents. As rewarding as raising children may be, new parents often lament their childfree days, when they could dash out to a movie at a moment’s notice. For many parents, a night out at the movies would be too expensive or guilt-ridden, given the need for a babysitter. Until their children […]

Yesterday, my husband received an envelope that looked very similar to what you would receive from a Canada Post “XPress Post” courier. The envelope had instructions for CPC — presumably Canada Post Corporation — to deliver the package in accordance with certain regulations, much like the disclaimers you see on the back of an XPress […]

A reader recently asked blogger Darren Barefoot about the folly of letting a company’s IT team manage a website, instead of the marketing team. Whether left to IT or marketing, a website can be tricky business — both departments are equally capable of disaster. The important thing is to have a clear business case and […]