“We need a Facebook page and a Twitter account, right?” ask many of our clients these days. Much like clients who want news sections or blogs as part of their websites, our answer is always “It really depends.” If so [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Categories: Articles, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Tips | 2 Comments »
We just finished a new identity and marketing campaign for a development project called District South Main for our client Amacon. The first teaser advertisements just hit the streets and the initial website has launched and is now acceptin [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Categories: Design, Marketing, News, Vancouver | 3 Comments »
If you didn’t catch the grammatical error in the title of this post (or the many in the photo for that matter), read on… Unlock the latch and propping open the lid of my secret chest of pet peeves and you’ll see that nothi [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Monday, July 27th, 2009
Categories: Design, Education, Marketing, Tips | 1 Comment »
A few months ago, Mac Donald’s launched a new TV campaign in France ‘come as you are’. The campaign itself, created by EuroRSCG, is pretty nice but what really caught my attention was the logo: it has turned green!! Just l [...]
Posted by: Mathilde Salvert on Thursday, July 9th, 2009
Categories: Advertising, Branding, Food, Marketing, Sustainability | No Comments »
M&S (Marks & Spencer) turns 125 tomorrow. My mum who lives in Leeds (where M&S started as a single market stall) is off to a special event tomorrow at M&S, so I thought I would check out the corporate site for more info. I u [...]
Posted by: Matt SamyciaWood on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Categories: Branding, Design, Inspiration, Marketing, Websites | 1 Comment »
To celebrate the launch of Internet Explorer 8 in France, Windows has joined forces with…Speed Rabbit Pizza, a leading pizza company. Explore and devour the IE8 pizza! 8 slices, 8 ingredients, 8 euros. I can totally see the rational h [...]
Posted by: Mathilde Salvert on Friday, March 27th, 2009
Categories: Advertising, Branding, Marketing | No Comments »
A great article about corporate giving, long but well worth the read. Has there ever been more urgency for corporations to ditch the greed and embrace generosity? It’s something that countless individuals have already started doing, o [...]
Posted by: Matt SamyciaWood on Monday, January 26th, 2009
Categories: Branding, Inspiration, Marketing, Trends | No Comments »
Does everyone remember Paul Wallace? He’s still around here somewhere… Anyway, these days he spends a lot of times in dank, windowless, rented rooms asking people what they feel about or how much they like or dislike coffee and [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Categories: Branding, Fun, Marketing | 3 Comments »
My wife, who doesn’t even eat lamb, sent me a link to a company called Edible. Divided into sections: Insectivore, Herbs & Spices, Aphrodesiac, Carnivore, Herbivore, and Apothecary, the company scours the earth for the rare, the e [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Categories: Design, Food, Marketing | 1 Comment »
I love weird marketing when it’s clever and relevant. The currently popular trend of weird for weird’s sakes—not so much. The Alta Bikes website is weird, witty and wonderful. Not surprising really, when you consider that the [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Categories: Inspiration, Marketing, Websites | No Comments »
It is so seldom I see a corporate or retailer website that makes me laugh anymore. Everyone seems to take themselves so seriously these days. Not HEMA apparently. HEMA is a Dutch department store first opened in 1926 in Amsterdam (maybe tha [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, March 15th, 2008
Categories: Advertising, Fun, Interactive, Marketing, Websites | No Comments »
My friend Colin sent me a link to this website with a post title “Mark Busse is a slacker”. My first thought was, “Busted — someone’s on to me.” until I realized it was a clever online viral campaign to promo [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Categories: Advertising, Fun, Interactive, Marketing, Websites | 2 Comments »
While cruising the streets of London I was approached by a smart looking guy offering me the chance to grow my own jalapeno peppers at home. He handed me a small pink package, that looked a bit like a book of matches. Inside were five chill [...]
Posted by: Haig Armen on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
Categories: Branding, Inspiration, Marketing, Packaging, Sustainability | No Comments »
It’s always great to see business publications touting the same messages we often deliver when educating our clients and prospects so I was pleased to read a two page article on corporate blogging in this week’s Business Edge. W [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Friday, August 24th, 2007
Categories: Marketing | No Comments »
At last year’s Flashforward conference, I was impressed by the presentation on “sonic branding” given by Dave Schroeder of PilotVibe. The very idea that jingles, start up sounds and sounds effects in ads are carefully cr [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, July 7th, 2007
Categories: Branding, Marketing | No Comments »
, you probably already know about the 7-11 stores across the US that have been temporarily converted to Kwik-E-Marts to promote the upcoming Simpsons movie. What you may not know is that we have one in the GVR, specifically in Coquitlam. This is particularly special when you consider that it is the only Kwik-E-Mart in Canada, and one of only 12 in North America.
The store is full of Simpsons products like Buzz Cola and Squishies (Slurpee machines re-skinned), and apparently in the US stores you can even buy Duff Beer. To see some pictures of our local store, check out this <a href=)
Unless you’ve been living in a cave or without your daily internets (heaven forbid!), you probably already know about the 7-11 stores across the US that have been temporarily converted to Kwik-E-Marts to promote the upcoming Simpsons [...]
Posted by: Leigh Peterson on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
Categories: Advertising, Film, Marketing, Vancouver | No Comments »
 waste of money. What in the world is it? Read on:
<blockquote>Bruster's® Real Ice Cream™, the country's premium ice cream retail franchise with more than 260 stores in 18 states, unveiled the world's first $1 million ice cream cone at the JCK Las Vegas Show. This work of art is created in the likeness of its signature waffle cone.</blockquote>
It is, however, highly topical as I stumbled upon it my RSS feeds not 45 minutes after Ben)
I present to you another example of the dire state of the human race. Considering all of the things going on in the world, this seems like a frivolous, almost immoral (as Mark put it) waste of money. What in the world is it? Read on: Bruste [...]
Posted by: Leigh Peterson on Thursday, June 14th, 2007
Categories: Art, Marketing | No Comments »
An oldie but a goodie we used to tell potential clients about the difference between marketing, PR, advertising, and branding. The only thing I might add to this joke is a line about design, something like: “You look like you’re [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
Categories: Advertising, Branding, Fun, Marketing | No Comments »
Check out this amazing video showing how even experienced advertising creatives can be manipulated using subliminal cues.
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Monday, June 11th, 2007
Categories: Advertising, Marketing | No Comments »
When designing for print, being millitant about typos and other errors is critical, but then in the heat of the usual panic to get things delivered on time there’s often great opportunity for clients or others to overlook glaringly ob [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
Categories: Advertising, Design, Marketing | No Comments »
I just came across this list of the top ten most dangerous toys of all time. This might be a little late to factor into this year’s holiday shopping, but then again, I doubt you’ll be able to find the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Friday, December 22nd, 2006
Categories: Marketing, Pop Culture | No Comments »
If you find yourself with some extra time over the holidays, and a hangover, you might grab a couple champagne corks, wire and foil out of the blue bin and maybe win yourself $1,500 from Design Within Reach. That’s right, all you budd [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
Categories: Design, Fun, Marketing | 1 Comment »
Nokia has been on our radar lately as we’ve been asked to do some exciting work with them. Nokia’s pushing into 2007 in a big way. 5 Cities 1 Party.
Posted by: Haig Armen on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
Categories: Marketing | No Comments »
When stock photography agencies aren’t folding into the now giant Getty collection, they are trying to gain the upper hand and wind the hearts, and dollars, of the image-buying hoards. Over the last several years Masterfile has gone f [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Friday, November 10th, 2006
Categories: Design, Marketing, Photography | No Comments »
The potential pitfall of education about the female body in the media can sometimes fall on deaf ears because overexposure of the message. The kind folks at Ogilvy produced this ad for the Dove Real Beauty Workshop for Girls. Puts things in [...]
Posted by: Steve Mynett on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Design, Film, Marketing | No Comments »
The problem with having the ability to recognize great artwork, is also having the ability to label something a steaming pile. Usually the notion can be combated or questioned, as art is and always will be subjective; the exception to this [...]
Posted by: todd smith on Sunday, September 24th, 2006
Categories: Art, Learning, Marketing, Pop Culture | 8 Comments »
Photoshop and photo manipulation at this point have very few limits; luckily, many people know this and continually produce amazing work. One of such organizations doing so is Brazil’s Platinum, FMD, who not only pushes composite phot [...]
Posted by: todd smith on Thursday, September 21st, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Art, Inspiration, Marketing, Photography, Pop Culture | No Comments »
Interesting concept for a billboard by McDonalds (the taint).
Posted by: Steph Tekano on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
Categories: Design, Marketing | No Comments »
A new JupiterResearch report claims corporate blog deployments will double in 2006 with 35 percent of large companies planning to initiate corporate blogs this year. Combined with the existing deployed base of 34 percent, nearly 70 percent [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006
Categories: Marketing, Technology | No Comments »
Last week at Vidfest there was lots of talk about content. Who makes it, who takes it, what happens when it forms the basis for new work and who owns what. Everyone had their own say and perspective of course, even the lawyers. Terry McBrid [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
Categories: Events, Marketing, Music, Technology | 1 Comment »
It should come as no surprise that aliens have been stealing our cows. It’s been going on for years. But it is comforting to know that someone has created a site to address this issue and hopefully bring an end to this terrible crisis [...]
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Friday, May 19th, 2006
Categories: Marketing | No Comments »
Some good ol unapologetic pull-no-punches hardcore motion graphics for a Monday afternoon.
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Monday, May 15th, 2006
Categories: Design, Marketing | No Comments »
Today a little direct mail piece arrived from Nebs. You know, the company that prints all the cheques and other business forms. On the cover is the word “I.D.ENTITY Logo design…the key to your identity”. Curious, I opened [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, May 11th, 2006
Categories: Branding, Design, Marketing | No Comments »
A few years ago people laughed at the idea of sustainability. Now as we experience a cultural shift and consumers redefine the criteria by which they make decisions, companies are begging our friends over at Conscientious Innovation to help [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
Categories: Industrial Brand, Marketing, Websites | No Comments »
The folks over at BCR Yachts ask what word can they use to describe their yachts. They say yachts are, by their very nature luxurious so how do you accurately describe classes of yachts? Good point. However, the bigger issue is that the wor [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, April 6th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Marketing | No Comments »
This morning we were browsing the latest issue of Applied Arts Magazine and were pleasantly surprised when we saw ourselves mentioned in Frank Lenk’s Tech Talk column. He talks about “rapidly proliferating designer blogs”, [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Friday, March 24th, 2006
Categories: Industrial Brand, Marketing | No Comments »
A few months ago, we blogged about an urban marketing campaign by Sony Playstation that was met with a very hostile response from the street artist community. The lesson learned from that experience might be summed up as “don’t [...]
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Inspiration, Marketing, Pop Culture | 1 Comment »
This just in: less is more.
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Thursday, March 16th, 2006
Categories: Design, Fun, Learning, Marketing, Tips | 2 Comments »
Our good friend Ryan Murphy writes about Five New Frontiers for Advertising on AskMen.com. My favourite: He concludes that “Only time will tell if the Big Dipper will one day be blotted out with an electronically generated billboard f [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Marketing, Pop Culture | No Comments »
In Chris Oakley’s video “The Catalogue”, human beings are reduced to little more than the sum of their spending habits and future needs. A disturbingly believable depiction of the not-too-distant future.
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
Categories: Film, Marketing | No Comments »
This little movie tells you why sharing is good, and not sharing can make people gang-up against you… Watch the rest of these cute and funny ad’s for Skype here.
Posted by: Steph Tekano on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
Categories: Film, Fun, Marketing, Technology | 1 Comment »
Sneaky unbranded newspaper advertising disquised as advertorials are becoming more common. This one for McDonald’s was in my local newspaper today carefully formatted to match the page grid, but with Lorem Ipsum for the copy! With gib [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, February 6th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Design, Marketing | No Comments »
We’ve created some pretty daring Direct Mail campaigns for clients in the past, using tricks like unusual envelopes and printing techniques to get the audience to actually open and read the darn things. This is a big challenge with DM [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, February 6th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Design, Marketing | No Comments »
We used to be fans of the Across The Sound podcast with Joseph Jaffe and Steven Rubel. As podcasts go, it was often inciteful and intelligent discourse between two innovative marketing professionals exploring new technologies and schools of [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, January 30th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Inspiration, Learning, Marketing, Websites | 5 Comments »
The Future of Marketing Summit was on my mind the other night as I was looking for a spot to grab a beer with a friend. Leaning in the shadowy doorway of a new restaurant with a brightly coloured neon sign was a well dressed young man. Dang [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Monday, January 30th, 2006
Categories: Marketing | 2 Comments »
Our friends over at PSFK are hosting the Future Marketing Summit in New York February 23rd. The summit has been developed by people in the brand communication business for people in the brand communication business to address the key issues [...]
Posted by: Steph Tekano on Friday, January 20th, 2006
Categories: Marketing, Websites | 1 Comment »
Our friend and fellow designer Chris Gee at ThePreparedMind.com recently found himself sucked in hook, line and sinker by the new Nike iD system of do-it-yourself customization kiosks in his local Nike Town store. He was so excited and move [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, January 14th, 2006
Categories: Design, Marketing, Websites | No Comments »
Skype is our new favourite toy (our Skype name is industrialbrand). And while upgrading our version recently discovered a brilliant little cross promotional marketing campaign they are running called Win a Conversation with Coldplay. Appare [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Saturday, January 14th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Marketing, Technology, Websites | No Comments »
My wife always rolls her eyes and shudders when advertisements offer “free gifts” to customers. Being a former teacher with proper grammar, she loves to yell at the TV that “gifts, by their very nature, are free!” Fu [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, January 12th, 2006
Categories: Branding, Marketing | 1 Comment »
We refer to the term Communication Design often in our business, but what about design as communication? Well, Shot Code seems to have created a very cool way of making it easy for people with camera phones to access (marketing) information [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006
Categories: Advertising, Design, Marketing, Technology | No Comments »
In the spirit of extreme consumerism, why not give the gift of livestock? Heifer International is a humanitarian assistance organization who’s mission for the past 60+ years has been to end world hunger and poverty. They believe that [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Wednesday, December 14th, 2005
Categories: Marketing, Websites | 1 Comment »
Coke infused with coffee? Are you kidding me? Designers and nerds around the world rejoice – now we’ll never sleep. (via canada.com)
Posted by: Mark Busse on Thursday, December 8th, 2005
Categories: Food, Marketing | No Comments »
As foodies we lament the crappy dinner roll. It really ruins the dining experience. Same thing applies to design, marketing and just about anything – why bother being in business if you can’t be proud of your product/service? Se [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, December 8th, 2005
Categories: Design, Marketing | No Comments »
It is a fine line that the big corporations walk when they try to market directly to a counter-culture. Alternative marketing techniques such as Sony’s recent urban tagging can often come across as transparent and insincere and as a r [...]
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Monday, December 5th, 2005
Categories: Marketing | 3 Comments »
The lead time for entering award shows often creates a huge gap in time between the date you enter and the date of the actual awards. Thus, when we found out earlier this week that our blog (this blog!) received a Merit in the Interactive M [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, November 17th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Industrial Brand, Marketing | No Comments »
If you are a member of our tribe and follow this blog, the odds are good you know who Blog guru Seth Godin is, or have at least seen his name on this site before. Seth Godin recently coined the phrase “Small is the new big.” whi [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
Categories: Marketing | No Comments »
The new 2006 Passat has “120 not-so-standard” features. To highlight this they commissioned 120 15-second films from different artists, one for each feature. Of note is Chrome Front Grill Frame.
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Film, Marketing | 7 Comments »
Should the day ever come when insects sport corporate logos, you might take extra delight in swatting them when they crash your next picnic. Check out these cool photos by a 19 year old Carnagie Mellon student. Incidentally, I came across t [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Wednesday, October 5th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Branding, Marketing | No Comments »
There’s a strange new advertising trend in Vancouver recently. Top echelon celebrity restauranteurs like John Bishop and Iron Chef winner Rob Feenie, who already have to worry about over exposing themselves on television, are now are [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Branding, Food, Marketing | 8 Comments »
Skateboarders shooting hoops from a half pipe will always make for good entertainment in my books. It does make you wonder how many missed shots did not make the final cut. Regardless, the DCShoes logo at the end of this clip led us to thei [...]
Posted by: Kevin Broome on Tuesday, July 26th, 2005
Categories: Marketing | 1 Comment »
Some time ago we posted a link to Belief‘s inspirational presentation Pollinate: Chain Reaction. The Santa Monica based broadcast design and live action studio recently profiled on Apple.com for their use of technology in design, has [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Friday, July 15th, 2005
Categories: Branding, Film, Fun, Inspiration, Marketing | No Comments »
Back in April we blogged our good friends’ Leonard Brody and David Raffa’s new book titled, “Everything I Needed to Know About Business…I Learned From a Canadian”. Now that the book is on the shelves (and selli [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Saturday, July 2nd, 2005
Categories: Marketing, Reading | 1 Comment »
An amazing example of innovative communication design, this billboard by New Zealand’s Clemenger BBDO won a Bronze Lion at this year’s Cannes. The billboard uses over 12,000 aluminum pegs on a white background to to create image [...]
Posted by: Mark Busse on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Marketing | No Comments »
Performance art is cool. It’s even more cool when it screws wth people. Czech Dream is a documentary (mockumentary?) about two guys who create a ficticious supermarket in an empty field. They hire an advertising agency to create and p [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005
Categories: Film, Marketing | No Comments »
Marketing Sherpa has announced their 10 Best Blogs for 2005 (as voted by their readership). Anyone in marketing, advertising, public relations and communications will find some terrific resources in not only the winners, but also at Marketi [...]
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Thursday, June 16th, 2005
Categories: Marketing | No Comments »
Large advertising budget… That’s hot.
Posted by: Steph Tekano on Friday, May 20th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Marketing | No Comments »
DO YOU HAVE THE CATCH?
Posted by: Charlie on Tuesday, March 1st, 2005
Categories: Marketing | No Comments »
In Vancouver if you don’t love the rain enough to sing in it, you’re miserable all winter. Check out this cool old-meets-new commercial for…
Posted by: Ben Garfinkel on Friday, January 28th, 2005
Categories: Advertising, Marketing | No Comments »
