July 27, 2007
Designers respond to CGC contests
NATIONAL­—Two recent contests that promote user-generated advertising and design (see online stories for July 26 re: Smarties and Via Rail) have raised concern within the graphic design industry. While a growing number of marketers see consumer-generated content as a great way to interact with their target audience, some designers feel certain CGC approaches are an insult to their profession.

Dean McNeill, national president of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada says the Nestlé Canada Smarties contest is in bad taste. The company has launched a website that enables users to design their own Smarties box. Ten winning designs will appear on the boxes nationally next year.

“Their suggestion that a tool allows the operator to become a designer suggests that all we really need to do is to give everybody in the world a copy of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator and they are designers,” says McNeill, based in Halifax. “Or perhaps if we were to just give everyone a cheque book they could become marketers. Or everyone a pen, they can become writers.”

Such a contest could actually hurt a brand instead of help, McNeill says. “Generally when someone designs a package, they have a creative brief, they research the groups that they are marketing to, they have an approach, a key message that they need to portray. It may not be obvious to the viewer that that’s taking place in the background but it’s a key part of any design exercise. Certainly, they’ll probably get some notoriety for this but I do think that it can hurt their brand because it won’t have a focused look.”

Vancouver packaging designer Bernie Hadley-Beauregard of Brandever Strategy, designers of Blasted Church wine, among others, agrees pretty pictures don’t necessarily make great packages.

Often, says Hadley-Beauregard, a winery will commission an artist to design a picture for its wine label but unfortunately, he says, “it is not pretty pictures that sell wine.” In that regard, he has seen many lacklustre results.

However, he has also seen CGC campaigns that were brilliant. “It depends on the category that you’re in but you might get the appeal of a very underground, very with-it, hip kind of audience and that in itself is a marketing initiative that works really well,” says Hadley-Beauregard. “I’m not against [CGC]. It could be a very wise strategy for some brands that are trying to reach a targeted audience… When you do it, you at times rely on a bit of lady luck as oppose to experience.”

July 26, 2007
Smarties to reproduce winning consumer box designs
TORONTO—What are your favourite Smarties colours? That’s what Nestlé Canada, the producer of those coloured, candy-coated chocolates wants to know with its Gimme Colour design contest.

For a limited time, all 50-gram Smarties boxes will be almost entirely black and white

“Smarties [is] a brand that’s all about spontaneity, interaction and play,” says Paul Hodges, marketing manager of Nestlé Canada. “So we were looking for a way to bring those three things to life beyond the product itself and we thought, what better way to allow consumer who have grown up with this brand to interact with it than to allow them to help design it in their own image?”

Participants are encouraged to design their own box of Smarties using online design tools available at www.smarties.ca. The contest launched on July 16 and runs until December 12. Ten winners will be announced next February and their designs will be produced on special-edition Smarties boxes and sold nationally.

But do Smarties fans also possess a knack for packaging design? 
“We wanted to make sure that what was going to be designed was going to be good enough to be on a pack,” says Paul Hodges, marketing manager of Nestlé Canada. “So with that in mind we made sure the tools that you’re able to use to build packs would [allow you] to build a good-looking pack.”

Seven different agencies were involved in launching this campaign for Nestlé Canada including Toronto-based MacLaren McCann Interactive who developed the contest’s web component and Big Image Marketing Group, also of Toronto, who designed the campaign creative and the new black and white Smarties boxes. For a limited time, all 50-gram Smarties boxes sold in Canada will be virtually colourless. Contact: www.smarties.ca

Via Rail encourages contest participants to design ads
MONTREAL—Also exploring the trend toward consumer-generated content is Via Rail with its new contest Beat the Car.

Users can recreate Via Rail ads

Its microsite, beatthecar.ca, allows consumers to edit Via Rail’s summer print campaign. Contestants can choose any of the four Via Rail posters, designed by Ogilvy Montreal, and write their own captions and upload their own images.

The ads will be posted on the site for others to rate and rizes will be awarded for the most popular French and English advertisements. Aware of how user-generated advertising can backfire – think Chevy Tahoe’s make-your-own-ad debacle where participants created SUV-bashing web ads – Via Rail filters the submissions before they are posted online.

“We can give out tickets but its nice when people can create things and the great part is that we have only had positive ads. Nothing was negative. We are filtering to make sure but people are only saying nice things about us,” says Jean-Philippe Laporte, e-marketing analyst for Via Rail.

Via Rail worked with several partners on the project including web specialist VDL2 and creative agencies 90 degrees and Ogilvy B2B, all of Montreal. Contact: www.beatthecar.ca

July 19, 2007
University hopes YouTube site will attract new students
HALIFAX—Suffering from declining enrollment, Saint Mary’s University in Halifax turned to local creative agency Trampoline for help. In response, Trampoline developed SMUtube (pronounced smyou-tube) a video-based microsite that allows SMU students, alumni, faculty and staff to upload and share their own video clips.

The site not only encourages SMU members to share and participate in this new online community but acts as a recruitment tool for high school students who want a better sense of what life is like at the university.

“University can be pretty frightening for a lot of kids. It takes a while to get going and feel more comfortable,” says Mark Gascoigne, president of Trampoline.

And since the world of 17 and 18 year olds is centred on texting, media sharing and social networking, he says, a YouTube site seemed like the most logical way to reach SMU’s target demographic. 

In addition to user-generated video content, the site also includes a virtual tour of the university, videoed professor introductions and, soon, video interviews with alumni.  

As with YouTube, videos are not uploaded automatically. The university’s marketing department screens the videos for inappropriate content before any clips are posted.

Several videos including one of a dodgeball game have already been posted. Gascoigne says reaction to the site has been positive but its popularity will accelerate once school starts in September.
Contact: www.smutube.ca; www.brandbounce.com

Font flick to premiere in Vancouver
VANCOUVER—The BC chapter of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada and its various sponsors are screening the premiere of type documentary Helvetica in Vancouver on August 7. After the screening, the film’s director Gary Hustwit will join artist, author and designer Douglas Coupland and typographer and GDC fellowship honoree Jim Rimmer to discuss typography and design and its impact on society.

“There’s a really huge buzz here,” says BC chapter president Mark Busse of the upcoming screening. Tickets are selling rapidly, he adds. They have already sold 664 tickets in two days. Contact: bc.gdc.net/helveticafilm

July 11, 2007
New shop on the block
TORONTO—After 22 years of in-house design work, Joe Bush has decided it’s time to go out on his own. He opened his own design shop, The Bush Group, near John and Wellington in downtown Toronto last month.

Joe Bush sets up shop in Toronto

Bush has worked in various corporate marketing and creative positions, most recently at BMO (Bank of Montreal) as senior manager of marketing and creative services. He also worked for financial institution Century Select and spent 17 years in the creative department at The Globe and Mail.

Encouraged by family and friends, Bush decided to hang his own shingle. “[I]t got to a point where there was a feeling of a lack of adventure and being stifled in the corporate world in a specific genre like the financial industry,” Bush tells Design Edge Canada.

Bush’s objective is to branch out into corporate branding and identity design in any business sector. His small but growing list of clients includes Hill & Knowlton, Kiwanis-Casa Loma, Royal LePage, Morrison Wealth Management - BMO Nesbitt Burns and Applied Management Consulting.

Bush also has help. His brother, who works for the BBC in London, England, is seeking clients in the U.K. and a relative in Goderich, Ont., is sourcing work in southwestern Ontario.

But can the Toronto market sustain another design shop?

“The competition is rather fierce but we are in a business that, I think, is capable of sustaining a lot of different service providers and there’s always a need for marketing and advertising.” Contact: www.thebushgroup.ca

Fun font celebrates Canadiana
VANCOUVER—Beer, mullets and duct tape. It sounds like an episode of the Trailer Park Boys but these Canadian favourites are some of the goofy icons 10four Design Group created for its new font, Adanac (Canada spelt backwards).

10four designs Canadian font Adanac

Released just in time for Canada Day, Adanac “combines the studio’s passion for innovative design with their love of all things Canadian,” explains the self-promotional poster 10four sent out to clients and contacts across the country.

Adanac includes a full alphabet of pictographs that represent each upper and lower case character and number, 62 icons in total. Lower case j is for jolly jumper. Upper case W is a miniature William Shatner.

10four co-principal Matt Heximer says they created what he calls a fun and whimsical font to showcase their type capabilities to clients.

Assuming a Christmas self-promotion piece would get lost in the chaos of the holidays, 10four decided to celebrate another favourite holiday.

“We’re proudly Canadian and we like that aspect of our studio so it seemed like a natural fit so find some obscure Canadiana and design a font around that,” says Heximer from his Vancouver-based studio.

Heximer says the challenge was the make the icons, which he describes as “little logos for Canada,” simple enough to reproduce at very small sizes as a black and white graphic.

“We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We wanted it to be fun to reflect a bit of our personality as well.”

Heximer says 10four has received a lot of positive response about the font, which was even featured in the National Post.

Download this free TrueType font at www.10fourdesign.com

Selling urbanity in the ’burbs
TORONTO—When one thinks of Markham, Ont., visions of piazzas and promenades don’t generally come to mind. However, The Remington Group with the help of marketing and design firm Scott Thornley + Company wants to change that.

Sustainability plays prominently in the marketing materials for this new development

With 243 acres of land, Rudy Bratty of The Remington Group is developing Downtown Markham, a $3 billion sustainable, high-density urban community that will combine 72 acres of interspersed parkland with residential, retail and commercial properties.

It is a grand vision that has been brought to life through storytelling, says president Scott Thornley. His firm is responsible for creating marketing materials, the media campaign and a 6,000 sq ft presentation centre for this major 20-year development.

“Storytelling is at the root of selling something,” says Thornley. “The point that people commit to it, it’s intangible. It’s a model, an illustration, it’s looking at a field under construction. You’re actually bringing people into this project by words and images.”

People must have liked what they saw and read. STC recently completed a brochure and website for The Verdale condominium, the latest phase of the Downtown Markham project to launch. Verdale 1 and 2 sold out in one and two days, respectively.

For more on this project, see the Sept/Oct issue of Design Edge Canada coming soon. Contact: www.stcworks.ca

GJP uses pulp fiction to market hard lemonade
TORONTO—GJP Advertising has created a humourous online campaign to market the “killer new flavour” of hard lemonade beverage, VEX.

Sliced The Movie is a spoof on horror movie trailers. The video starts with a group of fruit partying at the cottage and ends with them being blended, sliced and juiced to death.

In order to stay current and relevant with 19 to 28 year olds, GJP used the movie trailer format and horror genre as this age group has such a huge appetite for it, said Kevin Pfuhl, managing partner, client development at GJP, in a released statement. 

Visitors to the website www.slicedthemovie.com can download the trailer as well as several desktop wallpapers and “screamtones.” An interactive component titled Basement allows users to torture an orange using various kitchen utensils.

Three web banner ads continue the theme to advertise the site. One of the banners flashes text that reads “Unspeakable torture. Unimaginable suffering. And oodles of pulp” with the tagline “Who knew fruit could scream?” Contact: www.gjpadvertising.com