As advertisers search for meaningful ways to connect with consumers and bring users out of their den of a detached digital world, experiential marketing is helping their cause by isolating, engaging and making the target work for the brand. But how does one push experiential marketing to the point where it becomes memorable and unique? The only way to succeed is to get creative, and some marketers are proving that sometimes the mode of communication can contain more creativity than you can shake a 30-second commercial at …  

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Strategy Magazine, 2011

Microsoft Canada and Ubisoft Montreal have game developers in their crosshairs. The two partnered up on an integrated business-to-business marketing campaign that narrowly targets Canadian game developers and enthusiasts. Via the videogame Far Cry 2, dynamic in-game ads lead gamers to a secret, co-branded section of the Canadian Far Cry 2 website, hosted by Ubisoft and Microsoft …

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Strategy Magazine, 2011

In the face of PVR fast-forwarding and audience fragmentation, content creation – dare we say “advertainment” – is blurring that ever-thinning line between ads and entertainment. Today, well-informed consumers filter out marketing messages before their brains even have the opportunity to internalize the meaning. This is where content creation, when done well, can make an audience all eyes and ears. As it turns out, brand-spun programming has the potential to be a big game-changer for many brands, especially for those still clinging to the “Hey! Look at me!” style of marketing that’s been pounded into our collective psyche over the past century …

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Strategy Magazine, 2011

What do you do when you have zero product, zero service, and zero to say? You mobilize the masses.

Toronto-based Globalive Communications hopes to be the next major wireless company in Canada by asking consumers what they want in a wireless provider. (A formidable task given that there are a handful of biggies with a stronghold on the Canadian mobile market via long-term contracts.) Now that Globalive has successfully acquired a license to build a cross-country wireless network (excluding Quebec), it wants to pry Canadians out of their cell service headlock. But the company is making sure it’s up to the challenge…

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Strategy Magazine, 2009