Vespa emerges for TIFF

The Vespa butterfly campaign has emerged from its cocoon, with a 30-second cinema incarnation set to hatch this month during the Toronto International Film Festival. It builds on the wild posting campaign that broke in late spring, featuring installations of six interpretations of the Vespa as a butterfly by artists from around the world.

‘It kind of emanated from this ‘spring has sprung’ mentality,’ says Morey Chaplick, president of Toronto-based Canadian Scooter Corporation. The spot features a dark cocoon that bursts into a psychedelic, colourful Vespa butterfly, set to groovy music. ‘We wanted to tap into this retro feel – Vespa is an icon of the sixties,’ explains Glen Hunt, creative catalyst at Toronto-based Dentsu Canada.

Vespa is debuting the spot at TIFF to leverage its partnership with Toronto-based Tribute Entertainment Media Group, which will have a VIP lounge during the festival where celebs passing through will be asked to sign two Vespas to be auctioned off for charity.

Meanwhile, the spring postering efforts have been so well received, Dentsu has already asked artists to submit work for another poster effort next spring.

‘People are stealing [the posters], people are calling our office asking where to get them,’ says Chaplick adding that they’ve been telling callers they can have a set of the six posters for free if they stop by a retail location. He estimates that they’ve given away 100 sets thus far, and plans are in the works to do T-shirts and mugs with the designs, too – for sale and for swag with Vespa purchases.

‘It completely goes with our guerrilla marketing strategy,’ Chaplick says. ‘The bottom line is, we’d never be able to make the amount of noise we’ve been able to make using traditional media.’

client: Morey Chaplick, president; Jeremy Logan, VP marketing, Canadian Scooter Corporation

creative catalyst/copywriter: Glen Hunt

AD: Deborah Prenger

agency producer: Amanda Loughran

account supervisor: Aurelio DiLuciano

graphic design/post-production: Crush

CD: Gary Thomas

producer: Debbie Cooke

graphic animator: Chris Rolf

senior graphic designer: Stefan Woronko

CG animator: Aylwin Fernando

music/audio production: Grayson Matthews

music producers: Dave Sorbara, Tom Westin

audio engineer: Annelise Noronha

Volvo gets a makeover

Don’t put Volvo in a box.

The latest national print campaign for the Toronto-based Volvo Cars of Canada aims to shift perceptions about the brand to appeal to a younger (25-36) demo and lay the groundwork for an upcoming winter campaign that will skew even younger.

Three different executions each feature striking black-and-white photographs of ‘unique’ people who don’t want to be stereotyped, like a female boxer. The car is the smaller, secondary image, but it’s in colour to make it pop. The tag: ‘we’re not who you think we are.’

The campaign addresses the perception that Volvo is just a safe car and not much more. ‘They’re saying yes, we’re safe, but we’re also very stylish,’ says Ron Tite, VP/ACD at Toronto-based Sharpe Blackmore Euro RSCG. Adds copywriter Brent Turnbull: ‘We wanted to challenge the perception of the Volvo driver as well as the Volvo itself. [And] we wanted people to be able to identify with the ads and say: ‘Hey, that’s me’ or ‘Hey, that’s my friend.”

The ads broke in August and are running in magazines like Flare, Sports Illustrated and Azure. The winter campaign is expected to break in January to support the spring launch of Volvo’s new concept car, the C30.

client: Terry Spyropoulos, VP marketing; Jay Owen, brand and technical communications, Volvo Cars of Canada

CD: Paul McClimond

VP/ACD: Ron Tite

copywriter: Brent Turnbull

AD: Travis Shorrock

account team: Ian Bryce-Buchanan, Jessica Johnson

so out it’s in

Montreal-based Marketel has crafted a cheeky prevention campaign to tie in with the city’s first Outgames (a gay Olympics, if you will) for AIDS awareness groups COCQ-Sida and Action Séro Zéro. Saucy print executions, which ran in local papers and magazines as well as wild postings, feature phallic-looking sports equipment like baseball bats with the tag ‘Equipped for the Games?’ And, a 30-second animated spot that depicts two stick figures engaged in explicit sporty sexual relations set against a condom-wrapper backdrop ran on giant screens around the games. Posters featuring the sexy stick figures also ran in washrooms at gay bars and bathhouses.

‘Outrageous seems appropriate for an event like the Outgames,’ says Linda Dawe, senior copywriter at Marketel. The creative team was careful to keep the campaign light to best fit the festive mood of the games. ‘We’re not trying to scare people, but the message is still pretty explicit without being heavy-handed,’ says Dawe. ‘It’s not preachy or a downer.’

Dawe says they sent storyboards of the sexy spot to Radio-Canada to see if it would be interested in running it during their coverage of the Games. ‘They said: ‘Noooo thanks!’ recalls Dawe, laughing.

The Outgames, which took place last month, attracted over 250,000 visitors from around the world.

clients: Lyse Pinault, general director,

COCQ-Sida; Robert Rousseau, executive director, Action Séro Zéro

VP/CD: Gilles DuSablon

copywriter: Linda Dawe

AD: Stéphane Gaulin

client services: Carl Pichette, Laetitia Leclerc

media: Marie-Josée Dionne, Michèle Simoneau

directors: Thomas Castaing,

Richard Ostiguy, Moskito

animation: Ottoblix

broadcast production: Sandra Corbeil

sound: Sonart

You are cordially invited to submit your new, dead clever and previously unrevealed campaigns to: editorial director Mary Maddever at mmaddever@brunico.com and CD Stephen Stanley at sstanley@brunico.com, co-curators of strategy’s Creative space.