We have just weathered two days at the Canadian Congress of Advertising, in Toronto, and feel a bit like Hunter S. Thompson must have felt just before he wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Not that I write like Hunter, just that I feel about conventions the way he does, and, hey, Bad Craziness! might define the pantomime that went down in the much-heralded Wednesday afternoon session.
Sixteen packaged goods and ad biz heavies played a game, The Persecution and Assassination of a Canadian Ad Agency as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Multinational Marketing Under the Direction of Hugh Segal.
It was very complicated, often very witty, and very scary improv theatre, in which a mythical Canadian marketer gets swallowed by an American multinational giant with a meddling chairman, and the local agency that contributed to its stunning success and absolutely everybody else gets diddled and screwed and messed up to a fare-thee-well.
Further proof we’d really rather make trouble than money!
Actual advertising was on parade at the convention, too, and the Cassie Awards hype campaigns, which not only cause the judges a few moments of harmless mirth, but also purport to move the stone, results-wise.
(Anyone who has ever filled out an Agency New Business Questionnaire knows that writing about results can be equally as creative an exercise as creating the campaign being fingered as the cause. But, trust we must.)
Among the 10 golds and 14 certificates awarded was the lovely Oh Hungry? Oh Henry! campaign, credited with making Oh Henry! the candy bar leader (which, surprisingly enough, was what it was not so long ago when we launched Oh Henry! Ice Cream Bars. Musta slipped!)
The Barnes Exhibit ad stuff was there, flaunting its avoidance of highbrow snobbery! So NDP! I guess they figured the unwashed would think Modigliani was an Italian sports car.
A low-budget Tremco Mono Foam spot showed you can use tv to show how neat-looking stuff works. Good.
The slightly Depression-era-looking b&w types with bright orange Sunkist rinds in their gobs scored big, claiming twenty per cent growth over three years. (So much more impressive than 7% a year!)
Alexander Godunov was lauded for his Labatt Ice Beer launch role as stylish, confident and independent. Of course! He’s the sadistic terrorist in Die Hard! (He got killed off soon after the beginning of that one, too!)
It was a delight to hear again the inspired Labatt Blue Star Newfoundland radio, where common English sentences are translated into newfaneese, like english: Pardon me sir, I believe that beer is mine. newfaneese: lay off that blue star, buddie, or i’ll knock you upside the head! The Shining Star of the Granite Planet? Somehow I have no trouble believing it doubled sales!
Club Med was consistent, taking credit for water that wasn’t frozen and golf courses that weren’t snow-covered in February. The Toronto Zoo allowed tigers to solicit human visitation for food. Toronto’s Blue Box recycling program used Elvis Presley as a metaphor for, oh, whatever.
Burger King was a big noise in French Canada, with a running gag apparently based on the hilarious Quebecois predilection to pronounce Whopper as either Whipper or Whooper. Ha Ha, I guess it’s all in the adaptation.
Also from Quebec, a monster campaign to bring Listerine back from the dead after 12 years in the gutter of brand indifference.
It features ‘a top comedian’ wearing an iridescent blue clown suit and a little pillbox hat, who prances around and bugs out his eyes like Martin Short doing a parody of a Quebec comedian doing a mouthwash spot.
Western Union told us how to send money to the Caribbean, First Class. Not a priority with many of us, but it scored big amongst the needy.
Duracell’s fish-walks-to-Fats-Domino was there. Purolator invented itself a product called The 9 AM Daystarter and whipped up such excitement that it actually decreased its advertising expenditures! the incredible shrinking media budget! hope to hell we’re on fee!
Polaroid got the nod for that I-really-wish-we’d-done-that campaign where the lady’s asked what such-and-such looked like, and she thinks up a storm and…and…boom! A Polaroid photo pops out of her forehead!
A public service print ad for oxfam says o.j. simpson limited to ten visitors a day. Underneath this screamer headline, in mousetype, it reads In other news 500,000 Rwandans slaughtered. Another 1.5 million fighting for their lives in refugee camps. Donations totalled $600,000 off an $8,000 insertion. Hallelujah, gang, ads work!
Barry Base is president and creative director of Barry Base & Partners, in Toronto.
