LETTERS to the editor should be accompanied by a home and business telephone number so that they may be verified. The editor reserves the right to edit letters for brevity if necessary.
Agency of the Year
I’m a little confused.
I picked up my copy of Strategy to read that Geoffrey B. Roche is this year’s Agency of the Year.
The next day, I pick up my copy of Marketing and read that Scali McCabe Sloves is this year’s Agency of the Year; an agency which didn’t even make the list of finalists in Strategy’s competition.
Why has this confusing and embarrassing situation occurred?
I think our industry would appreciate a response.
Bill Durnan
Senior Vice-President
National Creative Director
MacLaren:Lintas
Toronto
Ads written in English
While the rules of grammar and usage are often debatable, the obligation of a journalist to be fair and accurate is not.
In his recent article, ‘Use divisiveness as a tool,’ [John] Dalla Costa states that bmw print ads created by RTA Publicite in Montreal have been ‘insensitively adapted from French.’
Had he bothered to check his ‘facts’ before committing them to paper, he would have learned that the ads he refers to in the article were written in English, in Toronto, and were not adapted, insensitively or otherwise, from French.
In being so quick to condemn and to cast aspersions on rta, Dalla Costa has revealed his own superficiality and insensitivity.
It may be argued that the real measure of advertising language is not its ability to meet pedantic and archaic rules of grammar, but, rather, its ability to communicate.
On this measure, the ads he chose to condemn have done rather well, eliciting more than 1,400 direct sales leads for bmw.
Kevin G. Gilligan
Managing Director
RTA
Toronto
