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The ads have their critics...
Globe and Mail
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Message lost in edgy ads
$100,000 campaign to promote Toronto as an exciting place misses the mark, critics complain
ANTHONY REINHART
If edgy was the intent, a cheeky new series of advertisements promoting Toronto to Americans has certainly put a few local critics on edge.
The four ads, currently appearing in alternative newspapers in eight U.S. cities within easy driving distance, were designed to poke fun at the city's stereotypical image as clean, safe and dull. Instead, they have provoked homegrown descriptions from ineffectual to "ridiculous" to "deplorable," due partly to some confusion over their message.
"I'm astonished that we've spent $100,000 to promote these ads," Michael Thompson, a city councillor, said after he saw them yesterday.
Mr. Thompson was particularly galled by an ad that shows a man preventing a pregnant woman from getting into a taxi because another man had been waiting longer. The first man tells the woman, who appears to be his partner, "To be fair, honey, he was here first," and the caption below the photo reads, "Toronto. Nothing like New York. Except for the Theatre."
"Any male in Toronto would have stood aside and offered the taxi, even if they were there first," said Mr. Thompson, who missed the irony of the ad: that Torontonians are ridiculously polite in contrast to New Yorkers, yet their city still offers top-notch theatre.
The six-week marketing campaign was undertaken by TO Live with Culture, a continuing promotion overseen by the city's culture division, to boost Toronto's cultural events and attractions. The ads were designed by FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding) Toronto, which donated its services. The city paid $100,000 to place the ads in alternative papers in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca, N.Y., and Syracuse, N.Y.
Gregory Nixon, project manager for TO Live with Culture, defended the campaign as "a direct response to a long history of marketing Toronto in very unimaginative ways." While he conceded the ads do not truly reflect Toronto, Mr. Nixon said that wasn't really the point.
"We're not just clean and safe and dull," he said. "We've got a bit of sexiness."
But Barry Avrich, president of Endeavour Marketing, dismissed this approach as yet another example of Toronto trying too hard.
"This is like screaming, 'I'm hip, I'm gay, I'm creative,' " said Mr. Avrich, who was among the many to roundly criticize the city's far larger Toronto Unlimited campaign, launched nearly two years ago, as uninspired.
"It's like saying 'fine dining' on a restaurant -- you're never going to go in there; you assume, if you're going there, that the food is great."
David Dunne, a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, said the ads say "more about what Toronto isn't" than they convey about its cultural offerings, a Marketing 101 faux pas that will limit their effect. On the other hand, Dr. Dunne said, they get the viewer's attention, and "that shouldn't be underplayed."
For that reason, Mr. Nixon seemed happy enough that the ads were generating a reaction.
"That's what we want," he said, "we want discussion."
Globe and Mail
Link to article
Message lost in edgy ads
$100,000 campaign to promote Toronto as an exciting place misses the mark, critics complain
ANTHONY REINHART
If edgy was the intent, a cheeky new series of advertisements promoting Toronto to Americans has certainly put a few local critics on edge.
The four ads, currently appearing in alternative newspapers in eight U.S. cities within easy driving distance, were designed to poke fun at the city's stereotypical image as clean, safe and dull. Instead, they have provoked homegrown descriptions from ineffectual to "ridiculous" to "deplorable," due partly to some confusion over their message.
"I'm astonished that we've spent $100,000 to promote these ads," Michael Thompson, a city councillor, said after he saw them yesterday.
Mr. Thompson was particularly galled by an ad that shows a man preventing a pregnant woman from getting into a taxi because another man had been waiting longer. The first man tells the woman, who appears to be his partner, "To be fair, honey, he was here first," and the caption below the photo reads, "Toronto. Nothing like New York. Except for the Theatre."
"Any male in Toronto would have stood aside and offered the taxi, even if they were there first," said Mr. Thompson, who missed the irony of the ad: that Torontonians are ridiculously polite in contrast to New Yorkers, yet their city still offers top-notch theatre.
The six-week marketing campaign was undertaken by TO Live with Culture, a continuing promotion overseen by the city's culture division, to boost Toronto's cultural events and attractions. The ads were designed by FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding) Toronto, which donated its services. The city paid $100,000 to place the ads in alternative papers in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca, N.Y., and Syracuse, N.Y.
Gregory Nixon, project manager for TO Live with Culture, defended the campaign as "a direct response to a long history of marketing Toronto in very unimaginative ways." While he conceded the ads do not truly reflect Toronto, Mr. Nixon said that wasn't really the point.
"We're not just clean and safe and dull," he said. "We've got a bit of sexiness."
But Barry Avrich, president of Endeavour Marketing, dismissed this approach as yet another example of Toronto trying too hard.
"This is like screaming, 'I'm hip, I'm gay, I'm creative,' " said Mr. Avrich, who was among the many to roundly criticize the city's far larger Toronto Unlimited campaign, launched nearly two years ago, as uninspired.
"It's like saying 'fine dining' on a restaurant -- you're never going to go in there; you assume, if you're going there, that the food is great."
David Dunne, a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, said the ads say "more about what Toronto isn't" than they convey about its cultural offerings, a Marketing 101 faux pas that will limit their effect. On the other hand, Dr. Dunne said, they get the viewer's attention, and "that shouldn't be underplayed."
For that reason, Mr. Nixon seemed happy enough that the ads were generating a reaction.
"That's what we want," he said, "we want discussion."