When I moved back to Canada in 2010, I had a new commuting challenge: to regularly travel 220 return kilometres, from west Toronto to Waterloo, ON. For my wife and two kids, I needed comfortable seating and trunk space too. Since I would be parking on the street in my more urban-than-suburban neighbourhood, I didn’t want to get […]
I haven’t been to IMAX since I was a kid, at one of the original IMAX theatres in Toronto (Ontario Place). I therefore delayed this post until I had a proper 2011 experience. I went to the IMAX version of Contagion at the downtown AMC theatre in Toronto. After two minutes in the theatre, I […]
Hello again world. It’s been a crazy couple of months, culminating in my realization that Canada doesn’t actually have that many companies that think they need a helpful brand strategy guy like me. I’ve decided to take Interbrand’s list of the top 25 Canadian brands, and count down some basic brand-brain impressions, things I like, […]
I walked into a Best Buy store in Toronto a few weeks ago, and asked a sales assistant: “How do I get all of the main US stations (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, PBS) and the main Canadian ones for free, in HD?” He told me you couldn’t. The only way to view High Definition television […]
Until last year, I didn’t know about High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). Like anything in life, you only notice some things when you try them. I never noticed how bad American Coca Cola tasted until I spent 3 months in Costa Rica getting used to original-recipe Coca Cola. Original recipe means the sweetener is real […]
The stodgy Daily Telegraph says its journalist was moved to tears. The Guardian says “This has to be the most believable example in advertising of someone ageing 70 years over the course of a minute and half.” Even my friend Ian Sohn who works at an ad agency in Chicago likes it. Here is the commercial. […]
Thanks to Paul, the webmaster of the immensely popular activist site www.love6music.com for placing my article about BBC 6 Music on the front page last week. It provided quite a few hits for my humble brand-blog. My post tried to explain what was going on through former P&G / Pepsi Marketer Tim Davie’s brand brain, explained […]
Room without a view: extend into a storage unit | Life & Style. When we were preparing for our big trip out to Costa Rica, I spent a lot of time at our impressive storage unit in the suburbs of the suburbs of London. I would turn my Nokia N95 onto speaker mode and rock […]
Radio 6 Music is probably the best station in the world for educating people about, and entertaining people with, interesting music. Unfortunately, the BBC Trust has proposed to kill the station as part of cutbacks. This is being done as a precursor to further expected forced cuts once a Conservative government is elected into power […]
My conversation with an Avis representative in Florida a few months ago: Agent: Would you like to add a Where 2 GPS to your agreement? George: How much? Agent: $11.95 a day. George: Isn’t that just a Garmin Nuvi? The kind you can buy from Amazon for $100? Agent: Yes, but it’s better. It’s a […]