Tag: canada

WestJet Flight Light

Over the last year or so, I have seen more and more brands from different industries actively experimenting with new ways to move beyond selling their products and providing their consumers with “convenience services” that eventually drive repeat usage / purchase of the product.

In this latest example, WestJet wanted to give their business travelers the ability to pursue opportunities, without losing connection with their loved ones at home. So, they created WestJet Flight Light, a nightlight that used live flight data to project a WestJet flight path onto a child’s bedroom ceiling. This simple device made the countdown of the hours and minutes to the parents return even more fun and interactive for the children waiting at home.

The prototype of the Flight Light is going to be in beta-testing throughout this summer. To stay updated visit the Flight Light homepage for more information.

The Magic Poster

To promote the Quebec City Magic Festival, agency lg2 created a poster that featured a magicians hat. The message on it was however hidden from the naked eye with the help of an invisilble ink. Curious passersby who took pictures of the poster using their cell phone (flash on) unlocked the message. A lucky few even got a free ticket for the festival’s closing show.

Ikea PS 2014 Instagram Website

Ikea over the years has made a name for itself as a trustworthy and affordable source of stylish home decor. In Russia to promote their new PS 2014 collection they teamed up with Moscow-based agency Instinct to produce a campaign that approached Instagram in an entirely new way.

The Ikea_ps_2014 Instagram account served as their campaign website, with each post representing a product category like Benches or Tables. On tapping the individual category pictures, hidden tags were revealed that offered a “link” to each product within that category. Every one of the 34 items in the collection also received their own Instagram accounts e.g. ps_laptop_station and ps_side_table.

The Instagram app was certainly never meant to be an Ikea catalog website, but this innovative use has its roots in previous brand campaigns. Early this year Mazda and JWT Canada turned the car-maker’s Instagram feed into an interactive road trip, replacing car specs with images and videos that followed the vehicle on an epic adventure. Over the course of four months, the campaign “Long Drive Home” helped grow Mazda Canada’s Instagram following by more than 300%.

Similarly, the Toronto Silent Film Festival turned their feed tsff2014 on its side, creating an interactive timeline complete with factoids and video clips to celebrate Charlie Chaplin’s 100 years on film.

Automated Thanking Machine

Start with the smile of your audience, and then work back from there. That is the key to most of the successful marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola has done a great job with their various happiness campaigns, followed by WestJet’s christmas campaign where they surprised their passengers with gifts.

Now TD Canada Trust for their “TD Thanks You” campaign converted select ATM machines in their Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver branches into special Automated Thanking Machines. Then 20 hand picked customers were requested to test out these new ATMs. To their surprise the ATM knew their names, talked back to them and eventually even gave them ultra cool gifts. The reactions were captured on video, which in the last 8 days has already got 4.9 million YouTube views.

Duracell Moments of Warmth

In a winter of ice storms and a polar vortex, moments of warmth are few and far between. So to change that, Duracell Quantum batteries in Canada retrofitted bus shelters with heaters. But the only way to get the heaters to work were through a human connection i.e. people joining their hands…

Christmas Surprise

It’s that time of the year again! So here is my last and very Christmassy post for the year. 😉

Airports during the holiday season are generally filled with disgruntled people facing delays, lost luggage and other mishaps. So Canadian airline, WestJet decided to use this moment to treat weary travelers with a Christmas miracle.

With the help of a virtual Santa Claus, the airline asked unsuspecting passengers waiting to board their flights to Calgary from Toronto and Hamilton International Airports what they had on their Christmas wishlists this year.

Then with more than 150 WestJet employees they set about playing Santa’s elves, gathering personalized presents and delivering them to the Calgary airport before the unsuspecting passengers landed. At the baggage claim the passengers received their holiday miracle…

This however was not WestJet’s first attempt into spreading airport Christmas cheer. Last year, the airline had created a Christmas themed flash mob, complete with dancing elves, in the middle of an airport…

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Here’s a lovely remake of “Little Drummer Boy” by Pentatonix to bring this last Ramble of the year to a close. 😎

Mazda3 Fast Lane

In a bid to capture consumers imagination and attention in Canada, JWT worked with Mazda to turn select Cineplex cinemas in Toronto and Vancouver into immersive gaming experiences that also acted as a mass in cinema test drive. 😎

During November, before the feature film, a short film showed two Mazda3 cars racing. Interested audience members could sync their smartphones to control their own virtual vehicle and race against other members of the audience. An onscreen leaderboard tracked the progress and winners got various giveaways.

How to become the most awarded agency in the world?

Agencies spend loads of money each year entering their work in award shows like Cannes, One Show etc. Rethink, an agency from Canada decided to do things a little different this year. Instead of investing tons of money in award show entries, they decided to tap into the growing trend of 3D printing and simply print their own awards. This way they became the most awarded agency in the world in a matter of days. 😆

The Beer Fridge

First various brands created campaigns with red buttons, then came one with a pink phone and now we have a campaign from Molson, a Canadian beer brand that revolves around bright red refrigerators. 🙂

These eye catching refrigerators were filled with Molson beer and strategically placed across a variety of European locations to attract crowds. The catch? The fridges could be opened only by scanning a Canadian passport.

The campaign was created by agency Rethink Canada in order to bring back the classic tagline, “I am Canadian.” As a result, the video footage collected from the different European locations was cut into a 90 second online ad (seen below) and a 30 second TV ad which ran during the Stanley Cup Finals.

Toronto Silent Film Festival: Instagram Project

Last month Fox tweeted a Vine mashup of its upcoming Wolverine movie trailer to stir up some hype for the film.

Now, the Toronto Silent Film Festival has taken to Instagram to promote its upcoming event with a first of its kind Instagram trailers. To view each trailer, head over to the relevant Instagram accounts on your smartphone…

  • tsff_1, for Murnau’s classic Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans;
  • tsff_2, for an excerpt from the 1925 feature Tumbleweeds; and
  • tsff_3, for the Del Lord short Super-Hooper-Dyne Lizzies

and then scroll rapidly though the images to create a flipbook effect.

I however could not see the animation smoothly as the Instagram accounts have received so many likes and comments that the smooth flow of the animation has been completely broken. So I guess one has to make do with the below case video…