Here is a thought provoking article combining technology and marketing to foresee how the advertising business may have to adapt to consumer buying habits in the future. Start to update your resumes to include experience in the field of "mind control".

http://www.cracked.com/article_16434_5-creepiest-advertising-techniques-near-future.html

Recently, IMS introduced a new interface for its workhorse crosstab software, “Clear Decisions”. The response in the room was unanimously positive, with one junior planner whispering in awe “It’s….beautiful.” What’s so great about “Clear Decisions”? Lots of things: Rather than having to type in reams of coding, and sweating over whether or not your brackets are in the right place, the software lets you drag and drop your selections from the codebook half of the screen into the crosstab half, and gives you the and/or choices right on the screen. Results are displayed instantly, so no more waiting until the run is processed to see if your sample is large enough. In the “Smart Views” screen you can quickly highlight the data visually, using colour, gradients or icons. The preference in the room was for the green, yellow and red smiley faces. What does this mean for you? Since the new software operates much more like a Windows environment, users can spend less time learning how to use the system and more time delving into insights and using those insights to build strategy. Currently, only Crosstab and Cost Ranker are available in Clear Decisions: IMS plans to roll out the other modules over the next few years.

This weekend 2800 riders came together for a 200 km trek in the battle against cancer.   Each rider had to raise a minimum of $2500 to participate and overall $14,000,000 was raised for cancer research at Princess Margaret Hospital.  The ride began at 7 am on Saturday in Toronto, stopping over at Mohawk College for the evening and finishing at 2pm on Sunday in Niagara Falls.  Friends, family and even strangers gathered at cheering stations and pit stops along the way to keep spirits high. 

It was a weekend of smiles, cheers and tears with truly touching stories that give hope and inspiration to many.

Please join me in congratulating friend and fellow PHD’er  Kristen Sibley for her incredible efforts and accomplishment by not only participating and finishing the ride, but raising $4100 for the cause.

Here are a few great uses of the outdoor medium from around the world.  70 cases can be found at TrendHunter.com…

Many eyes will no doubt be tuned to the much anticipated Euro Cup Quarter Finals this weekend.

As you might expect from a global network, many PHDers have a deeply rooted interest in the outcome.

As a Canadian from Scottish extraction I personally have no stake in the outcome … my only prediction is for plenty of soccer-style “injuries” and more bad blood.

Check out these passionate PHDers … someone won’t be happy on Monday.

Has anyone else wondered, during the lull of the day when you really know you should be doing something more productive but instead you start trawling the Internet for info and checking blogs, that perhaps your time could be spent to better serve others?

Here at phd we have phenomenal initiatives such as phd sustain, and annually we work closely with the United way. But does anyone have any idea of how we can match charity and sustainability to ensure that some of the swag we receive and some of the leftover food we have can be donated to the less fortunate and those who are more in need?

Thoughts anyone?

Finally, BBM has realized that diaries are costly to maintain, less reliable than when they they were introduced 20 years ago and experience huge sample problems

Starting this Fall, Montreal, will be the first market officially surveyed via the PPM (Personal People Meter).  The success of the TV PPM, launched in 2004, has made media buyers realize that radio surveys lack the accountability that we have encountered through the TV PPM.

The PPM is the size of a pager that fits in your pocket and can be carried with the panelist throughout the day.  It must be docked at night to download the information collected throughout the day.

Each TV program and radio station will be encoded with a unique audio code.  The PPM will record the codes on a minute by minute basis.  These panelists can be used for both TV and radio, however, at this time, BBM are keeping the panelists for TV and radio separate.  In the future, when the panelist does start to provide for both, buyers can complete reach/frequencies on total broadcast campaigns.

PPM will provide more stable data, less swings book over book and records "in Car"and "at Work" tuning and Online Streaming of radio stations.  The data can be viewed on a daily,weekly and survey basis.  The weekly ratings will help the radio stations adjust areas of concern on a consistent basis.  This is great news for radio buyers who have to currently deal with stations refusing to accept that their station did not perform well survey after survey. 

Montreal has been testing the PPM for a year. Preliminary results for radio look very similar to the TV initial results.  Prime tuning, which for radio is the Mo-Fr 6a-10a timeblock, is down and off prime evening and weekend tuning has increased.  Men and teens are tuning to radio stations much more than surveys state.  Men and teens don’t think a toonie is enough of an incentive to fill in a diary every day for 4 weeks, but give them an electronic gadget, and they are happy.

Vancouver and Calgary will start their survey in February 2009 and Toronto and Edmonton jump on board March 2009.  I am very much looking forward to the results and the capability of reviewing our buys on a weekly basis, as we do with TV.

Canwest unveiled it’s Fall line up for 2008 just after the first rooster cock a doodled on Wednesday morning. Turns out the early start was because the generous mega corporation wanted to treat it’s clients to a delicious breakfast of lukewarm coffee, plain unsweetened yogurt, and what was believed to be BLTs.

The highlights of the launch included appearances by talking car KITT, handyman Mike Holmes, and Rick “the Temp” Caponelli. “The Temp” provided much of the humour for the presentation while interviewing people that were supposedly on Survivor, now entering what seems like its 21^st season. Unfortunately no announcements for a “Survivor: Antarctica” or a “Survivor: Mars” were announced and instead the next season will take place on the typical tropical island setting, possibly Manitoulin.

As part of an agreement with NBC, Canwest has picked up a handful of new programs including poor man’s Jack Nicolson and brat pack bad boy Christian Slater on new show “My Own Worst Enemy”, the revival of Knight Rider (sans Hasselhoff= sans viewers), comedy Kath & Kim, and an updated version Robinson Crusoe.

Also introduced was an Americanized version of British drama Life on Mars, and the Ex List, featuring a woman who needs to re-date all of her ex-boyfriends because some gypsy tells her she will be single forever if she doesn’t find her husband in the next year. We believe a show with a premise like that has the potential to last many, many seasons, depending on the number of men the young lady has slept with. Speaking of promiscuous, 90210 is back so that we can follow the lives of spoiled high school kids from a familiar zip code.

Returning shows include Heroes, Prison Break, House, Bones, Survivor, The Office, The Simpsons, Family Guy and Brothers & Sisters.

All in all a fantastic event, topping previous years when they served alcohol and started at a reasonable hour.

by Dwayne Maillet and Atreyee Dey

In the spirit of sharing some stunning creative for one of our clients (and to give myself a kick-start into our blogging world here!), please have a look at this British television ad for Honda/Acura. For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, prepare to be dazzled! The description accompanying this video reads as follows:

If you thought that the people who set up a room full of dominoes to have them knocked over later was amazing, you haven’t seen anything yet. There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in these images. Everything that you see happened in real time exactly as you see it. The recording required 606 takes and in the first 605 takes there always was something, usually of minor importance, that didn’t work.

It was necessary for the recording team to install the set-up time after time and it took several weeks working day and night to achieve this effect. The recording cost 6 million dollars and it took 3 months to finish, including the engineering design of the sequence. The duration of the video is only 2 minutes, but every time that Honda shows the commercial on British television, they make enough money to support any of us for the rest of our lives.

However, this commercial has turned out to be the most displayed in the history of the Internet. Honda execs think that it will pay for itself simply because of the free showings (as Honda is not paying one cent for you to see it). When Honda senior execs viewed it, they immediately approved it without hesitation-including costs.

There are only six Honda Accords built by hand in the whole world, and to the horror of Honda engineers, the recording team disassembled two of them for the recording. Everything you see in the sequence (besides the walls, floor, ramp and untouched Honda Accord) is part of those two automobiles.

The voice is that of Garrison Keiller.

The commercial was so well received by Honda execs when they saw it, that their first comment was how amazing the computer graphics were. They almost fell out of their chairs when told that the recording was real without any graphics manipulation.

By the way, about the wind shield wipers in the new Honda Accords, they are sensitive to water and designed to start working as soon as they get wet.

Enjoy!!

You know that better as the theme song to Hockey Night in Canada, played for more than 40 years on CBC.

Well not any more.

Thanks to CTV, TSN and RDS, that great tune will resonate in our ears in a slightly different manner for years to come…they purchased the rights

in perpetuity…

That means forever folks!

There is no doubt of the power of this theme song.  I have personally used it to connect with a Canadian who had it as a ring tone on his cell while walking the streets of London England.  And the controversy it has stirred has taken over gas prices for a day or two as the top story in the Canadian press.  Letters have been sent, petitions signed and Facebook pages set up all over the place to support our second national anthem.

As a hockey fan, I am disappointed by CBC’s decision but happy CTV have kept it alive.  As a tax-payer, I applaud CBC’s fiscal responsibility.  As a media guy, I don’t know yet what to make of it as the shock has yet to wear off.

I would love to hear some more opinions…