This past Friday August 29^th, PHD successfully hosted its first golf tournament – the PHD Golf Invitational – at Maples of Ballantrae Golf Club. What started as a small company gathering developed into a fully sponsored charity event with 44 golfers, raising $4500 for the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. The response from suppliers was remarkable, especially with the short lead time given to get on board. With the risk of thunderstorms, Mother Nature even cooperated, allowing us to stay dry throughout the day.

PHD would like to thank all of its sponsors– Cineplex, AOL, CTV, NewAd, Yahoo, Canwest, 24/7 Real Media, Globe and Mail, MSN Sympatico, Auto Trader, Fidelity Investments, Rogers, and some of our very own clients Boston Pizza, Home Hardware, and Hershey – this day would not have been possible without your contributions!

Thanks again! See you next year for the 2^nd Annual PHD Golf Invitational – it’s going to be even bigger and better!

Cheers,

Geoff Glen and Sean Cunningham

It’s Cuil (I think pronounced Cool), a new search engine built by some of Google’s former brain-trust and lots of funding.

Its simple, easy to use and follow, seems to have a better grasp for what you are looking for, and is currently completely underutilized.

It will:

Search 121,617,892,992 web pages!

which is 3x as many as Google.  Or, perhaps 3x more irrelevant?

To find out more about them, click here.

For fun, I Cuiled myself, “Brian Wylie PHD” and it froze solid.  Better get those kinks worked out…

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?

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!!

 CREATIVITY: a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts

How do you express yourself creatively? Most of us are creative every day whether we are solving a small problem, or challenged to come up with that genius idea that the client will love!

PHD TORONTO celebrated pioneering, innovation, and of course fun, last week during our annual Creativity Week. We kicked off the week with an all staff breakfast announcing the upcoming events.

First up, a PHD theme song! The company was divided into small groups to compose their song and perform it in front of everyone at the close of the week. The groups came up with some really great songs about what PHD is all about!

Groups were also encouraged to venture out into the city and take photos in a creative setting. With the incentive to get out of the office, PHD’ers took on this challenge and the results once again displayed PHD’s pioneering and creative spirit.

Throughout the week, PHD’s ‘creative corner’ was set up with all sorts of craft supplies, with everything from colouring books to window paints. All works of art were displayed in our Creative Gallery on Friday.

Lastly, PHD’s “secret project” was something our own Brenda Bookbinder came up with – 30 little canvases were handed out with a piece of a picture attached to it. PHD’ers had to replicate the small picture on the canvass. At the end of the week, all the canvases were pieced together like a giant puzzle to reveal a big portrait of our president, Fred Forster!

Creativity Week at PHD turned out to be a great success with lots of participation, creation, and inspiration from the entire company. We hope you are inspired to be creative and possess a pioneering spirit every day.

Are you being creative today?

If you know who coined this phrase, write it in the comments.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day like Earth Day to launch Canada’s PHD Sustain initiative. 

  Taking Care of our PHD Village

In an effort to reduce our waste & benefit our environment, the following changes are already making a difference in the office:

· Milk & cream 1 litre bottles replaced their tiny plastic versions

· People have added reminders on their email signature “Please consider the environment before printing…etc.

· A switch to more discussion & 1 pager handouts vs large presentation decks

· Printing on both sides of the paper

· Recycling

· Limiting how many media kits are received from sales reps

· Correcting & updating address-lists so we don’t end up with an overflow of Media Week & Marketing Magazines

· Using the revolving door to go outside

· Asking about recycled paper when planning a flyer or DM piece

· Using “angels-advocate” at the office as a way to improve our team morale

· Calling your sales rep when an unnecessary polybag arrives

What else have you noticed?

What changes have you started to make in your home life or your office life?

Magazines Canada’s third annual Best on Page event, an exhibition of award-winning magazine ad creative from around the world.

Best on Page featured 170 award winning concepts from the Cannes Lions Festival, Epica Awards, Canada ’s own Marketing Awards, Créa Awards and Anvil Awards.

Attendees had the opportunity to vote on the creative execution most deserving of Best of Show honours. The competition was fierce as 143 of the 170 ads captured votes.

And the winner is: Sony PlayStation from TBWA\Madrid in Spain.

Second place honours go to Bazooka Bubble Gum from Duval Guillaume Brussels in Belgium and third place is an ad for the Breast Cancer Welfare Association from Saatchi and Saatchi, Petaling Jaya in Malaysia .

Best of Show winners are a testament to the creative potential of the magazine medium. These ads stop, engage and influence readers in powerful ways.

For your own personal exhibition of each of the winning 170 creative concepts from Best on Page, click here. Enjoy the show!

A message to everyone working in a marketing related field - expect to fail.  Why?  Because if you do not fail, you will not learn and will become complacent.  Companies and people need to embrace this notion.

Here is a quick case study on how expecting to fail can lead to success…

In the early ’90s, the BBC was getting killed in the market by the competition, funding was being cut, staff were leaving for bigger and better opportunities, and the near future was very grim.  Enter a new CEO with a pioneering spirit who created a “Gambling Fund”.  No, this did not mean creating a bunch of successful Texas Hold ‘em players, but a fund that would only be given to projects that were destined to fail.  In a time where budgets were short, they recognized that they first had to fail to become a success and focused financial effort to do just this.

Guess what came from it?  Only the biggest hit in BBC history, now a world-wide phenomenon, and one of my favorites:

Catch a clip or two here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/

Creativity week is almost here and we will have another opportunity to rejoice around our mistakes, I’m looking forward to it.

We recently pitched the business of a client who has very strong values when it comes to health and the environment.  We felt we needed to cater as much of the media plan with sustainable media as possible and thus was born “The Living Board”.

Don’t get the wrong idea - the board is really not alive, it is not organic in anyway.  The concept is simply that the material is a recyclable vinyl and then transformed into shopping bags and given out to consumers when the campaign is over.  It is also bio-degradable for the time down the road when the shopping bag is no longer needed.

Great idea Michelle and Jonathan.  No word yet on if we won the assignment, stay tuned.

I just stumbled across this on Trendhunter, which follows the above to a degree - recycled movie posters.  And no, I don’t nor do I ever plan to own one…

These pretty bags will delight many environmentally conscious women and if they happen to be film buffs, they will be doubly delighted. The bags are made of recycled movie billboards. Films such as Mission Impossible, The Bourne Ultimatum, Pride and Prejudice and a whole lot more, are featured on these unlikely canvases.

Outfitted with an inside zippered pouch and an elastic-over-metal closure, the Billboard Bags are one of a kind according to Ecoist. They sell for $48.00 and if you’re curious about which movies are represented in the gallery, here’s the breakdown:

1. Thunderbird
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Bourne Ultimatum
4. Superbad
5. Mission Impossible

How will you be reducing the carbon footprint of your next marketing campaign?

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