Moneysense Just Confirmed the Obvious - Ottawa Rules!

For the third time in just four years, Moneysense Magazine ranked Ottawa as the top place to live in Canada. Weather, crime rates, culture, recreation, health services, housing prices and the fact that we're not Toronto were all used as criteria for the rankings. The announcement was made this week, but that 'Ottawa rules' edition of Moneysense doesn't hit newsstands until May 3rd.

The Ottawa Chamber of Commerce is pretty excited about having the top spot and has already announced that they see it as an opportunity to leverage the ranking as an important marketing tool for the city. More businesses are expected to set up shop in Ottawa as a result. No word yet as to whether the top ranking can help us in the playoffs next year...

Jane's Walk Ottawa

Looking for something to do this weekend in Ottawa? You may be interested in checking out one (or more) of the 35 free walking tours that are part of Jane's Walk Ottawa. It is described as "a pedestrian-focused event that improves urban literacy by offering insights into local history, planning, design, and civic engagement through the simple act of walking and observing." This initiative began in 2007 in Toronto and is now held in numerous cities across North America. Jane's Walk was inspired by the late Jane Jacobs, urbanist, activist and author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." For a schedule of this weekend's tours, click here.

I just learned about this annual event and think it's fascinating. It sounds like a great opportunity to get out and about and learn more about the city we live in.

Ottawa Writers Festival 2010 Spring Edition Starts This Week

The Ottawa Writers Festival was launched in 1997. For the last 13 years, the festival has brought hundreds of celebrated authors to Ottawa, honouring "the world's best writing from home and abroad with an electric program that presents interactions with leaders in the worlds of science, history, poetry, politics, spoken word, economics, drama, fiction, biography, music, religion, spirituality and more." For more information about the festival, click here.

The 2010 Spring Edition runs from April 22nd to 27th. Most events will be held at a pretty cool venue - the Mayfair Theatre in Old Ottawa South. There are also some post-festival events lined up for May, June and September. The full schedule can be found on the official website.

I think I might check out Terry O'Reilly and Mike Tennant's presentation on Sunday, April 25th. Their CBC Radio show The Age of Persuasion is consistently interesting and Terry has a pretty compelling website as well. If you're interested in marketing and culture, this would be a great event for you. Maybe I'll see you there!

Kotex Keeps It Real with Hilarious Tampon Campaign

Period talk. Feminine hygiene ads. Whatever you want to label them, advertisers have been trying to sell tampons based on the notion that women somehow equate twirling on a beach to having their period. We've all seen these highly laughable, but always slightly uncomfortable tampon ads over the years. Laughable, in that women with long, perfect hair are seen running along a beach or cuddling a kitten or jumping around in pink athletic gear delivering some cheesy line about feeling "fresh" or "free" or something equally ridiculous. They're uncomfortable in that any woman that's had to endure watching one while there's a male within a 50-yard radius knows the exact real life definition of awkward. That being said, I have to give it up to the ladies at JWT New York for this brilliant campaign for Kotex. It's hilarious and ballsy - they weren't afraid to go and make fun of themselves. They actually took clips from their old, guilty-of-doing-exactly-what-we're-now-making-fun-of ads and put them in this spot to prove their point. The writing has chops too. They originally wrote the ads with the word "vagina" but several networks rejected it, so they quickly replaced it with "down there" and two out of three networks rejected that. What they did run with may not be 'keeping it as real' as the creatives at JWT would have liked, but it's Laugh Out Loud funny. The lines in this spot are just too good for me to mention - I have a strict "zero spoilers" policy on stuff this good. Watch and ENJOY!

Oh, and just for kicks, I've included their mega-awesome print ad for a double dose of hilarity.

Will the iPad Delay Increase Demand or Cause Heartache?

Well it looks like Canadian “early adopters” are going to have to wait longer than expected to get their hands on the iPad. Although consumers worldwide hoped to have access to the new tablet-style computer by late March, Apple announced yesterday that they will have to wait until late May.

Even though this is the second delay for the international launch, I imagine that Apple investors are feeling pretty confident! With U.S. sales of 500,000 in the first week, the level of demand is not only encouraging, but according to Apple, it's “far higher” than expected.

And the success isn’t expected to slow down. According to an article written by eWeek.com, Morgan Stanley has predicted that Apple could sell 6 million iPads in 2010 and roughly 7 million in the first year. Apple said they will start taking orders for the iPad from international buyers starting on May 10. For those of you who can’t wait, you can always take a trip south of the border and try your luck there. With the dollar at parity, there’s no time like the present.

Keeping Up with "The Joneses"

"The Joneses" is a new Demi Moore/David Duchovny film coming soon to a theatre near you. Check out the trailer below. According to the synopsis, the film is about four individuals living undercover as a picture-perfect family. What their neighbours don't know (yet... I imagine), the fake family works for a marketing company and their job is to introduce new luxury-level products to neighbourhoods like theirs around the world, using undercover marketing techniques.

Fashion companies, including Reebok and Nike, do in fact have "coolhunter employees". Coolhunters seek new trends and act as brokers, bringing these trends back to their company and turning them into products for sale. As Malcolm Gladwell explains,

"The key to coolhunting... is to look for cool people first and cool things later, and not the other way around. Since cool things are always changing, you can't look for them, because the very fact they are cool means you have no idea what to look for... Cool people... are a constant."

Do big companies and/or marketing companies actually implant cool people into make-believe lives to sell a variety of products to their unsuspecting neighbours? I doubt they go that far. Although, I have heard of people being hired to walk around big malls with specific shopping bags in their hands, to influence others to shop at those specific stores, so maybe it's a slippery slope. I can't help but notice that "The Joneses" is in fact one big excuse for product placement.

In effect, "The Joneses" seem to me to be double-agents, the characters in the film are masquerading as cool people in the film trying to sell products to their neighbours while they are simultaneously trying to sell these same products to the film audience as well. While this product placement is most likely intentionally heavy-handed, to stress the message of rampant consumerism or whatever the director is going for... that doesn't erase the fact that it is still product placement.

Sound Too Good to Be True? It Probably Is.

Today, and today only, IKEA is offering a $1,000 gift card to Facebookers who 1) become "fans" of IKEA on Facebook and 2) "invite" their Facebook friends to do the same. Sound too good to be true? That's because it is. Unfortunately for the 40,000 fans of this page, this is a scam. Not only will you be spamming all of your friends, you'll be divulging personal information to untrustworthy scam artists. IKEA is obviously not too impressed. IKEA spokeswoman Mona Liss told WalletPop.com, "Needless to say this is most frustrating."

Let this be a warning to big businesses like IKEA that they should keep an eye out in the social media world for phony Facebook and Twitter identities that could tarnish their brand and offer the public insincere offers.

Did You Learn Anything, Tiger?

Wow. Nike's first Tiger Woods-centric commercial since everyone's opinion of the golf great drastically changed last fall has surfaced. They aren't brushing scandal under the rug. They have Tiger staring the audience in the eye, while the voice of his late father asks him if he's learned anything. I'm absolutely fascinated by this approach. I find it really powerful. Surprisingly, I don't view it from my regular cynical standpoint. I have lost a lot of respect for Tiger Woods in the last few months, even though I must admit that his personal life is really none of my business. Even so, I really do appreciate the message of facing your demons and learning from your mistakes that this commercial conveys. Nike's standing by their man, espousing responsibility for one's actions. Somehow it almost makes me want to cheer for Tiger's triumphant return. I never would have guessed that a Nike commercial would make me feel this way.

IKEA’s Largest Canadian Store to Go to Ottawa - They Thought of That

The Swedish home furnishings retailer that’s loved around the world, has just proclaimed its’ love for Ottawa in the form of a new, 389,000 square foot store. Set to open in 2011, it will be relocated and rebuilt at the Pinecrest Shopping Centre. Seeing that Ottawa is a single store market for IKEA, it’s not surprising that they would want to grow, but, it may come as a surprise to some that Ottawa will score Canada’s largest store. (And…cue the yellow and blue marketing bonanza.)

Ottawa home décor enthusiasts will surely be salivating, as this mega IKEA will feature over 9,000 exclusively designed products, 50 room settings, an enormous, 640-seat restaurant, a children’s play area and… wait for it… 1,200 parking spaces! Holy BIG shopping carts Batman!

Construction doesn’t begin until May, but official bragging rights over Toronto begins now Ottawa. Enjoy!

ikea ad from Playback on Vimeo.