Tag Archives: marketing

Marketing Downtown: Less ‘Should,’ More Filling a Need

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By Jason Menard

It’s not enough to build it and hope they come. And while the downtown master plan is visually appealing, core proponents can’t be blind to the fact that the most important thing to see is what the consumer actually wants.

It’s great to have a pedestrian-friendly downtown, but you have to focus on marketing and give those pedestrians a reason to come. And it has to be more than supercilious castigations of what people “should” be doing; it has to be a focus on providing customers with something they want to do.

Otherwise you’ll end up with a beautiful, but empty, revamped core. Continue reading →

Rainbow Oreo Not About Marketing; It’s About What’s Right – in Black and White

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By Jason Menard

The rationale behind publishing a multi-coloured Oreo in support of gay pride is starkly black and white – it’s the right thing to do, despite the fact that there is little to no chance of positive benefit to the company’s bottom line.

An image of a rainbow-coloured Oreo appeared on the brand’s Facebook fan page on Monday. Since then, the page has been inundated with over 250,000 likes and over 45,000 comments. It’s a simple image with a simple message: “Proudly support love!” – and while the decision to publish it may be simple at its root, from a business point of view it’s much less black and white. Continue reading →

Winning Isn’t Everything. In Today’s Sports it Amounts to Very Little

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By Jason Menard

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” – Vince Lombardi.

“… I’m not sure people want to see a team at home that has a 9-0 record but the average score is 12-7. I think they’d much rather see us .500 at home with an average score of 38-34.” – Chris Rudge, executive chairman and CEO of the Toronto Argonauts. Continue reading →

Too Many Marketing Words Obscures Pearson’s Users’ Message

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By Jason Menard

You know the old adage about what you should call a spade? Well, run that tool through a marketing department and it’ll be time to call a spade an efficiency-increasing earth adjusting implement.

And in the case of a Toronto Star article that ran today discussing the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, the fog created by biz speak can run the risk of creating a tool that ends up doing the wrong job for its users. Continue reading →

Two Weeks of Tiger Tweeting Show Honesty Still Not His Policy

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By Jason Menard

Two weeks into Tiger Woods’ commitment to openness and fan interaction and it’s abundantly clear that honesty remains far from the best policy for the golfer and his public relations team.

If you’ve read any of my previous work relating to social media, you’ll know that I have a simple mantra — just because everyone can blog, tweet, or post on Facebook, doesn’t mean
they should. Continue reading →