Archive | May, 2011

Sico adds colour to Yonge-Bloor station

12 May

Sico splashes colour across Toronto transit  from Marketer News by Kristin Laird

Quebec-based paint brand Sico is inviting Torontonians to add a little colour to their lives through a month-long out-of-home campaign that transforms the city’s dull and grey Bloor-Yonge subway station into an inspirational paint palette.

Bloor Station

Oversized, framed paint chips now line the subway station walls as part of the station domination that also includes branded turnstiles, posters and video shorts running on digital boards that use the tag line “Let’s Colour.”

The transit campaign coincides with the re-launch of Sico’s Cashmere paint brand, and lets commuters know that it’s available at 22 dealers across the greater Toronto area.

The paint industry is highly competitive, which is why it was important to launch something different from what other brands are doing, said Dominique Pépin, marketing manager for Sico Paints.

The subway station environment also makes it easy to demonstrate the power of colour. “With dull grey, a pop of colour here and there acts as a trigger… We want people to think, ‘Maybe I have something to paint,’ and we would like to be their paint partner,” she said.

For the next three Thursdays in May, Sico will hand out Gerber daisies in a variety of colours with a little card that invites commuters to visit the Sico Facebook page and download a $10 off coupon.

“That might bring them to consider the brand for their next purchase,” said Pépin.

Once the out-of-home campaign wraps at the end of the month, Sico will determine whether or not to launch it in other markets, said Pépin.

The effort is part of a larger initiative that includes a national television commercial that runs for the next seven weeks on television. It has also been posted to Sico’s Facebook page to help grow the brand outside of Quebec.

Palm Havas developed the creative and Mediacom handled the buy.

The Grid arrives with help from Rethink

12 May

The Grid chalks up its first marketing effort from Marketer News by Chris Powell

Pamela Hegan, the managing director of Rethink Toronto had spent the past two months developing a marketing stunt for today’s re-launch of the alternative weekly magazine Eye Weekly as The Grid. The project involved an estimated 50 artists creating sidewalk chalk drawings throughout downtown – making the prospect of rain slightly unnerving.

The weather remained clear, however, and Torontonians awoke this morning to the results of what Hagen describes as a citywide “art project” that saw artists work throughout the night to create a series of pieces connecting The Grid’s distribution boxes to each other and to interesting merchants like coffee shops and book stores throughout the downtown core.

“We wanted to focus on a really spectacular way to celebrate the first issue,” said Hagen. “The concept is that The Grid connects with Toronto and its inhabitants in really interesting ways, and we wanted to find a way to bring that to life visually.”

The stunt is being supported by a print ad in the Toronto Star featuring the Twitter hashtag-referencing headline “#WestEndWins. #EastEndWins. Discuss.” Rethink was also charged with creating The Grid’s branding and visual identity, which includes the publication’s logo and street box designs.

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