In a 2010 interview, Bob Leroux, a vice-preseident and general manager with Pattison spoke about the company’s relationship with the festival: “We’d absolutely support them … it is our goal to expand the partnership. We like what they stand for in terms of bringing ideas and thought. Why should it just be in a gallery?” More than ever, Mr. Leroux said, outdoor companies are trying to make public art a part of their business. In Montreal, CBS Outdoor works with a group called Mouvement Art Public (MAP): in between paid campaigns, instead of throwing in filler ads for its own network, CBS has allowed MAP to show artists’ work using its signs.

This year, Pattison is a sponsor of 4 Toronto public installation projects.

The festival runs throughout the month of May.

Every day thousands of busy people rush through the area connecting Toronto’s Union Station with the PATH system; a series of tunnels that connects nearly 50 buildings in the downtown core. The PATH contains hundreds of retails stores, services and food outlets where people stop to pick up the essential items they may need at home that night or the next morning.

This week Well.ca, the largest health, baby and beauty e-commerce retailer in Canada, has opened up a store in the PATH tunnel near the spot where Brookfield Place connects with Union Station. But this store doesn’t have any square footage and there is no need for staff. Well.ca has created Canada’s first QR-enabled virtual store, inspired by Tesco’s much-talked about Homeplus Subway Virtual Store in Seoul, South Korea. The store consists of a wall-size poster featuring shelves full of images of P&G products including Tide, Crest, Head & Shoulders and Pampers.

To use the virtual shopping experience, users first download the Well.ca Virtual Store app; available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The customer then uses the scanning function inside the app to scan the unique QR code associated with each product. Once they’ve completed their selections, they can checkout and pay for their items within the app and Well.ca will deliver them for free. The Well.ca virtual store will be ‘open’ from April 2 to 30.

The Well.ca virtual store represents just one of the unique and innovative opportunities that marketers have at their disposal to create interactive experiences from static print and out-of-home ads. While QR code usage and interest may be on the verge of plateauing, new technologies use augmented reality, image recognition, geo-location, near field communications or audio triggers to connect a mobile user from a physical to online experience.

Just in time for the return of Don Draper and the Mad Men crew, a guerrilla street artist has hacked a number of Astral’s TTC bus shelter ad spots in an apparent effort to “provoke discussion about consumerism and advertising in public spaces.” According to the website that accompanies the anti-ads and a tip we received from a reader, seven shelters received “updates” over the weekend, spanning an area from Queen & Lisgar to Yonge & King. A casual tour of the more westerly shelters this morning confirmed that at least a few of them are still in place.

As for who’s behind the project, at this point no one has claimed credit (which is perhaps fitting given the nature of the intervention). The hack is reminiscent — if not as inventive — as the work that was done to add a chalkboard to an info pillar earlier this year. The group that took responsibility for that well-received addition to our streetscape doesn’t seem to be involved with this latest interrogation of ad-creep.

The web element of this little intervention is not particularly developed, but it would seem that the primary purpose of Ad Agony is to foster discussion about the relationship between public space and advertising — well, that or this is all just a cloaked marketing campaign waiting to get attention via posts such as this one. The DIY character of the anti-ads (painted by hand) suggests otherwise, but it’s honestly hard to tell these days.

And that, perhaps, is the very point.

Photos by the author or submitted by via Blog TO tips form

For the month of March, dog walkers won’t have to worry if they forget to bring poop bags to Trinity Bellwoods Park, in Toronto, Ontario, thanks to Mars Canada Inc.’s latest Pedigree® bus shelter campaign. To help promote Pedigree® Chicken & Rice+ Dry Food with prebiotics, Proximity BBDO in Toronto developed the first-ever bus shelter ad that also dispenses poop bags. The idea was simple: When it comes to healthy digestion, the proof is in the poop. People walking their dog can grab a bag and put it to use. Most importantly, they can also give some thought to the quality of their dog’s “back end performance” while doing so.

Advertising Agency: Proximity BBDO, Canada

Photo by Corey.Gudgeon, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

At its meeting last night, the Toronto Public Library board approved a plan to hire a contractor to sell advertising on the backs of due-date slips. TPL will also hire a consultant to look for other in-library advertising opportunities that, in the words of library staff, will “maximize revenue and minimize impacts to the delivery of core library services.” The only votes against the plan came from the two left-leaning councillors who sit on the board: Sarah Doucette (Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park) and Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches-East York). A motion by Davis, which would have delayed a decision on the matter until the public could be consulted, was defeated.

Staff hope to implement the changes at some point before the end of the year. We’ll see what ends up happening. But remember: we told them it wouldn’t work that well.

The 30-foot Christmas tree in Toronto’s Union Station is wrapped in 3,100 LED lights which flashes in green, red, white and blue. These aren’t just your regular Christmas tree lights though, these lights represent Christmas chatter online.

When the holiday is being talked about in the news, the tree’s green lights flash. White represents when Christmas is a topic of conversation on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. When the red lights are on, it means blogs and forums are are flooded with holiday posts, and the blue lights represent Christmas talk on the tree’s very own homepage Christmas Spirit Tree.

Advertising agency, Tribal DDB, are the people behind the Christmas Spirit Tree and created the idea for Canadian Tire. And it sure did work, because the popular store was trending on Twitter earlier in the week.

The tree picks up on words like Santa, merry, holiday, gift, time, and year. When these words are posted online, they help to power the Union Station light show. Sitting on top of a unique server, the tree has the help of another advertising agency, Sysomos, to filter through comments, posts and messages. The coloured lights get brighter, depending on the number of messages being posted in Canada. Underneath the tree is an interactive map which shows where in the country the online messages are originating.

“We wanted to be different. We thought, how could we do it with a social feed?” said Rosie Riolina-Serpa, assistant vice-president of digital & gift card for Canadian Tire. “I think the tree just gives everyone a good feeling.”

The Christmas Spirit Tree will be on display at Union Station in Toronto from now until December 26th from 6am to midnight. If you are unable to visit the tree in person, you can check out a live stream on the tree’s website, or on screen at Dundas Square in Toronto.

-Kiwi Commons

Advertising Agency: BBDO, Toronto, Canada

To launch the Mercedes-Benz 2012 C-Class Coupe, one was parked in front of a motion blurred wall, sidewalk, and billboard that read: “Looks fast. Even in park. The 450hp 2012 C-Class Coupe.” To complete the motion-blur illusion, real 3D models of a motion blurred fire hydrant, parking sign, and mailbox were created to be part of the street scene.

Advertising Agency: BBDO, Toronto

Astral OOH recently revealed the latest piece of its street furniture line in Toronto, hosting a group of industry members at Cirque du Soleil Totem in Toronto. Its LED-lit Signature Column will appear in 120 locations around the city, selected for their ability to reach the most of both vehicular and street traffic, Eric Menzies, director of sales, street furniture, Astral OOH, tells MiC.

“The number one difference with this piece is location, which is everything for OOH,” he says. “These don’t need to be at a transit stop, or a transit route. They have been chosen [based on] the best location for street and pedestrian traffic.”

The 4′ x 6′, standard PSA-sized faces feature the Toronto “Info to Go” system and were designed by Kramer Designs to include as little a frame as possible, says Menzies. “Info to Go” features a map of the area around the sign, with landmarks of interest and public transit routes. The Signature Columns will be featured in areas of the financial, fashion and entertainment districts that transit routes can’t reach.