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

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.

A uniquely Canadian spin on a global Volkswagen creative platform rolled out this month via an augmented reality billboard takeover in Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square.

To help promote the launch of the 2012 Beetle in Canada, digital animation enabled Beetles to come to life on billboards and interact with passersby, providing them with different views of the vehicle. One, for example, turns a billboard into a tunnel with a Beetle driving out of it towards the viewer.

The billboards drive to VWjuicedup.ca where visitors can download a mobile app that will activate the experience, “juicing up” the ads by viewing them through their phone cameras. Incorporating headlines from the global campaign, the billboards have been adapted with media by MediaCom and creative from Red Urban in Toronto and include, of course, a glyph to activate the AR experience.

“We were looking for something that was a little more innovative and a bit more engaging,” says Nicole Milette, account director, Red Urban. “The push is all about the car’s performance, its new look and innovations.”

Advertising Agency: Red Urban, Canada

Article from Media in Canada

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But if Volkswagen Canada has their say, beauty will be in the hand of the person who’s stealing it. At least that’s the idea behind an ongoing out-of-home campaign celebrating the launch of the turbocharged 2012 Jetta GLI. Beginning in October, pop-up “Performance Art” galleries began to appear in Toronto and other Canadian cities. The outdoor exhibits feature limited edition, hand-numbered, framed long-exposure light painting photographs created by the 200-horsepower Jetta GLI. While the frames have been hung for all to admire, they haven’t been hung that securely, allowing more daring admirers to claim the artwork for themselves. Thieves are being asked to share their steals, and Volkswagen Canada’s Facebook page has already received numerous photos from fans decorating homes and offices with the eye-catching imagery.

Advertising Agency: Red Urban, Canada

Building on its reputation for always being ahead of the curve, Warner Bros. Pictures Canada created a unique outdoor installation merging science and advertising that is guaranteed to leave movie lovers, science buffs and art enthusiasts in ‘awe’ or ‘eww’.

In support of Academy Award ® winner Steven Soderbergh’s latest film “Contagion” — in theatres September 9th, Warner Bros. Pictures Canada teamed up with microbiologists and immunologists from around the world to create a one-of-a-kind bacteria message board located at 409 Queen Street West in an abandoned store-front window. On August 28th, two large Petri dishes were inoculated with live bacteria including penicillin, mold and pigmented bacteria and almost overnight have revealed the true Contagion — an artistic interpretation of the spread of a virus as depicted in the film.

The public was invited to witness first-hand the remarkable growing power of natural bacteria on Wednesday August 31st from 11:00 AM — 2:00 PM. The first 50 people who arrived received passes to see “Contagion” in theatres and other themed prizes.

Advertising Agency: Lowe Roche, Toronto, Canada

Big billboards and big SUV’s — they both pollute the environment. In keeping with smart car’s low impact on the environment, we created low impact billboards. Miniature sized street advertising that celebrates the beauty of being small.

Advertising Agency: BBDO, Toronto, Canada

Thanks to marketer Rob Linden for spotting this fresh new campaign from Coca-Cola’s Simply Orange, aimed at getting consumers back to the brand’s tagline, “100% pure. Never concentrated. Never frozen.”

With media by UM Canada and creative by Zulu Alpha Kilo, the campaign includes OOH, print and in-store activities, Shannon C. Denny, marketing communications, Coca-Cola refreshments, tells MiC.

“In addition to the transit shelter ads, there is an oversized billboard with a large orange cut in half that sits above the physical board,” she says. “The orange, sitting atop a juicer, is filling the Simply Orange carafe below.”

In an effort to prevent impaired driving, fake, double-sided funeral cards are place on vehicles parked in major bar districts. Inexpensive and easy to execute, the cards target drivers just as they’re getting back to their cars. The campaign was launched successfully by Cossette Toronto on St. Patrick’s Day and continues to be executed on nights with increased alcohol consumption.

Watch the case video here

Week-End – Alex Prager

Alex Prager is a self-taught artist whose intriguing photographs feature women dressed as starlets and femme fatales, embroiled in cinematic melodramas. Growing up in LA, the artist was immersed in an environment that embraced ideas of glamour and celebrity culture. While each photograph in the series Week-End (2010) tells its own story, together these images come across as film stills from tantalizingly incomplete narratives. Her enigmatic tableaus are reminiscent of a classic Hollywood era, with their supersaturated and enhanced colours, dramatic lighting, unexpected camera angles, and archetypal representations of beauty.

Prager’s signature style is influenced by fashion photography inasmuch as it draws upon films by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and Douglas Sirk. For the artist, “a picture is a picture,” and it is irrelevant whether these images were produced for a gallery wall or for a fashion magazine. If anything, editorial shoots enable her to realize more ambitious projects that would otherwise be difficult to realize.

Surrounding a car dealership and autobody shop, this site-specific installation also evokes nostalgia for a time when film screenings could be enjoyed at the drive-in theatre. Presented as billboards, these seven images reveal the artist’s interest in advertising tropes, in the way they lure the viewer into make believe-worlds. Much like a fashion advertising campaign, her seductive photography heavily relies upon artifice and fabricated promises of happiness. By working with makeup, costumes, and poses–caked lipstick, fake eyelashes, wigs, and demure blank stares–Prager celebrates the trappings of femininity, to the extent that she makes it uneasy for the viewer to see beyond these constructed facades. Within each of these scenes there is an air of mystery present, as if the answer lurks just outside of the picture frame.

This was presented in partnership with Pattison Outdoor Advertising and Nikon Canada