Tag Archives: Toronto Star

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

TD Domination

15 Jan

From Marketing Magazine: TD Goes Big on Toronto Star Homepage By Kristin Laird

TD Bank helped answer questions about retirement yesterday through a one-day page domination on the Toronto Star’s homepage.

On the right-hand side of TheStar.com, visitors saw what the paper calls an “XXL,” a 300 x 900 box ad with a photo of Patricia Lovett-Reid, senior vice-president, TD Waterhouse Canada. A banner ad also ran across the top of the page.

Visitors had the option of expanding the ad to take up the width of the page, and revealing three 20-second videos, all of which featured Lovett-Reid discussing retirement options.

At one point, a small ambient version of Lovett-Reid walked into the middle of the screen, inviting visitors to watch the videos.

One of the videos started playing as soon as the ad has been expanded, driving viewers to TDRetirement.com or inviting them to take a survey that provided a summary of their retirement needs.

The user could print a summary of the survey to take with them for a personal assessment with a TD representative.

“It’s a great way to get our message out,” said Jeff Smith, associate vice-president, digital marketing, TD Bank Financial Group. “It’s a unique page takeover, it’s not intrusive on the user.”

Innovations Response designed the ads, with Starcom handling the media buy

According to Smith, the Toronto Star is currently the only Canadian publisher offering this kind of online inventory. “It’s important for us to be at the forefront of digital innovation,” he said.

The effort is aimed at 45- to 64-year olds in the pre-retirement phase, he said.

The domination is part of a larger retirement-focused effort that includes TV, print, online banner ads and in-branch merchandising.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.