Plus: New work from Loblaw and PurpleBricks, and a tour of WestJet’s newest plane in The Message‘s round-up of new Canadian creative
Jam3 produces sing-along video for Fox
Let’s start the week with a song. It’s a choral rendition of “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent, painstakingly assembled from more than 500 user-submitted videos from fans, musical influencers, Broadway casts and four professional singers.
The video was created and produced by Toronto design agency Jam3 to promote Fox’s live airing of Rent on Jan. 27. From the call for submissions to final approval, the project was completed in about six weeks.
Jam3 has worked on a number of projects for Fox over the past few years, including The X-Files and Empire. The latest project, which required approximately six weeks from the call for submissions to final approval, was handled by Jam3’s offices in Toronto and L.A.
“Dealing with hundreds of submissions makes for incredibly lengthy render times,” Jam3 associate creative director Adam Romano told The Message. “To solve for this, we divided the video into several smaller pieces so we could get faster turnarounds and approvals.”
Tim Horton’s tells a Roll up the Rim True Story
Just before the holidays Tim Horton’s introduced a new advertising platform based on the “True Stories” of its customers.
The first ad was a young boy who told his mom he wanted to use his own money to pay for the order behind them in the drive through. The second spot, published on Monday morning, tells the story of a hockey dad/coach who uses his Roll Up the Rim “Please Play Again” cup to inspire his son’s hockey team. The spot comes in advance of this year’s launch of its hugely successful “Roll Up the Rim” promotion.
The ads are a celebration of Canadiana and Canadian traditions, but the stories behind them are intended to resonate with a very wide audience, said Paloma Azulay, global creative head, Tim Hortons.
“We want to make sure there are universal values behind each story,” she told The Message. The new ad is about hockey but should resonate with non-hockey fans, she added. “[It’s] all about how you believe in yourself, you need perseverance to win a championship, and making your kids believe in something.”
Portmanteau marketing part 1: PurpleBricks
The online real estate services business PurpleBricks officially arrived in Canada on Jan. 8, following its 2018 acquisition of ComFree.
The brand is being introduced to Canadian home sellers and buyers with a TV spot that portrays the pain of “commisery”—finding out too late that there are no real estate commissions when you sell your home with PurpleBricks.
Launched in 2014 in the U.K., PurpleBricks has sought to disrupt traditional real estate with a hybrid online brokerage model and fixed fees. German publishing giant Axel Springer took a large stake in the company last year, and the business has expanded to the U.S. and Australia (where things have not gone smoothly).
Portmanteau marketing part 2: Loblaw
After combining its PC points program with Shoppers Drug Mart’s ultra-popular Optimum program last year, Loblaw has launched a new brand campaign for the blended rewards program built around the concept of “Pointsonality”: the types of people who use their points in different ways.
WestJet introduces its first Dreamliner
WestJet has big plans to expand its service internationally, and its acquisition of up to 20 Boeing 787 Dreamliners over the next five years is a big part of that strategy.
The airline received its first 787 last week, and will begin using the plane on a Calgary to London route in April. WestJet marketer Richard Bertram gave a tour of the new plane, explaining how it’s designed to reduce jet-lag and why a carbon fibre fuselage makes for a less arid flight.
