July 18
As a “social impact” agency, Public often advises its clients to take a stand on important issues.
So when U.S. president Donald Trump published his racist tweets this week, the Toronto and New York-based agency felt compelled to follow its own advice—creating a social campaign condemning the racist trope “go back to where you came from” as antithetical to a healthy democracy.
Public created a similar campaign for the City of Toronto in 2016, when Canada welcomed 25,000 refugees fleeing war-torn Syria. “We hope this ‘redo’ will also be successful, which is why we made the campaign open source,” said Public in a release. “Anyone can use it so long as they don’t manipulate it for negative intent.”
July 16
Dairy Farmers of Canada has announced a one-year partnership with Cineplex Media to promote the fact that the theatre chain’s popcorn topping is made with real butter.
The DFC’s Blue Cow logo will be featured in 60 Cineplex theatres across the country through what the companies are describing as a “full suite” of advertising and branding vehicles, including pre-show ads, point-of-sale decals, butter dispenser signage, digital screens in lobby areas and full page ads in Cineplex magazine.
“Cineplex is famous for its popcorn and our real Canadian butter option so this partnership makes perfect sense for us and Dairy Farmers of Canada,” said Robert Brown, vice-president of Cineplex Media in a release.
July 15
Simone Lumsden is the new CMO for Rogers, joining the company on July 2. Leroy Williams had been the top marketer at Canada’s largest telecommunications business, most recently holding the title of SVP and head of consumer channels, but Rogers confirmed to The Message he is no longer with the company.
The job is new but the office and her boss, Joe Natale, will be familiar to Lumsden—who spent more than 12 years with Rogers starting in the late 1990s. She left the company in 2009 to help launch the Public Mobile brand, which went live in 2010. Lumsden oversaw integration efforts when Public was acquired by Telus in 2014, before taking senior brand roles for the company while Natale was CEO.
“Here at Rogers we are focused on giving customers the best possible experience throughout their journey with us. This new CMO role and team will focus on delivering consistent and meaningful experiences to our customers,” said Lumsden in a statement to The Message. “It is a great time to be coming back to Rogers. Rogers has always had a deep history of innovation and industry leadership, and the recent launch of Rogers Infinite data plans is another great example of this.”
Cairns Oneil strategic media has added Pam Hill to its senior leadership team. Hill was most recently senior vice-president, managing director at PHD Canada, leading accounts including Scotiabank.
“Pam represents our continued commitment to delivering senior thought leadership to
all of our clients by expanding our senior leadership team, creating capacity for
continued growth,” says agency co-founder Sherry O’Neil. In addition to O’Neil and David Cairns, the agency’s senior leadership team includes Tim Hughes and Robin LeGassicke.
Starbucks is bringing its delivery program to Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Starbucks Delivers was introduced in the U.S. last year through a partnership with Uber Eats. Consumers will be able to order from “the majority of the Starbucks core menu,” through the Uber Eats app.
“Learning from our global Starbucks Delivers rollout, we’ve incorporated unique company packaging and standards to deliver Starbucks products to Canadians without compromising the high-quality of handcrafted beverages, food and service they expect from us,” said Michael Conway, president, Starbucks Canada in a release.
Nestlé Canada is opening a flagship “KitKat Chocolatory” store in Toronto’s Yorkdale Mall. Visitors can design their own KitKat break by creating customized KitKats choosing from three base chocolates (milk, dark, or white) and 16 speciality ingredients like rippled potato chips and rose petals. The permanent location, which is slated to open this fall, follows a pop-up Chocolatory experience in Toronto last year, and other permanent locations in Australia and Japan.
Twitter has chosen Canada to test a new feature that allows users to hide replies to their tweets that they do not like. Twitter says it’s part of its efforts to give users more control over their conversations. “[W]e know that distracting, irrelevant, and offensive replies can derail the discussions that people want to have,” reads a blog post explaining the new option.
However, citing its commitment to transparency, other users will be able to click an icon to see the hidden replies. “Anyone around the world will be able to see and engage with hidden replies by tapping the grey icon that will appear. We want to be clear and transparent when someone has made the decision to hide a reply, and will be looking at how this feature gives more control to authors while not compromising the transparency and openness that is central to what makes Twitter so powerful,” the company said.
