Blog

By Bob Reaume, ACA It being January, every advertising pundit and their cousin are busy doing their look at ‘The New Year Ahead.’ But because the ACA’s focus is on issues that matter to client-marketers, I think you’ll find this list a bit different from most everything else you’ll read out there. The ACA monitors […]

Let’s stop the craziness.

After sitting on the sidelines attending a variety of industry conferences over the past five years and listening to more than one pundit state emphatically that companies don’t create brands customers do, it’s time to call balderdash.

Times have changed but brand creation has not. If companies have relegated the creation, management and nourishing of brands to consumers I’d argue they’re just plain lazy.

By Jessica Yared, ACA Some called 2013 the year of digital, and they wouldn’t be wrong. We saw this reflected in the creation of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAAC), concerns with video-on-demand (VOD), the Canadian debut of ComScore’s comprehensive online measurement system, and most recently, the new anti-spam legislation (CASL). Digital or not, it’s been […]

By ACA staff For the second year in a row, ACA staff took up an office collection to purchase a donation of food for Covenant House Toronto, just in time for the holiday season.

By Bob Reaume, ACA As of this week – that’s during the last month of the year if you’re being observant – the complete regulations that advertisers will need to work within to comply and navigate the new anti-spam law are finally known. (Notice I didn’t say ‘the complete picture’, since some interpretation still needs […]

Like water to a vessel, marketers must adapt to today’s many media platforms if they want to succeed. That is, in essence, what Marshall Self, Head of Media Solutions at Google Canada, told his audience at the November 5 annual .

Self highlighted how new technologies – smartphones in particular – have fostered a new generation of consumers, and a new audience by the same token. For him, the most pressing challenge for marketers in this new universe is finding the right target consumers and contributing to their quest for a better life.

Self says that brands don’t sell themselves to consumers anymore. On the contrary, it’s the consumers that do the selling by expressing their support in the many communication platforms they have access to. He suggests marketers maximize their ads’ efficiency by making them more accessible and user-friendly (through the use of Skip Ad buttons, for instance), then let consumers find them and take action as they deem appropriate.