Results tagged “advertising”

Pity the person made agitated and restless by drinking an over-stimulating beverage. Because of their tragic decisions, the owl woman fell asleep at her office desk, while the mule man walked up to his boss, a report firmly clenched in his hand, and allowed his overactive nerves to tell the boss what he really thought of the company’s management. By the end of the day, both found themselves facing the harsh realities of the Great Depression. If only they had sent away for a free sample of Postum…

A dazzling view of the Toronto skyline welcomed visiting flyers like this Royal Canadian Air Force pilot throughout World War II. The glimmer of city lights, the Royal York Hotel, and other pre-war skyscrapers as he approached Port George VI Airfield (as the island airport was officially named upon opening in 1939) was a far more welcoming sight than enemy fire.

Last week, Live Green Toronto, the City of Toronto’s website for eco-friendly living, launched a new transit shelter advertising campaign with a unique twist: passersby can flip a giant switch that turns the ad on or off. The ad’s text encourages readers to "switch this poster off," and to switch on Live Green’s website for information about saving energy and living green. The ad was designed by Agency59, a Toronto-based advertising agency, and installed by Astral Media, the company behind Toronto's street furniture. While it’s undeniably clever, the execution is a little flawed.

Late last night the City's proposed new billboard bylaw and tax [PDF] cleared a major hurdle, unanimously passing through the Planning and Growth Management Committee on its way to a hearing before the full City Council. The meeting ran 'til about 11 p.m. and had to be moved from one of the regular committee meeting rooms to the main Council Chamber in order to accommodate fifty-plus deputants and scores of other observers. It was a pitched battle, one that has lasted through several years of debate, consultation, and resistance leading up to this moment. A tremendous victory for public space advocates, progressive councillors, and Mayor Miller, the bylaw will provide harmonized regulation of the billboard industry (the rules haven't been updated since amalgamation) and the tax will create the revenue needed to enforce those regulations.

Isn’t it wonderful when four stereotypical figures can come together in perfect harmony thanks to a humble can of spaghetti? We never suspected that the finest spices from Asia lurked within our sloppy Saturday childhood lunch.

We’d like to offer a toast to the unheralded service industry workers who served up fine fountain drinks back in the 1960s. Whether it was a bow-tied bartender who knew the perfect mixed drink to suit his or her customer's needs or a bow-tied teenager asking if you'd like a Coke with your burger and fries, these professionals required the finest of beverage-dispensing equipment to quench the thirst of bowlers, brides, and boozers.

If something looks a little amiss about the model in the advertisement above—if her head looks a bit too big for her body, her torso a bit too compact to be natural, her arms, dear God her arms, doing things arms don't do—all can be explained: Bikini Bay on Queen Street West apparently offers its models, like its swimsuits, in "mix & match."

And what are your kids doing tonight, besides hanging out in a dimly lit club?

Based on these ad campaigns for two of Labatt's top-selling brews in 1960, we surmise that 50 was targeted to men who indulged in a healthy round of log rolling/jumping or other potentially fatal tomfoolery while downing a few stubbies, while IPA was intended for the alpha male who wanted no distractions, apart from watching his favourite sport, while indulging in his favourite beverage.

Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas, you perverts.

We can picture it now—a giant, disembodied head floating in the locker room of Maple Leaf Gardens, hovering near his microphone as he interviews battle-scarred hockey players preparing to dazzle the rest of the country with their skills over the airwaves on Saturday night. Interviewees were too focused on the game ahead to notice the lack of a body…

Yes, your friends were happy that the iambic pentameter flowing out of your mouth finally sounded naturalistic and not an exercise in word fumbling. For that, you deserved a night on the town!

Aliya-Jasmine Sovani is the anchor of MTV News, and, as an MTV News intern recently informed us in Eye, she listens to an "eclectic mix of Led Zeppelin, MGMT and Britney Spears." But did you know that she is also a woman, with breasts?

During World War II many Torontonians worked towards victory and, as this billboard testifies, cows were not excluded from doing their part to tackle Hitler and Tojo. The regional bovine population contributed to the war effort by providing food-solid goodness for the home front. Officials of local dairies soon discovered that the helmets they issued refused to stay on any cow’s head (straps were at a premium), so they were utilized as feed buckets or souvenirs for children touring their facilities.

Being a former child star can become a fate worse than death. Often exploited and then kicked to the curb when the cuteness wore off due to impending puberty, these former moppets spend their adult life trying to detach from the likes of Steve Urkel, Screech, Rerun, and Danny Partridge—and their characters' respective catchphrases.

For most city students, this week marks the start of another year of hitting the textbooks or reasonable facsimiles of. Back in 1929, local department stores such as Simpson's did their part to further the education of their future customer base by offering texts alongside the normal range of school supplies. Of the subjects listed, note that it was slightly cheaper for students to study British history than Canada’s past, which demonstrates the societal ties that remained between Ontario and “the mother country” (unless the publisher simply charged less). Also note how perilously the texts float above each student’s head—we hope this wasn’t a hint that knowledge should literally be fed to student brains.

Translation: the "temporary" relationship clause in a White Glove Girl's contract refers to the amount of time she has remaining on this mortal plane. Until then, we're happy to shuffle temps around from employer to employer, keeping our White Glove Girls under lock and key until the next call comes in. Sometimes we'll let them out of the dunge...asset pool for a few minutes to take care of their "happy homemaker" duties. Anyone thinking of stealing one of our assets should be aware that we've spent years working on glove-tracing technology—we'll know when you've stolen our assets!

Reader Ian Simpson sent us this photograph, yesterday, of a newly installed billboard for Bud Light at John and Adelaide streets. It reads: "Torontonians aren't cold. Not in August, anyway." The ad, of course, is a direct response to a Coors Light billboard in British Columbia, which announced that that company's beer was "COLDER THAN PEOPLE FROM TORONTO."

Once upon a time, the managers of Eaton’s men’s clothing department were preparing a hiring call for designers for their 1971 fall line. Just as they were about to post the position, an eccentric designer approached the retailer with a portfolio of exciting ideas. The man called himself Adam, and rumour had it that he had been a rising star in the fashion biz until overwork and several personal crises induced a nervous breakdown. He now believed he was the Biblical figure whose name he had assumed and claimed many of his ideas were simple suggestions delivered nightly by a higher figure. Most of the time these ideas had worked, but even “the first man of fashion” had his off days, such as the time he tried to sell an American department store chain on a line of fig leaves dyed to match the colours of fall.

This may sound crazy, but pasting thousands of ads for bargain divorce services all over hydro poles and the backs of road signs is illegal. You'd never know it, because these cheap-looking stickers seem to propagate throughout the GTA like wet Mogwais. Even worse, the fact that their contact information and provenance are so clearly displayed shows how incompetent the city is at enforcing its postering bylaw—it's not like we can't tell who's responsible, after all.

It was ninety years ago today that east-enders were first able to enjoy fine entertainment at the theatre that underwent numerous name changes between its opening as Allen’s Danforth and its current incarnation as the Music Hall. Growth in what was considered suburbia in 1919, along with the ease of reaching Danforth Avenue via the recently opened Prince Edward Viaduct, persuaded the Allen’s cinema chain to build a high-quality theatre in the neighbourhood.

Last year, we featured the television spots used during the latter half of the 1980s to encourage tourists to come to Toronto and "Discover the Feeling!" Today’s ad is an early print version of the campaign used to lure travellers from Motown into driving east on Highway 401. After a year of development by Camp Associates, the new tourism slogan was unveiled in 1984 as a replacement for "Toronto...Affectionately Yours," which had been used since 1972. Early reaction to the new slogan was summed up by Star columnist George Gamester: "’Discover the Feeling!’ doesn't sound like much for $50,000. But then 'I Love New York' probably didn't sound earth-shattering when first proposed, either."

Ah, IKEA. Bastion of the comfortably quirky; originator of accessible (read: cheap) design; first stop for first apartment decorators everywhere.

These three local towers were...

Two years ago, we asked TTC Chair Adam Giambrone about whether increasing the amount of advertising on the TTC would be a way to make the organization a bit more money. He told us then: "I think we have an acceptable level of advertising. Could it be less? Absolutely. At this point any reduction would be a budget reduction, and I'll tell you I'm not really prepared to reduce the budget of the TTC to reduce the advertising. At the same time, I think we certainly have enough advertising. Many people would say too much, and even if we went all-out, the money is just not the solution to our city's budget woes." In November of 2007, we polled our readers on whether there was too much, just enough, or not enough advertising on the TTC, and 51% of you said that, then, there was too much.

Little-known fact: during the construction of the SkyDome, so many people stared down at the rising stadium from the CN Tower that the landmark occasionally came to life, with binoculars in hand, to see what all the fuss was about. Reports of the tower leaning over at a precarious angle were written off as mass hallucinations or proof of too much partying.

If you were a retailer looking to launch a new department store chain in the early 1960s, the discount market appeared to be the way to go. While Toronto did have one-off discounters (Honest Ed's) and lower-priced annexes of existing retailers (Eaton's), businessmen looked at the prosperity of American discounters like E.J. Korvette and saw potential for setting up similar chains in Canada. For several years after Towers opened its first store in Scarborough in the fall of 1960, discount chains with varying degrees of longevity made their debut around Metropolitan Toronto. One of the splashiest openings belonged to Sayvette, who promised to shake up the department store sector. In its two decades of retailing, Sayvette went from grandiose dreams and promising new retail approaches to dead weight on the balance sheet of one of the country’s largest food merchants. Along the way Sayvette experienced little profitability, speculation over its ownership, unrealized expansion plans, and a constant search for where it fit in the retail landscape.

Are you suffering ill effects from the temporary disruption of your yearly prescription of trips to the Toronto Islands via the Sam McBride or the other ferries? Do you miss riding your bicycle from Hanlan’s Point to Ward’s Island, hearing the sound of children playing at Centreville, or other island-centric activities? True, you can hop on a water taxi or find your own means of crossing the harbour, but those methods of transport cannot handle the crowds the islands are accustomed to seeing at this time of year. Fear not if you are suffering withdrawal symptoms (or feel, as the blood-red headline in yesterday’s Sun shouted, that CUPE killed your summer)—cultural archivist Retrontario provides you with a minute’s glimpse of how the islands normally look at this time of year. This provincial ad first aired around 1980 and enticed visitors from all corners of the province to check out, in the narrator’s words, “a walk on the grass kind of place.”

If Listerine can freshen your breath and kill bacteria in the mouth, why can't it do the same to the rest of your body? It's safe!

Based on the illustration, is it really the bride’s happiness that’s at stake or is it the cook in the background’s satisfaction with the proper food preparation equipment? Or is the artist depicting the bride having a vision of her happy homemaking, which shows her as someone who remains cool and relaxed after her Happy Thought got her through the third meal of the day (and the rolling pin maintained discipline in the house)? Could we be looking at two neighbours exchanging knowing glances at each other, possibly because they bought Happy Thoughts before everyone else on the block?