Results tagged “astralmedia”

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.

Over the past seventeen days we've seen Toronto's poor, untended trash bins in some pretty appalling states. So why is this one, located across the road from Main Street Station, so spotless?

Astral Media Outdoor uses Geotargeting Exclusive Solution—a proprietary GIS program mashing up consumer data from Generation5 and cartographic software from MapInfo—in order to allow "you to concentrate advertising faces exactly where your target customers are found. By combining socio-demographic data with the habits of the target group, it builds a consumer profile that is accurate to the postal code level. It then maps the data for precision market targeting." (Did you know that "The Toronto's Asian Community" feels that they are "too tolerant of products and services that do not meet [their] expectations"?)

On any given Sunday, you may have seen—or may yet see—a chartered TTC streetcar gliding through your neighbourhood, with a local band on board and a small army filming them. As part of an ongoing project called the Transit Tapes, created by Orbyt Media and partially bankrolled by Astral Media (which means not everything they do with the TTC is a hilarious disaster!), artists are being thrown into the back of streetcars and filmed playing songs as the cars rumble around town.

Both the Globe and Star picked up and ran with yesterday's story about Virgin Radio's subway suicide ad; here's the Star's article, and here's the Globe's. From them, we learn that Astral Media Radio programming director Pat Holliday, upon seeing early mock-ups of the ads, said that "we were all laughing like crazy because we just thought they were so funny"; that TTC Chair Adam Giambrone is saying the TTC should review its policies for commercial still photography; and that the Star somehow managed to completely avoid mentioning either Torontoist or writer Jonathan Goldsbie in their article, saying instead that "The Toronto Public Space Committee," which Goldsbie is a member of but wasn't acting on behalf of, "didn't find the poster so amusing and alerted TTC chair Adam Giambrone, who agreed they were 'in poor taste'." And, oh yeah—the Globe helpfully restated one of the most important parts of our story yesterday, one of the biggest reasons the ads were so dubious: "Astral [Media], which holds the city's massive street furniture contract and administers all advertising on transit shelters, also owns Virgin Radio." Whoopsy daisy.

You know what's hilarious? Ads that make fun of suicide. Why, they're right up there with the ones that make light of rape.

Advertising company Astral Media Outdoor bid successfully for the right to provide Toronto with new street furniture almost two years ago. Their contract calls for them to supply, among other things, new trash bins to replace the city's existing ones (both the Eucan-provided "silver bins" and the several varieties of plastic city-owned receptacles). The Astral bins debuted last year during an exhibition at city hall. Now, they're starting to appear on downtown streets for general use. Torontoist has spotted the bins as far north as Yonge and Davisville, as far west as Little Italy, and as far south as King and Bathurst, where two of the new cans now sit near the southeast and northwest corners of the intersection.

Most of Torontoist's recent reports on Astral Media have centred on their outdoor advertising unit and its role in the city's new street furniture. We'll take a short break from our continuing coverage to look back at what Astral's television distribution arm was up to in 1980, when it offered programming that included a venerable prank show, adventure travel, and a mini-series starring David Niven as a World War II Canadian spymaster.

When we tried out the bench prototype at the street furniture unveiling at City Hall in June, it was one of the few items we were pretty much okay with. But because Astral Media can't do anything right (when it comes to street furniture and billboards, anyway—their other divisions seem to be functioning relatively well), they've managed to screw this up, too.

Toronto has always had a love affair with labels. What can you expect from the town that seized upon the idea of "no name" and turned it into a brand? Through our obsession runs the secret paranoia that our local product names just don’t cut the Heinz mustard compared to those from south of the border: while we stockpile President’s Choice Cola in our basements and slink into Mark’s Work Wearhouse under cover of darkness, publicly we storm the gates of American Apparel by the thousands, leaving a sea of emptied Pepsi cans in our wake. And though we may silently subscribe to Canada’s The Movie Network, we have always loudly coveted America’s HBO. Now, finally, thanks to the upcoming launch of HBO Canada on October 30, Torontonians are finally getting a movie channel that it will be cool to be seen watching. Even if the "new" channel is, in reality, simply PC Cola packaged in a Pepsi can.

Sitting proudly at the intersection of King and York Streets is one of Astral Media's new transit shelters. The only problem is the street name displayed on the shelter is "University Ave"—which is the previous stop, a block west.

Photo by JesseK-G from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. On Wednesday, we took a look at the garbage bins. On Thursday, the advertising pillars. Yesterday, the transit shelters. Today, everything else. (Also check out Karen von Hahn's disparagement of the street furniture in the Globe.)

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. On Wednesday, we took a look at the garbage bins. On Thursday, we looked at the advertising pillars. This morning, the transit shelters. (Be sure also to read Christopher Hume's review, which makes our less-than-kind assessments look like raves.)

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. Torontoist was going to review all of the items at once but decided that some merited their own posts. Yesterday, we took a look at the garbage bins. Today we look at the advertising pillars. Friday, the transit shelters, and on Saturday everything else. (Be sure to read Spacing's coverage, too.)

In the opening voiceover for his Oscar-winning animated short Ryan, Chris Landreth explains, "I live in Toronto, a city in Canada where I see way too many shades of grey for my own good health." This line occurred to us as we attended the official unveiling of Toronto's new "street furniture" at City Hall Monday morning, a celebration of the all-new shades of grey about to trickle onto our streets.

At an event yesterday to show off Toronto's new street furniture, David Miller praised the exclusive deal with Astral Media. The contract includes a measly 1,000 new bicycle posts, because God knows we don't want to encourage cycling in downtown Toronto. The contract also includes new public toilet installations which are billed as being "self-cleaning," to which Torontoist can only issue a collective "shyeeeeah, right."

Public relations is a tricky job, especially for the companies that operate illegal signs across Toronto. They've already got to deal with a site dedicated solely to putting an end to the practice, an increasingly aware and increasingly concerned populace, and those damned vandals who forgo legal means of dissent by dealing with the problem directly. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that Posterchild, a prominent member of (and advocate for) the lattermost group, has decided to lend a helping hand to add some much-needed accountability to the whole operation.

Remember last week, when Marc Lostracco took a look at Astral's final street furniture prototypes and promised that "Torontoist's Jonathan Goldsbie will have a more in-depth analysis of the new street furniture next week"?

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.

Last week, we asked Torontoist readers to submit their ideas for a Stephen King-esque plot, for a chance to win tickets to King's first public appearance in Canada ever (Friday night!), as well as a whole pile of books. Here are the winning plots.

The Toronto Public Space Committee last night Art Attacked every single Astral pillar in the city. Photos are here and here, with more to come.

Despite loud public complaints, Toronto City Council has begrudgingly approved Astral Media's street furniture bid with a few conditions: reduce the total amount of per square foot advertising, guarantee that all billboards follow city bylaws, estimate how much energy will be used illuminating advertisements, and ensure there is no loophole in the contract which would allow Astral to screw the city over.

Last summer, Clear Channel Outdoor threatened to sue the Toronto Public Space Committee; last week Astral Media Outdoor threatened to sue Rami Tabello and his IllegalSigns.ca. That left one bidder for the "street furniture" contract with a relatively fuck-up-free slate.

In yet another show of contempt for the residents of Toronto, Transportation Services and "Clean and Beautiful City" staff have opted to put the models of the City’s proposed street furniture on display to the public for one day only; they will be visible in the City Hall rotunda from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. tomorrow, Wednesday, April 4. This is a project that will determine the look and feel of all of Toronto streets from this September through August 31, 2027 — and you're being given an eleven-and-a-half-hour window to glimpse the possible outcomes.

Yesterday the City of Toronto unveiled the designs submitted for the "Coordinated Street Furniture Program," its plan to grant a billboard company a twenty-year monopoly on providing and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, benches, and other items for Toronto’s sidewalks.

Hundreds marched around Downtown Toronto for the Stop the Violence walk on Sunday but this weekend, around Toronto, there was a different story. Police reported that three people were shot: one of them was a 13-year old boy who walked into Etobicoke General Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

Apparently, the INFOTOGO pillars that are strewn across our city are getting a lot of... positive... attention. The 'first-ever interactive, stylized street-level furniture' has won a prestigious international award from The Society for Environmental Graphic Design. the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers.