I’ve been doing enough bits and pieces now for Upper Canada College (UCC) in collaboration with Richard Marazzi Design that it’s time to post the best of them.

UCC thanks the Globe and Mail for Failing Boys

UCC wanted to second the emotion in a Globe series, ‘Failing Boys’, investigating how Canadian education is leaving too many boys behind. This is was the ad I wrote.

Boarding Forever campaign

A few years back, UCC almost killed off its boarding school component, but a spirited counterblast from old boys saved it. Thing was, UCC’s boarding facilities were in need of total renovation, so $14 million had to be raised.

I developed the line ‘Boarding Forever: The Global Call’ to anchor the international fundraising portion of campaign. The idea was to incite a hearty sense of the old boys’ and the school’s passion behind it, coupled with the reassurance that boarding would remain a UCC institution.

The rest rolled out from there.

International mentor recruitment campaign

The Common Ties mentor campaign was also a substantial undertaking. Additional collateral that went along with this ad was similar to the above.

…and an Xmas card here and there.

SOFA — that’s Source of Furniture and Accessories — is a brilliant Toronto invention. It’s 200,000 square-foot section of the International Centre is devoted to the furnishings & interior design industries of Canada, the US and beyond.

SOFA leases fully customizable private showroom spaces to manufacturers who use them to market products to the design and architectural trades.

I’ve worked with SOFA for a couple of years, writing the website, print ads and collateral for their team of very hardworking women. It’s a fairly new destination and not in the most glamorous of locations — Airport Rd — so it’s not the easiest of sells. But these girls hustle and are getting it done.

Since I developed the tagline, several blend names, package copy and the website for Social Coffee Co. in collusion with Meta’s George Argyropoulos, they’ve done well. George’s brief was: “It’s called Social… client wants it to be about friendly-social shit, but that’s boring. I want it to be about Socialism, Commies and all that. The owner’s Laotian and I believe that is a Communist country. Bye.”

I struggled for cliches about Communism (it’s been a while, no?) and, locating several, filtered them in. (That’s no intentional coffee pun by the way, it was organic. I shun the pun. My crime is rhyme.)

Since launching in March ’10, Social’s proprietor, Steve, has shoved his sudden brand into the knives-out-competitive coffee markets, and is already selling it in quantity online, and pulling big awards at coffee shows.

The piece of news that moved me to post this, and attempt to take some credit, came Friday last when I was sitting in front of Manic Coffee on College St. chatting with one of the barmen, on his break. I asked if he knew of Social. “Yes. Social’s big now,” he replied. I asked if this was because of their amazing fun-poking Leftward branding. “Don’t know about that,” said he, adding, “but their coffee’s excellent.”

As founder of The Autists brand and event (a fundraiser benefiting Geneva Centre for Autism), I’d succeeded in getting a big network ad agency — MacLaren McCann Toronto — to do our ad campaign last year. This was in part because I wanted their logo on our sponsor list, and also because I figured, given a good long leash, they’d knock it out of the park creatively. For 2011, we also had a large American agency network’s head office lined up for just that, but then they got busy and we got close to deadlines on a load of free media space (the Globe, Star and Post). So I called on Laura Wills of Messenger, who was already helping us with invites and collateral, and asked her to art direct the ads. I did the writing and developed the concept of selling the art on auction, rather than focusing entirely on the charity. We used our biggest names — such as William S. Burroughs — to draw the gaze of art collectors. Here’s the campaign. (Note: The first ad did not run — we did not receive the painting due to various snafus.)

My client Jib has established a new search engine optimization service called the PAGEONE Program. The offer: Give us a reasonable sum of money (it’s generally under $5k) and we’ll get your website onto page one of a Google search for the keywords you want associated with your site and business — all within 60 days. They guarantee it and they’re getting it done large scale.

I was brought in to write the DM and website for the service, and also to edit a 60-page DIY book on maximizing SEO by Rob Campbell (aka Smojoe), who runs PAGEONE, a book they have decided not to publish. Why give away the golden goose?

I began working with this alternative energy provider years ago, when I was asked by Jib to create a name for the then-fledgling company — and that name was Potentia.

Last fall I was brought in to update Potentia’s new website — and once again this past winter, when the company shifted its focus to purely rooftop solar PV energy.

Our approach was to make Potentia an approachable creature with a simple business model: Renting large roofs on which it builds solar panels, which it owns, manages and maintains for 20 years. The juice is fed into the grid at a profit.

Potentia is now a very big boy in rooftop photovoltaic; backed by nearly half a billion dollars in new financing from the likes of OMERS, it recently signed the largest solar PV contract in Canadian history — a 20-year deal to install, maintain and sell energy from large solar arrays on the roofs of a number of Toronto schools.

Toronto-based nonprofit energy efficiency experts GreenSaver spent decades building a respected name through the supply of weatherproofing, insulation, heating/AC consulting and solar-thermal hot water systems to homeowners.

Approaching design house Meta and myself for a full rethink of greensaver.org, they also charged us with raising the profile of their lesser-known services — consulting with renovation companies, energy providers and apartment owners and managers on energy efficiency for houses and buildings.

Some screen grabs…

We kept the down-to-earth, occasionally humourous, tone I’d helped develop on previous GreenSaver jobs directed at homeowners, while adopting the necessary tonality for the other three verticals.

Go get ‘em, GreenSaver.

Designer Richard Marazzi approached me to collaborate on this, a bus-exterior campaign. I came up with the Autumnal Italy notion, for which Richard designed a banner to anchor it. I researched several fall fairs and these are some of the ads that came of it. They were to target those inclined less toward visiting leaning towers than to sampling Italy as locals do, via its seasonal food festivals. Too bad Alitalia Canada couldn’t use it.

Back in ’09 my client, designer George Argyropoulos — then of Jib, now of Meta Design — approached me with a few small jobs for Far Coast’s Canada-wide brand relaunch. What began as a trickle grew to a Niagaral flow, culminating in a vast 2010 Vancouver Olympics marketing blitz (Far Coast having won Official Brewed Beverage Supplier status for the Games).

Below, some of the ads and posters used at and around Far Coast cafes and kiosks in Whistler and Vancouver.

The Far Coast website served as a key vehicle for the brand launch. In time, the Olympics sort of took it over. A few screen shots show how the various coffee and tea blends were communicated — using audio and rolling text. (If you visit the site, take note that I am responsible for the two blend descriptions shown below. The others existed before my time and aren’t quite to my, uh, taste.)

Far Coast also commissioned students from Emily Carr University of Art + Design to design and build seating for its cafes from ‘blue pine’. The timber gets its name and blueness as a result of the nasty mountain pine beetle having invaded the trees it comes from. I thought the initiative was brilliant, and so re-purposed the old ‘when life gives you lemons’ line to explain Far Coast’s adoption of this perfectly good wood, which due to its colouration is not viewed by the timber industry as commercially viable.

Since May 2, the day of The Autists, I’ve not had a moment’s rest. Pitching new clients, launching a new business and keeping up with demand from existing clients. So a quick postmort.

In sum, a massive success. We sold off virtually everything on auction, both the live and silent versions, at generally strong prices. We had three exceptional musicians — Chaka Khan, Matt Savage and Samantha Mutis — perform for us at what several conductors and musicians have already ranked among the finest concert venues in North America, Koerner Hall. And we raised a considerable sum for Geneva Centre for Autism, the exact amount I do not yet know.

I have big plans for The Autists in future, which I’ll share as they inch toward fruition.

Vast thanks to all those who worked with me, donated product, time and sweat to help our event rock the world. In no particular order they are:

Charles Pachter, for curating like the true master he is, and bringing in all those talents whose work gave our event much added oomph

Albert Schultz, for selling the goods, making us laugh and making it look far too easy

Peter Doig, for donating a fine and valuable work that helped our cause immeasurably

Stan Morantz, for saying yes to all our printing needs faster than it took him to read the list of them

Wallace Edwards, for donating a fabulous work (two actually — long story) without hesitation

Curt Detweiler, for hooking us up from San Fran with a top ad creative team in Toronto to do the outdoor and print campaigns

Jon Freir & Chunky, for producing those ads quickly and tastefully

David Shephard, Dali and Cornelius, for the blog design, ad tweaks and other last-minute favours

Fidel Pena & Claire Dawson, for designing The Autists logo and invitations that set a high and early mark and made a mere idea shine a few million candlepower brighter than it would’ve in lesser hands

Chaka, Matt & Sam, for singing, playing and giving all and remaining at the top of your respective games throughout

John Alcorn, for organizing the music, bringing such consummate pros to back up Chaka, to the extent that she took the time to write and thank us for making the experience unusually rich for her

Hindy Abelson, for believing, acting on it, tapping her people, and watching my back

Holly Bannerman, for watching Hindy’s back, and being a calming presence throughout many typhoons of uncertainty

Katie Wilson, for feeding me much useful info and enabling me to experience more personal organization than I’ve ever known, or may ever know again

Boss Marg Whelan, for saying yea not nay to a loony fundraising event, then being such a class act while attending it

The Koerner Hall-ers, for your professionalism, understanding and endless assistance

The staff at Geneva Centre, for doing what you do and making an absolute difference to the lives of people who really need a difference made