I worked with Yield on a print and radio advertising pitch for the Toronto Parking Authority’s Green P street and lot business in late 2011.

We didn’t win it, but I couldn’t bin it

Below, some roughs I worked on, produced by art director Ryan Fox.

As often happens with this man, I came up with the art direction ideas, he the copy.

Smart parking, aka Smarking

We also created several pieces promoting Green P as the smarter way to park. They even have an app for it.

Some radio

‘Smarking I’ – 30”

(Two cheerful men in a car, looking for parking, SFX: engine, traffic)
Hamish: Risking presupposition, it would appear our parking prospects do not give rise to optimism.
Raphael: Afraid I must assume a degree of culpability, for I had earlier neglected to mention one Green P smartphone application.
Hamish: And what, oh ever-sagacious one, is that?
Raphael: It is no less than an inspired scientific marvel enabling one to prelocate Green P parking facilities prior to exodus.
Hamish: Rather a smart approach to parking, I should say.
Raphael: Smart parking, indeed!
Together: Smarking!
VO: With the Green P smartphone app, you’re no longer parking, you’re smarking.

‘Smarking II’ – 30”

(Two guys driving, SFX: music, traffic)
Rick: Wow, is she wearing skorts with her windblazer?
Dave: Yup, she’s packing massive ladytude!
Rick: You’re so wittarious today.
Dave: Mayhaps, but I can occasionally be doofiotic.
Rick: Hey, why so scritical?
Dave: Because I forglected to download the Green P smartphone app. It lets you chout all their parking areas, preparture.
Rick Wow, talk about smart parking.
(SFX pregnant Pause)
VO: The Green P smartphone app. It’s not parking, it’s smarking.
Dave: Okay, intellinouncer!

‘Casanova’ – 30”

Woman: (smooching sounds) Mmm, you kiss like a god.
Man: Thanks, you’re pretty amaz— Oh no!!
Woman: What?!
Man: Gonna get a parking ticket! Be right back!
Woman: But… (sigh)
SFX: Door swings open, left banging on the wall, footsteps echo off into distance.
VO: Announcing the Green P smartphone app. It let’s you pre-plan where you park, and set yourself an expiry reminder, plus you only pay for the time you park. You’ll never have to interrupt anything again.
Man: (rushing back, breathless) OK, where were we?
Woman: Sorry, your time’s up here, too, buddy.

‘Assistant’ – 30”

(SFX: Street sounds, man and woman walking quickly)
Mr Abernathy: Okay, got the briefs?
Jane: Check.
Mr Abernathy: Got the concepts?
Jane: Check.
Mr Abernathy: Excellent.
Jane: Um, I also took the liberty of pre-parking us, Mr Abernathy.
Mr Abernathy: What?
Jane: That’s right sir. I downloaded the Green P Parking app onto your smartphone and found the closest Green P lot to our meeting. On arrival, I’ll set an expiry alert to beep us so we don’t get a parking ticket!
Mr Abernathy: Well done, Lisa.
Mr Abernathy: It’s Jane, sir.
Mr Abernathy: It sure is, Jane.
VO: Download the Green P parking app for your smartphone. It’s got your back.

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.

Remember Direct Mail? When I first got into this business it was huge, till digital came along and…

But, DM ain’t dead yet.

I’ve written several fine pieces with Messenger‘s Laura Wills for TTI Travel.

Some pages…

Just got my hands on the full set from Colin McRae, CD at Mo-Des Design (I believe client only ran first one).

The brief: Drive hard the notions that Merc’s four-stroke outboards neither burn oil, pump out skanky blue smoke nor bleed toxic rainbows all over the lake — unlike old school mixed-fuel two-strokes. And also that these bad boys are well known for their high quality of manufacturing, reliability, ludicrous power and civilized exhaust notes. (Except, as remarked, when corporal punishment occurs.)

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.)

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.

A print campaign I wrote with graphic designer Richard Marazzi for Toronto furniture shop UrbanAmish. Richard also shot, edited the images.

Monthly small-space magazine campaign.

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.