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I have the happiest stewardess ever spotted on an Air Canada flight. She’s proudly violating the airline’s untouchable dress code by wearing her Tiger-Cats Eastern Final yellow towel over her company issued apron. These game day swag rags look suspiciously like the iconic Pittsburgh Steeler Terrible Towel and were out in full force last Sunday at Terrain-Tim Hortons-Field. That’s the official stadium name according to the signage all over it. I didn’t know the Francophone population in Hamilton was so large, but then again I don’t live there so how can I comment. Back to the towel sported by my anomaly of a stewardess. She proudly told me Sunday past was the best Ti-Cats game she had ever seen but was hoping Sunday approaching (Coupe Grey Cup 102) would relegate it to second best. She’s got three cross country 777 jaunts between now and kick-off but her seats are awaiting for her in BC Place..Row P on the 50 yard line. Just look for that yellow towel and mile high grin.

Boarded the 7:00 AM for Vancouver today and have to admit I was a bit surprised I didn’t see more CFL fans on the plane. That said I did witness a first. A guy wearing an Argos backpack with a Green Riders hat. Did he marry a Saskatchewan gal? Did he move to the 416 for work, but can’t betray his homeland. Can’t imagine he would jump on the Argo ship then. Perhaps I missed the fact he’s wearing Blue Bomber boxer shorts and Alouettes socks and he’s actually a coast to coast fan?

It’s the time of year when Canadian Football takes its moment in the spotlight.

High school football is in full city and provincial championship swing. Community leagues are nearing their final playoff games. The CIS is marching steadily towards the Telus Vanier Cup in Montreal and a milestone 50th anniversary. The annual nation-wide CFL party disguised as a football game is being marketed as Roar on the Shore this year. It’s a great theme for a Vancouver-hosted Grey Cup.

South of the border, eleven weeks of NFL madness has me praying for a Browns-Bengals-Ravens collapse and the NCAA Football Playoff race is more intriguing than even the selection of Condoleezza Rice to it’s selection committee.

But while the NCAA has landed on yet another winning formula, what holds for the future of collegiate ball in Canada? It was virtually impossible for me to find the Yates Cup OUA Football Championship on TV last Saturday. Apparently it was online on something called OUATV and also broadcast/fed/streamed across Rogers community cable. But if you were an alumnus of either school, or just a university football fan, how hard are you willing to work to find this game?

If you’re a diehard fan and have an interest in the Vanier Cup, but also want to go to the Grey Cup, you know need a transnational flight to whisk you from Montreal to Vancouver in two weeks. Of course it’s doable, but costly.

Why isn’t the Vanier Cup part of the Grey Cup anymore? Two of the most successful Vanier events were when the football titles were paired. I understand sponsor conflicts, and now broadcaster conflicts, but running head to head with the Grey Cup doesn’t make sense to me. Sponsors, media, broadcasters, donors, and football zealots are split.

The Grey Cup, under the polished eye of soon to be departing CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon, has grown amazingly in the past several years. I can remember attending games in the late 90’s that couldn’t sell out and barely inspired community involvement. Today it’s back to its glory of yesteryear and quite frankly gone far beyond. The festival, the parades, the parties, the half-time acts are all best in class. Last year I was awed by the in-stadium branding, which now has a consistent look on an annual basis.

Cohon and his team have built a machine. So if the Vanier Cup isn’t going to partner with them, I think there is a sizable need to build it’s own event, on it’s own weekend, and break the mold. I don’t mean the mold of a current pattern; I mean the mold growing on the Vanier Cup because pretty soon the brand will be tarnished.

I am not picking on the CIS. In fact this is the opposite. I love CIS football. I saw three live games this year at two different stadiums which probably puts me in the .00001% of Canadian sports fans. It’s an amazing product waiting for some corporate love.

Football at all levels in Canada is a wide-open opportunity. Too often marketers get caught up in the participation numbers. No it’s not soccer with a million kids running across this country. But it is a sport with a much deeper impact than it’s numbers. Football programs bring significance to a city, a university, a high school, and a community. This may be a hockey country, with some hoop mad cities (hello the “6”!), and soccer on the brain of every young girl right now. But football is right up there.

The CFL has proven the power of the sport. Look at the billions in construction it has recently attracted. There is more opportunity out there. Smart marketers should start drafting their playbook this November.

PS. If you’re going to be in Vancouver during Grey Cup weekend and I haven’t invited you to one of our Canadian Football Hall of Fame events drop me a line.

I have never had more conversations about the Canadian military than I have in the past weeks.

The recent murders of Cpl. Nathan Cirlillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, along with the training death of Private Steven Allen have rung an extra somber note on this week’s Remembrance Day ceremonies. But they have also cast a deserving spotlight on the women and men who have and continue to serve our country.

I was in Hamilton on the weekend and it was impossible not to think of Cpl. Cirlillo and the mourning in that community. The mother of one of my young Peewee football players who took him to see Cpl. Cirlillo’s gravesite inspired me. It made me hope that perhaps these tragedies will help our next generations understand the sacrifices made in the Great War, that marked it’s 100th anniversary this week, and in subsequent global and regional conflicts.

Perhaps these tragedies will provide the political will to ensure we invest more in our services. I hope we never become the military-industrial complex of our southern neighbours, but decades of endless federal government budget cuts to our defence spending are putting our men and women at needless risk. These men and women, and those before them, are willing to sacrifice their way of life, and potentially even living, so we can live in a country like Canada.

Do we want to continue to be a country that fights terrorism or one that is strangled by terrorism? Do we want to be a country where rights and freedoms for all its inhabitants is paramount, or one with ethnic wars and where schoolgirls are sold into slavery? Do we want to live in a country where we can respond to natural disasters or one where we are a natural disaster?

As Canadians we need to do more than remember. We need to speak up. We need to educate our leaders. We need to educate our young. We need to educate ourselves.

Let’s inspire more bright women and men to serve. Let’s support them with our respect and our wallets. Let’s keep Canada Canada.

Let’s remember the smile of Cpl. Nathan Cirlillo. Let’s remember the photo of his dogs waiting for their master to come home. Let’s remember the funeral day pictures of his young son, handsomely sporting a regimental hat.

Let all of us remember that the sacrifice of his Dad for you, me, and our families means that this young man will grow up without the greatest hero a son can have.

A father.

Hello Friends;

It’s time for my annual Movember campaign.

Over the past few years you have supported me with unbelievable generosity and kindness. Every year I am amazed at the unexpected flow of donations that I receive.

This year I am dedicating my efforts to a valued colleague who has been in a yearlong health battle. His resilience and spirit have been unbelievable as he deals with an endless roller coaster of treatments, surgeries, test results, and fleeting good news that often has quickly turned to bad. I have yet to hear him mutter a single complaint. I have yet to hear him feel sorry for himself.

Please join me in supporting Movember. I have been fortunate to get to know the PEOPLE behind Movember and they care, care, care. So whether you grow your own Mo, support a friend’s Mo, or are a mo Sistsa….my hat goes off to you.

If you wish to support me and my efforts, here is my Mospace link.

Thank-you from the bottom of my heart.

TOmorrow has begun.

TOmorrow we wake up and the tragic comedy will be over.
TOmorrow the embarrassment of being a TOrontonian will vanish.
TOmorrow Jimmy Kimmel will need some new material.

TOmorrow we will finish massive construction projects, open new transit lines, build new condominiums, welcome new Canadians, learn how to combat Ebola, strengthen our defences against terrorism, host the Pan Am Games, get ready for Canada’s 150^th, host the World Juniors, stage the NBA All-Star game, and celebrate annual Pride festivities.

TOmorrow our public face at these milestones will be someone who will respect each of these moments as they deserve.

TOmorrow is an opportunity for all TOrontonians. We can’t just rely on one mayor or fourty-four councillors. It is up to all of us to do our part. Massive voter turnout was just one step. Now we all, young and old, must contribute to community building, job creation, cultural development, environmental cleanup, civic pride, and unifying actions.

A great TOronto is essential for our great country.

We can’t wait any longer. Thankfully TOmorrow is here.

It only took two games for Leafs Nation to sink to a new low as one infamous fan went from hurling boos to his souvenir jersey onto the ice as the Buds floundered against Pittsburgh.

Has losing a pair of hockey games in October ever generated so much vitriol? Does being edged by the Habs and then undressed by the Pens, actually warrant such a public display of disrespect? By the time I started putting pen to paper the Leafs had already rebounded with a Manhattan road win. Does our newly naked fan now wish to retrieve his souvenir?

A true fan would not have parted so quickly with their treasure. For the jersey is the purest form of displaying your true colours and loyalty to your team.

How powerful are the True Colours of Fans? Exhibit one for me was all my Cleveland Browns’ acquaintances mocking me of their throttling of my Steelers on the weekend. Notice I didn’t say Cleveland Browns’ friends! Browns fans epitomize True Colours. Their team name is a colour, albeit they were actually named after their founding owner Paul Brown. Their greatest player of all time was named Jim Brown. They are the only NFL team to have their franchise sneak out of town at midnight and yet have the league’s rulers strip the deserters of the Browns name and trademark as it was considered a true part of Cleveland’s DNA. Like the Leafs, the Browns haven’t won the title since the mid-60’s. Yet their fans have remained loyal.

The irony of the jersey toss is I had just noticed last week one of the coolest sports sponsorship activations I have seen in a while. It was created by Alaska Airlines, an official sponsor of the Seattle Seahawks, well known for innovative activations such as their Portland Timbers campaign where fans got to design a plane patterned after the MLS team. They also ran a 35,000 feet in the sky tailgate party during last year’s Super Bowl featuring the Hawks demolition of Denver.

Now the airline has offered Seattle fans, affectionately known as the 12th man, a unique offer tied to their utilization of Quarterback Russell Wilson as their new spokesperson. When taking an Alaska flight at Seattle’s airport there is a new boarding class available right after Business.It’s called Seahawks Class and all travelers wearing Wilson’s # 3 jersey get to cut to the front of the line. Brilliant!

What I love about this simple promotion is: 1. It’s a zero cost activation; 2. It’s rooted in a human truth – fans love Wilson; 3. It creates true Social buzz… not staged digital but WOM, online, PR; 4 it’s easily measureable; and 5. It is selling airline tickets!

Unfortunately our Leaf jersey fan has a bizarre sense of entitlement. The cost just to get inside the Air Canada Center is prohibitive to most average fans. Let alone buying a jersey.

This jerk’s act takes on more meaning this week with the death of Ralphael Platner, better known as “Ralph the Program Guy”. He started working in the 1970’s at Jays Games held at Exhibition Place and pretty well worked at every major venue in the city. Season ticket holders knew him by site and according to a great blog by Mark Hebscher he was also a renowned party crasher!

You couldn’t help look at Ralph when he was working and wonder what he thought of all these fans paying top dollar to attend games. Ralph probably witnessed, although not sure he saw, more great sports moments than all my readers combined. If a vendor can be a fan, part of the show, and an essential service all at once – it was Ralph.

But more importantly I doubt he ever threw his jersey on the ice.

If you’re a Pan Am Games doubter, and there are a great many out there… take a look at the amazing new teaser video put out by Travel Ontario.

To be fair the 2015 Games have endured the same script it seems most major events write. Budget issues. Political controversy. Executive turnover. Public skepticism. Yes Southern Ontario has been strangled by closed roads, traffic snarls, cost overruns, and construction delays. For the general public that has no idea who PASO is or why this event matters, it’s been tough PR to combat.

But day by day the tonality appears to be shifting. Tim Horton’s Field is now open in Hamilton and the CFL Tiger-Cats appear invincible in their new digs. According to colleagues who have seen it, the new Aquatics Centre and Field House in Eastern Toronto (you could also call it Scarborough) appears to be worth every penny. Ticket sales have hit the six figures with months to go.

Clearly the marketing minds at Travel Ontario are convinced of success. Their production investment in this piece of film has been pegged at $ 2 million by some experts I consulted. It might just be worth it.

To me this work is more than just a promo for an event. It’s a mini-doc for our amazing city and region. If I were one of the many people not named Ford, trying to wrest back control of our city to sane hands, I would do my best to co-op this piece or at least get a cameo in the upcoming versions. It’s that powerful. Inherent in the power is what it represents.

The film demonstrates clearly that these Games are more than just athletics. Already our region is benefiting from state of the art venue development and construction. Olympic pools in the 416 mean that your talented swimming daughters will finally have a place to train, prepare, rehab, and compete. The stadium in Hamilton is much more than the host of a dozen professional football games in a year. It’s a shrine, in an often mocked community, that is accessible for all Steel City residents, will attract major events, and provide a unbelievable home field advantage for local teams to proudly defend.

The Pan Am Games have already secured their structural and athletic legacy. But it goes further.

The Games themselves will be an opportunity to show off our city to the Pan Am countries who are visiting. This will include visitors, businesses, and government. Toronto prides itself on being a cultural mosaic and I suspect this event will entice even more people to move here from abroad.

This video now signals a time for the corporate community to jump in. How can your business add to the excitement, the atmosphere, and the festivities of the Games? The recently announced Torch Relay will provide reach right across the province. It’s less than a year away and it’s not too late for you to think of how you can get involved.

2015 promises to be a great summer with Pan Am, FIFA Women’s World Cup (more on that in a coming blog), and my 50th birthday. (Okay two out of three ain’t bad.)

Watch the video. Get in on the Games.

Award shows always create controversy. If they don’t, then the subject matter is too niche or the community involved has little or no passion for their pursuits.

With a record number of entries and a strong live turnout last Thursday at the Arcadian Court, there is no concern that the Promo Awards are too niche or the promo community has no passion. Put on by Strategy Magazine on behalf of CAPMA (of which I’m a member), the awards celebrate the best Canadian brand activation programs. Whether you love or hate award shows, you should never discount the value in spending two hours viewing the best work of your best competitors and the best work done by the competitors of your best clients.

So while I enjoyed my evening and celebrated our Bronze Award for Best Small Budget Campaign for work we did for Hot Wheels, I do have a tiny question and a large observation.

Okay tiny question. How did the WestJet Christmas Miracle video not win Best of Show? All I can tell you is that until the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge came along, this was the number one client reference for their desired campaign. In fact our Chief Creative Officer Graham Lee started keeping track of how many times the WestJet video came up in client briefings!

But it was a great piece of work…kudos to WestJet and Studio M, and the results were astounding. It has won every award you can imagine including a Cannes Lion. But not the Promo Award’s Best in Show. The winners were amazing programs, but I don’t think they were on the same once in a lifetime scale of the WestJet campaign.

Now onto the bigger stage. If you have a moment check out the winners gallery from this year’s awards. Notice anything?

Check again.

I have news for my industry colleagues. In a world where marketing has been transformed by digital channels, consumer interaction, community engagement, and live experiences; it’s not the below-the-line agencies that are winning. It’s the Advertising Agencies. The alleged above the line agencies. The massive behemoths that for years we mocked and predicted could never do what we do. More importantly we expected they never would or could afford to.

But if the Promo Awards are a leading indicator, they have got it figured out. Or are starting to at least.

That should concern small independent shops like us. The “advertising” agencies have deeper pockets, more creative resources, endless research, and international client assignments. They have channeled that might into digital, social, content, Experiential, PR, stunts, viral, and even brand curation.

If you don’t believe me, look at the winner’s showcase. I didn’t do the math, but I would be curious as to the winner split by agency primary discipline. It sure feels like the Mad Men have taken over.

So what’s an independent activation agency to do? My advice is to continue to do what you do best. But do it like an ad agency would. Start with Strategy. Understand your clients business better than ever. When I started out as an AE in the “fax era” (just clarifying my age), I prided myself in knowing more about our clients business than the newest ABM who showed up on the desk every ten months. Today I don’t believe our industry spends enough time learning the ins and outs of our client’s business. Partly clients are to blame. Ratcheting down fees to commodity pricing makes it impossible for agencies to dedicate billable hours to non project time. That’s a shame.

Build your entire platform on Creative. True creative thinking takes talent, time, and toughness to pursue great work. Too often our industry has sold itself on speed and price. I’m not sure that’s a sustainable model. The leading activation firms out there like the Mosaic’s and B-Street’s have creative excellence and it shows in their work.

Invest. Innovate. Invent. If we don’t invest in experimentation, trial and error, new ideas; how can we ask our clients to? We have been spoiled in the activation world. In a good economy clients utilize our services. In a bad economy, they have needed us even more so. But a healthy industry can build complacency. Today we have a threat. The advertising agencies are on to us. We need to respond.

My last advice? Sleep with the enemy. We are very fortunate to have several blue chip clients that have created excellent environments for us to work on an integrated basis with all their agency partners. I consider that to be some of the most valuable time of my week. We learn from each other. Inspire each other. At times battle with each other. But collaboration has to be more than just a client mandate. It should be a key business strategy.

I am not suggesting that winning awards is what we should be about. But at the same time I see a lot of value in them. Winning is not only good for your brand, but for galvanizing your staff, inspiring your clients, and motivating even better work. But today award shows provide much more than shiny hardware. They point a light on the path to the future.

I was a Jonathan Dwyer fan.

Loved the way he ran at Georgia Tech. He had some nice moments for my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. Didn’t love that we let him go, but thought his landing in Arizona was a good place for him and his young family.

Seemed like it until yesterday, when it was Dwyer’s turn to be charged with domestic assault. In a case so terrifying his young wife left the state that should have been the scene of a rebounding career for her husband.

Football is a game of repetition, routine, and preparation. Unfortunately the daily routine in the NFL right now is assault, deny, and ignore. The players signing bonuses are lining the pockets of their defence lawyers, the pursues of their victims they are attempting to silence, and the accounts of the charities they use as image blockers. Given the daily arrests and accusations of its players, it seems that the NFL is proving they like routine.

But it’s not a routine that I like. Or society likes. Or the NFL’s sponsors as we now are hearing from. Can’t imagine it really is a routine the NFL likes.

The good news is that it seems like the sponsors have decided that if the league can’t referee itself, than they will step in. Kudos to the Radisson hotel for suspending it’s sponsorship with the Minnesota Vikings. Nike followed by terminating their deal with Adrian Peterson, as they had done with Ray Rice. Anheuser Busch, Pepsi, and even the Governor of Minnesota fired stern salvos at the league’s braintrust.

Kudos to the sponsorship community for standing up. All too often we see major corporations sit quietly while corruption infiltrates sport at the international level. Bribery, match fixing, unethical behaviour by officials all seem to get ignored due to the power of the marketing opportunity.

The NFL is the marketing conglomerate it is only because of the value of it’s brand. Right now that brand is deflating not only by the day or hour, but by the second. You can only imagine how many lockers that TMZ is digging through right now in a well-founded attempt to turn up some genuine dirty laundry. I am personally willing to bet there is at least a dozen more domestic violence scandals to come.

Sadly the Super Bowl is the number one day for domestic violence in the United States. Today presents an unbelievable marketing opportunity for brands to take a stand. They have started and I can feel that more will jump on board, perhaps even more quickly than they embraced the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Blowing the whistle can’t be a short-term play. Marketers need to ensure the NFL makes wholesale changes that impact society. From now until Super Bowl Sunday and beyond.