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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.

Winning a Pee-Wee football game does strange things to an old coach.

It makes the sun look brighter. The sky look bluer. A long walk to work a little shorter.

My cute dog looks cuter. My friendly barista even friendlier. Strangers on Yonge Street not so strange.

Even being in the office on a Sunday feels like a sanctuary not a cemetery.

Oh did I mention we won last night?

My Greater Toronto Jets, 18-0, over the Niagara Storm. It’s been a while, maybe nine games counting our Spring league, since we posted a W. Let alone a shutout. Forgive me for being ebullient.

But this isn’t a story about winning.

First of all it’s a story about how I need to follow my own preachings. One thing I am constantly on my players about is to worry about themselves. Don’t worry about the refs calls. Or opponents cheating. Or even your own teammates mistakes. Worry about you. You are all you can control. Do your job. Lead by example. Motivate by your actions. Inspire by your words.

Wow, what wisdom from MH3. Start engraving my surname on the Nobel Prize for youth coaching right now. Except it’s a crock. I too often get distracted by the refs calls, good and bad. Or the other team’s coaches. Or even my own player’s parents. (Confession, I yelled, yes yelled, at my own team’s parents last night. In unison they had shouted instructions to one of my players which directly contradicted what I wanted. But still…I’m an idiot!).

In fact for this game my distraction, and hypocrisy, started weeks ago when the schedule came out and I saw an 8:30PM road game scheduled in St.Catharines. I wondered how any adult could think that getting 11 & 12 year olds home after midnight from a football game was sound parenting.

I got riled up. Complained to our Program Director. Fired emails to the league convenor. Groused about it to parents. Countless joules of energy were misspent when I could have been focused on preparing my team.

I knew how wrong I was when the players arrived. Bounding out of the night sky across the well lit field, the prospect of “Saturday Night Football” had them energized and motivated to a level my best oration would never have. When my starting tailback announced he was ready to rush for a THOUSAND yards, I knew there was some Saturday Night Fever in the air.

So the first moral from this story is to eat my own cooking.

The second came right after the game. It went down like this. Just as I was about to deliver my stirring post-game speech, one of my players interrupted and me and said “Coach, that was a good play you did at the end.”

Even as I write this I get goosebumps, a lump in my throat, and am honestly typing through teary eyes.

My emotion is so strong because his comment wasn’t about some trickery laced touchdown pass I called or a menacing blitz we implemented. No, he was referring to the fact that with 2:54 in the game, and a safe 18-0 lead in my pocket, we kneed out the rest of the fourth quarter. Four times I had my QB let the play clock wind down and take his time running a dead ball play. With the help of the refs, who realized our plan, the game metered itself to a victorious conclusion.

But that’s not the plot twist. The key to this story is that when we first got the ball we were on our opponent’s 1 yard line. First and goal. Easy touchdown coming up! First time in twenty years of coaching I have taken the ball over at the opponent’s 1 at any time during a game.

I toyed with punching it in. There were several deserving players on my team who would be thrilled with a TD. Even a gimme. I could have let one of our new players run it. Or allowed one smallish lad who aspires to be a QB, but hasn’t called a snap yet, maybe throw for it and thrill his Dad who drove so far to see him play. My son would probably bring me breakfast in bed if I let him crash his way in. Anyone of our linemen would have loved the glory.

But at the risk of sounding like I am still campaigning for that Nobel, I didn’t want to rub salt in the flesh of my wounded opponent. I’ve had it done to my teams and it sucks. This past spring we were down by 40 to a team and they ran a flea flicker on us for a late score. Who benefited from that?

So my only intention was to not to be rude. Instead I got a gift that I will last much longer than one more TD. I got those words from my young player…”Coach, that was a good play you did at the end.”

Even if it was only that one player who learned something about sportsmanship last night, I am now an even happier old coach. The memory of him looking me in the eye, from so deep inside his own developing young mind, will stick with me forever.

The goosebumps are back. My throat is even a little tighter now. I need to end this story. Not because I have now exposed my emotional fragility. It’s because those words helped me catch Saturday Night Fever, and I don’t want to lose it, or them.

Trust me, I won’t. Ever.

“Coach, that was a good play you did at the end.”

For seven months all of you knew the truth.

The Atlantic City prosecutor knew.
The NFL Commissioner knew.
The Ravens coach knew.
So did the Ravens owner.
Ray Rice’s agent knew.
The NFLPA knew.

You should all resign. Sell your team. Quit your jobs. Admit it.

That’s the verdict Rice’s wife deserves.

Summer is over and done with. Not to throw an ice bucket on your mood, but it’s true. As I write this, the clock turns to Autumn.

Personally I couldn’t be happier. Fall is my favourite time of the year. You don’t need three guesses as to why. But here’s three answers:

Football. Football. Football.

I just walked off the field from coaching my son’s Pee-Wee team. Week I of the Fall season and the Hamilton Jr. Tiger-Cats squashed us 26-0. But my kids played great.

We dressed 19 players, to our opponents 36, and five of ours had never played before. So more accurately it was fourteen against the world. That’s how they played. Like a spirited band of soldiers, outnumbered on all sides, endangered but unwillingly to wave the white flag.

Exhausted as my charges were their tackling was surprisingly good. Even to the end. Not surprisingly their blocking was quite poor. I find blocking is the hardest thing to coach. It requires selflessness, commitment, and determination. Yet for young players they don’t see the reward. It’s a rare day when you hear kids chirping about a great block they made. You always hear about the runs, catches, kicks, passes, and most definitely the bone crunching tackles. But unless a block went Aunt Jemima for a massive pancake, they go truly unsung.

I’ve got to find a way to make blocking a priority. I need a method to convince my players of its value. It’s the most fundamental key to any offence. No system in the world works if players don’t block. Even the referees from today’s game commented that if we threw a couple of blocks we would have scored a couple of times. It’s that obvious to all at field level, except my would be path clearers.

The unsung, the behind the scenes, the backbone are the key to any team, business, army, government, or community group. Motivating 11 year olds that these roles matter is no easy task. Share with me your thoughts. Your ideas. Your techniques.

Fall Ball is erupting across North America this week. Labour Day classics. NFL, CIS, NCAA kickoffs. First week of practice for my high school team. One thing the winners will have in common. They block, block, block, block.

Fundamentals are never over-rated.

It’s an odd week here at TrojanOne.

We’ve had a thrillingly busy summer, with what has seemed like an endless season of live activations potently mixed with 2015 program planning. The hint of a brief calm pervades the office, but only a hint as there are RFPs to be finished and major Labour Day weekend events to be executed. This fleeting moment before the back to school storm is magnified by the absence of most of our summer interns, who have already decamped for their next wave of education.

Our intern program is a source of pride for me.

In this day and age the concept of interns is being globally and rightfully vilified for corporate abuse. The word itself has become a metaphor for overworked, bullied, ignored, abused, coffee-fetching, filer, underpaid, poorly trained, a managerial nuisance, and free labour. I think several years ago our program may have been guilty of some of those sins. In fact I can remember when full-time staff complained that having an intern was too much “work.”

No longer!

Today we have a sophisticated recruitment, selection, on-boarding, training, and supervisory system for our interns. We fully expect them to contribute to our success and they fully expect we will contribute to their success. It works.

But I would be foolish to suggest it’s all about our system. What the system has really done is allowed us to attract the best and the brightest. But these young people have talent beyond their years and we are merely fortunate they chose us. Today was a celebration of our summer intern crops. Announcements were made surrounding our hiring on of a few young talents. As excited as they are to be earning full-time pay, I am equally thrilled about the value our internships provide us in finding amazing entry level talent. To cap our celebration we presented the Matt Ludlow Spirit Award. It’s a special internal recognition to the intern who best represents Matt’s spirit, one of our former interns who died much too youngly three years ago.

This term’s winner represents all that is amazing about internships done well. In fact, he is so great I am not sharing his name because I want to keep him. Problem is he is only 19 and so I have to wait a few years.

Yes that was no typo. This kid is nineteen years of age. But he is already a legend in our shop.

I first took notice when he presented some background work he had done for an RFP. Not only was the work thought-provoking, insightful, and comprehensive; but staff members in attendance were in awe with his presentation.

In the span of a few months this youngster, who I don’t think shaved once during his tenure, went to client meetings, wrote pitches, led concept brainstorms, dealt with senior purchasing people at our clients, and never once lost his smile. To say that I trusted him like a five year vet was an understatement.

Maybe I’m biased because he gave me such a nice “Thank-You” card before he departed, but my experience with this youngster dispels all the myths that young people today don’t get it. This kid got it, as did our entire crop of interns this summer.

Our team feels fortunate to have had them. Hope they feel the same about us.