U.S. production helps BC film business bounce back to blockbuster level
New rules for tailings ponds based on findings from Mount Polley collapse
UBC obtains religious document from 1245
Canadian Press, February 4, 2015
770-year-old papal bull resource for historians and scholars.
New Vancouver opera tackles bullying
Canadian Press, October 30, 2014
Shane Koyczan’s journey from victim to tormentor to redemption.
Researchers probe HMS Erebus wreck in Arctic
Canadian Press, October 17, 2014
168-year search ends; reconstruction and detective work begin.
Investors gather for marijuana conference in Vancouver
Not your typical Vancouver gathering of marijuana enthusiasts.
Citytv without Moses
Marketing Magazine, February 24, 2003.
What does the station stand for without the man who was its brand?
Dunt-da-DUNT-da-dunt
National Post, October 8, 2003.
Hockey Night theme, Canada's other anthem, gets an official recording.
Planet Africa’s ground control
National Post, September 12, 2003.
TIFF Programmer chooses films from large, diverse continent.
He’d make the boss a brand booster
National Post, August 26, 2003.
Ted Matthews believes a company’s brand is too important to be left to the marketing department.
The short answer
National Post, August 12, 2003.
Relationships between clients and advertising agencies are getting shorter.
Learn to write a bestseller in ten easy steps
Marketing Magazine, May 6, 2002.
Or buy a polite “doesn’t meet our needs at this time” for $50.
Tech babble
Marketing Magazine, November 12, 2001.
They’ve got a different word for everything, and none of it makes any sense.
CBC’s new hipness hurts
Marketing Magazine, August 27, 2001.
The latest efforts from Razorfish try too hard to pull The National into the world of cool.
Think polyester leisure suit
Marketing Magazine, May 14, 2001.
If you want to sell clothes, why evoke an era defined capital-U ugly?
How to be dumb
Marketing Magazine, March 28, 2001.
The record industry may have beaten back Napster, but at the cost of alienating its best customers.
The Midas touch
Marketing Magazine, February 26, 2001.
No company is worth a second look until Gerry Schwartz tries to buy it.
The gray flannel fixation
Marketing Magazine, October 30, 2000.
What is it about the advertising business that movie and television writers find so bewitching?
What is reality?
Marketing Magazine, August 28, 2000
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet in the quest for reality TV concepts.
Poetry to soothe the creative soul
Marketing Magazine, June 26, 2000
T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost provide copy for two campaigns; an observer wanes poetic.
Takes one to know one
Marketing Magazine, May 8, 2000
The academic ad critics on Mental Engineering commit every sin they castigate marketers for.
New York stories
Marketing Magazine, March 27, 2000
Two new books demonstrate how culture and marketing melted into one lukewarm soup.
Revolution is just a t-shirt away
Marketing Magazine, February 21, 2000
Doesn’t the marketing of No Logo undercut the book’s anti-consumption point?
Dear Bob
Marketing Magazine, November 15, 1999
What the new CBC boss should — but won’t — do to fix our national broadcaster.
Woodstunk? Wankstock? Worsestock?
Marketing Magazine, September 6, 1999
What the new CBC boss should — but won’t — do to fix our national broadcaster.
Play that funky music
Marketing Magazine, July 5, 1999
Why Gen-X channel-surfers are blasé about the use of ’70s hits in advertising.
New KISS on the block
Marketing Magazine, June 24, 1999
The switch from new country to CHR repudiates the CRTC’s original decision.
Wrong number
Marketing Magazine, May 24, 1999
Bell’s baffling new commercials say more about the telco’s mindset than it knows.
Building a better magazine law
Marketing Magazine, March 1, 1999
If Shania Twain’s music is Canadian, why not Vanity Fair’s content?
Too much of a good thing
Marketing Magazine, November 9, 1998
Nike’s trip-up should be a warning to those who’s use saturation marketing.
Advertising about advertising
Marketing Magazine, September 28, 1998
In our commercial culture, the rise of reflexiveness as a creative trope was inevitable.
Defining all that is Canada
Marketing Magazine, May 4, 1998
Molson Canadian’s latest ads have nailed our schizophrenic national identity.
Front of the line
Marketing Magazine, April 20, 1998
Newspapers are working hard to treat advertisers like VIPs without abandoning editorial integrity.
Flaming Brûlé
Marketing Magazine, March 16, 1998
Tyler Brûlé’s recipe for publishing success seems ethically suspect. So why the praise?
Cable consternation
Marketing Magazine, February 9, 1998
Selling TV in a country where people huddle indoors for half the year shouldn’t be this hard.
Sample and scold
Marketing Magazine, December 1, 1998
Negativland thinks Pepsi is wily, maybe evil. Better that than irrelevant or boring.
We’re number three. We don’t try at all.
Canadian Business, November 28, 1997
KVOS isn’t like other Canadian TV. People actually watch it.
Advice for Mr. Black
Marketing Magazine, November 10, 1998
What advertisers hope for if Hollinger’s boss green lights a national daily.
When to extend
Marketing Magazine, November 10, 1998
Brand extension is more than pasting a daily’s logo on another product.
Rating ratings
Marketing Magazine, October 27, 1998
The new TV violence code doesn’t really change anything. Is that why advertisers like it?
Canadian Business ups the ante
Marketing Magazine, September 29, 1997
The magazine’s gamble of going twice monthly is paying off handsomely.
The Howard has landed
Newsweek International, September 15, 1997
Why the outcry over Howard Stern’s Canadian debut? Other media sold out long ago.
The Howard has landed
Marketing Magazine, September 15, 1997
Why the outcry over Howard Stern’s Canadian debut? Other media sold out long ago.
Going to extremes
Marketing Magazine, July 21, 1997
The decade’s most overused ad cliché sounds a little stupider each time it’s used.
Steal from this book
Marketing Magazine, May 26, 1997
Why Mondo Canuck should be required reading for Canadian advertising creatives.
Corporate rock rules
Canadian Business, November 11, 1996
There’s a long tradition of using rebel music in ads. But its backfire potential is huge.
Mr. Rogers’ country
Canadian Business, November 4, 1996
He faces many challenges, but nobody is in more Canadian media than Ted Rogers.
Cable cult hit lands in Canada
The Globe and Mail, October 12, 1996
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is cheaply-made, funny, critically-acclaimed series in the U.S. Now it’s seeking new frontiers.
Building a bargain basement home theater cult hit lands in Canada
McCain’t
Marketing Magazine, August 19, 1996
McCain’s ads are so lame they’re poised on the verge of some weird kind of greatness.
Say cheese?
Marketing Magazine, July 1, 1996
Trying to make sense of the Dairy Farmers’ dazed and confusing cheese campaign.
Think global, act loco
Canadian Business, June 1996 [cover story]
It’s weird, it’s cheap, and as its on-air personalities endlessly insist, Citytv is everywhere.
Adbusted
Marketing Magazine, May 24, 1996
The fundamental flaw at the core of Adbusters’ culture-jamming stance.
Life in the slow lane
Book review: Driving Force: The McLaughlin Family and the Age of the Car by Heather Robertson.
How a TV channel came to Life
The Globe and Mail, November 8 and December 27, 1994
Two-part story about the development and launch of the Life Network cable channel.
Finding humor and maintaining standards
The Globe and Mail, April 23, 1994
Book review: Municipal Bondage by Henry Alford and If You’re Talking To Me, Your Career Must Be In Trouble by Joe Queenan.
The mild bunch rides again
The Globe and Mail, January 26, 1994
Some might scoff at the resurrection of a sitcom that ended its five-year run 20 years ago. But The Brady Bunch endures, this time as an affectionate satire.
A pig-out for Irving fans
The Globe and Mail, May 29, 1993
Valerie Gibson wrote the book on being a cougar before the term existed.
Zooming in on what went wrong at the CBC
The Globe and Mail, April 23, 1993
Book review: Fade To Black: A Requiem for the CBC by Wayne Skene.
Back to the tedious future
The Globe and Mail, February 3, 1993
What’s more annoying than the magazine Mondo 2000? Mondo 2000, the book.