Archive for the ‘toronto’ Category
Wow! And ad for ads! How meta
Posted by: admin in advertising, toronto on March 23rd, 2009
This post is dedicated to the free-thinking person that wrote what i think is the funniest graffiti defacing a poster that I’ve seen in a while:
"Wow! An ad for ads! How meta"
Sadly, my mobile phone camera is not the best, so I’ll set the scene.
The poster above was in a bathroom at The Lakeview restaurant, a 24-hour diner on Dundas just east of Ossignton in Toronto. Evidently Zoom Media is having trouble finding advertisers willing to pay money to have a drunk, vintage-clad hipsters plant their foreheads on their “innovative” ads while they liberate themselves from their pints of PBR (I don’t claim to know what goes on in the women’s bathroom)
The Anything-but-Toronto Condominiums
Posted by: admin in media images, toronto on February 11th, 2009
Toronto has the dubious distinction of being probably the largest city in the world that doesn’t Exist. Sure, I was born and raised in Toronto, it certainly exists in the physical, real sense. But the aliens on a planet observing a sampling of our news, movies, television and other transmissions, the overwhelming majority of which emanates from the US or is America-centric, could be forgiven for thinking that it was arbitrarily decided to not colonize the areas north of the 49th parallel and Great Lakes/St. Lawrence.
Europe Exists. That’s where our period pieces and spy movies are set. Russia and Asia Exist, that’s where the spy movies become really interesting. Africa and Latin America Exist, that’s where drugs and diamonds come from that are the focus of the spy movies. Such is the complex virtual world that has been shaped inside all of our heads by the media.
So this makes for an interesting situation when you want to do condo marketing to people that have been made to believe that they live somewhere that doesn’t Exist. Toronto has a lot of high-rises (about 1750) and evidently they are running out of ideas for how to market them. Well, why don’t we sell people on the idea that they are in a place that does Exist?
So, in the affluent Rosedale/Yorkville area of Toronto, we have the Milan Condominiums.
Near Yonge & Merton streets we have the Merton-Yonge Condominiums (MYC in an old-style font that makes the “M” look rather like an “N”. Clever!!)
On the Etobicoke lakeshore, we have the California condos and South Beach condos and lofts.
These are just four that come to mind that I’ve seen in and around the city — I am not actively looking for a condo or even trying to find these! One notable exception to this trend is the 1 Bloor residences, which I have to admit do look pretty interesting. It’s also one of the few condo developments that seem to want to inspire a sense of pride in the location of the condo. It’s in Toronto and it wants to be in Toronto!
Bazis Internatinoal, the developer of 1 Bloor, is from Kazakhstan, so perhaps they can be forgiven for not realizing that Toronto does not Exist.