by peter

Drowning in Content

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Content marketing is still everybody’s favourite new boy toy. But he is getting a bit older and more worn, and has to work harder to command attention in a increasingly competitive market.

Sure, he remains cute. A fresh stream of content is still the way to get noticed online, to up page rankings, to establish yourself as an authority with your market and to build customer relationships. But the trouble is the sheer volume of content being produced. We’re drowning in it. There’s more information being posted than there are eyeballs to read it. I’ve heard that as many as 27,000,000 new new pieces of content are  produced and shared online daily.

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by peter

Serenity After Trial

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“I thought the process was going to be hideous, humiliating and shameful,” Karen recalls of her bankruptcy more than a decade ago. “I was terrified when I went to see Richard Killen. I was in tears as I walked into his office.”

Karen’s story of battling debt is a familiar one. She had decided to make a brave midlife career change from working as a bartender. Finding employment in a Toronto health food store, she made the decision to go back to school to get certified as holistic nutritionist. . . . Read the blog post I wrote for Richard Killen & Associates, showing how their trustee services helped a woman cope with one of the most difficult trials of her life.

by peter

Coffee Mountain High in Jamaica

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There’s coffee and then there’s coffee.  The world’s best cup may be Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, with its smooth rich flavor and lack of bitterness.

The Blue Mountains of Jamaica are so named for the azure haze that wreathes its peaks, which 2,256 meters above sea level. Covering the eastern parishes of St. Andrew, St. Thomas, Portland and St. Mary, the mountains boast the ideal conditions for coffee growing, with their cool mists, abundant rainfall, rich volcanic  soil offering excellent drainage and prolonged growing season.

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by peter

Graduating into Debt

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Getting a student loan can be double-edged sword. Many kids can’t afford a higher education without one. But the downside is that a lot of students are graduating with huge debts that they many find hard and in some cases impossible to pay off.

The problem of student debt in Canada is on the rise. According to a September 2013Globe and Mail article,  accumulated student debt is now more than $15 billion nationally, and perhaps as high as $23 billion, if you take into account credit card debt, lines of credit and provincial loan programs.

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by peter

Four Ways to Experience Provence

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I am writing series of weekly marketing e-blasts for LaCure, the luxury villa company, targeting different market segments. These would direct clients, repeat clients, travel agents, partners such as American Express, Andrew Harper and Home Away. The following is aimed at Andrew Harper agents, promoting Provence and its summer festivals to its client base.

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by peter

Know When to Shut Up

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As a copywriter you have to know when to keep your words to yourself. Sadly, there are great pictures and layouts that can speak for themselves, with only a little  support. These are ads created by Chris Hoy of Rivet Design for Ballentine Construction, a cottage and home renovation company based in Point au Baril, Ontario. Virginia MacDonald‘s photographs of cottage interiors are so gorgeous that the rooms speak for themselves. I merely report what they say and add a tagline.

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by peter

Annual Reports Aren’t Dead

Left: Scott Thornley + Company’s annual report for the University of Toronto Scarborough. Right: The Works Design’s annual report for Corby Distilleries.

Left: Scott Thornley + Company’s annual report for the University of Toronto Scarborough. Right: The Works Design’s annual report for Corby Distilleries.

After working 15-hour days for a month to meet deadlines for two annual reports, I can say that the market for ARs isn’t dead, though I may be.

I had heard from many designers that AR work had dried up with diminished budgets as the reports went online, reducing print runs dramatically. What once had been a design stable with eye-popping budgets had become a pain in the ass no longer worth the nail-biting deadline pressure.

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by peter

Journalists Telling Brand Stories

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Recently I did work for /newsrooms in Toronto, creating a “bucket” of 100 tweets for one of its corporate clients. The tweets weren’t extolling the benefits of the brand but providing content of real interest to potential customers.

Founded by Chris Hogg and Sabaa Quao in 2012, /newsrooms is dedicated to telling brand stories through “continuous content marketing and social media coverage.” The company draws on the combined talents of journalists and marketers to do real-time publishing about brands, in the same way that organizations like CNN, Reuters and BBC World News Service cover the news.

“[/newsroom] is not a pure marketing play where a journalist is being asked to convey a message about a brand,” says Hogg, a graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism, in a October 2012 interview with Digital Journal. “They’re not being specifically asked to promote or tout something, but instead covering what a brand is doing the way a journalist would cover an event, for example.”

To tell all the brand stories that are fit to post, Hogg and Quo have set up traditional newsroom structures for clients, with editors, correspondents, etc. So honed storytelling skills are paired with new technologies and, in a era where newspapers are pruning staff and resources, some experienced journalists are getting a second life.

by peter

‘G’ is for Giffen and ‘E’ is for Earth Voices

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Above we see ‘G’ for Giffen, as created by one of my best friends, Lisa Burroughs. She is an artist who now divides her time with husband Tom between their home in Ohio and property in New Mexico. With its dramatic interplay of light and shadow, and the sculptural effect of the found materials shot on sand, the letter is part of Lisa’s Earth Voices, a 26-image series that takes the letters of the alphabet and imbues them with spiritual significance.

 “The theme of the series is a transformation of symbols, a healing and reclamation, a reminder of the true power available to us through our native symbols – a power that is personal, cultural and spiritual,” explains Lisa. “I was engaged in a tender meditation suggested by the natural world while witnessing the voices appearing in the sculptures. Glimpses of near perfection occurred, some recorded and some not. The sun, rain, wind and trees all had their say in composition, texture and light.”

In her former life, Lisa acted as an award-winning creative photography director at Newsweek and other magazines. She then made the transition from working with photographers to create arresting images, to stepping behind the camera herself and doing her own art work, of which Earth Voices is the most recent expression. (Visit Lisa’s site.)

See the following video of her work, set to trance didjeri music by Inlakesh, in a meditation on symbols, sound and language, and the land:

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by peter

Five Myths About Bankruptcy

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When facing financial desolation, it’s hard to think straight, you are so gripped by worry. Bankruptcy plays into many people’s doomsday scenarios, imagining that it will be the end of them financially and personally, as family relationships are ripped apart under the strain.

The truth is, bankruptcy and consumer proposals are about getting control back over your life and feeling relief as you take steps towards recovery. As soon as bankruptcy is filed, the calls from creditors begin to stop and an immediate stay of proceedings means that none of your assets can be seized, other than those signed over in security in case of default. . . . Read the full post I did for the Killen Landau blog.