Marketing communications can be as dull as the term – a starched shirt that constrains and itches.
Words with colour and oomph, with snap and flourish, cut through the grey tide to hook attention.
They are the bridge that connects company to consumers. The beating drum that drives action.
While print becomes a smaller piece of the larger media pie, the importance of creating a rapport with the reader or target remains – whether it's for a brochure, annual report, ad, RFP, live-event agenda, magazine or newsletter.
As the editor of Applied Arts, I handled all the editorial content for the magazine, blog, newsletter and website. Over the years, I guided the editorial properties through a number of transitions, to reflect changes in the industries we covered, including graphic design, digital design advertising and branding. During the last two yeas, for example, to give
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For two decades I’ve written and edited marketing materials for LaCure, North America’s largest renter of luxury villa properties. They are the company that pioneered the all-inclusive concept for private villa rentals. In the early days, I mainly wrote brochures, promotions, ads and other forms of marketing communications for their properties. Later, as their business
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While the lavish budgets of old have been slashed, and many companies have migrated their reports online, annual reports continue to serve an important purpose. Not only do they communicate how a company or organization is doing, they can serve as the basis for a variety of marketing communications. For he YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka
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I helped to launch Canada’s first mass-market guide to the Internet and served as its editor for more than six years. Boasting a circulation of more than 700,000 and high readership scores, Sympatico NetLife was distributed to members of the Sympatico Internet Service, and sold on the newsstand and by subscription. I
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Hydro One, Ontario’s giant electrical utility needed a rush job: A 20-page booklet, covering letter and other collateral that would be sent to new and returning users of the service. Besides introducing the consumers to the available services and providing practical advice, the materials were designed to personalize the giant entity, address concerns about rising
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The Paris headquarters of Danone, the international manufacturer of dairy products and bottled waters, wanted to communicate corporate values to its employees and involve them in its expanded mission, striving to improve the health of its people, society at large and the planet itself. I was hired to write its White Book, outlining its new
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I helped to launch and edited this general-interest lifestyle and technology magazine, published by Transcontinental, with a circulation of more than 500,000. High readership scores showed that Click: Smart Living succeeded in its strategic job of making technology accessible to its intended audience of both women and men.
A lot of my work has come through designers. I did the copy for this Royal LePage Advisors ad for Gary Beelik and Jim Ryce of Soapbox Design.
Over the years, I have written and edited financial articles for different corporate clients, including a magazine-style publication, Financial Strategies for Women, a ghost-written magazine feature for a consultant who coached financial planners, and a number of pieces for BMO’s in-house publication, @Work. See an @Work article here.
The Manufacturing and Technology Committee of Magazines Canada wanted to find a way to relieve some of the production nightmares plaguing prepress departments and printers. So I was hired to write this lavish 80-page booklet, called Look Like a Hero, giving art directors the information they needed to negotiate the ever-changing print production process. By
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