For a national icon, a “toothy tyrant” beats a frozen bear. Last week, Canadian Conservative senator Nicole Eaton suggested Canada abandon the beaver as our national emblem and adopt the polar bear instead. Um. Seriously? We Beg to Differ. Let’s be clear: polar bears are awesome I have nothing against polar bears! I know they [...]

Okay, I admit it. I checked my Klout score. And so did you. It was hard to resist every now and then. Just a little peek. How bad could that be? We’re human, and we love to check our box scores for anything we do. Well, guess what? After Klout’s sudden and arbitrary-seeming “re-alignment” of [...]

Last week, the Ottawa Senators kicked off a minor media sweat-storm when they unveiled what they called their new “heritage jersey” – which obviously had the retro styling of a classic hockey sweater. Then, even the office of  Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada (who still hasn’t written that hockey book) weighed in with a terse [...]

Spoiler: Cheech & Chong smoke the Ragu sauce In my inbox today, two different bloggers slammed two big food brands for recent “edgy” social media campaigns. First, C. C.Chapman Ragu Hates Dads. Then, Dale Buss on Brandchannel What Was General Mills Smoking to OK Cheech and Chong Magic Brownie Campaign? On both, I beg to [...]

I’m often critical of Canada’s efforts at country branding, but in this case one of our national flag-bearing agencies nailed it. Totally. The trickiest thing about truly great logo design is not to have your symbol say a lot. That’s easy, just layer element upon element upon element like the Canadian Olympic Committee’s logo (at [...]

This photo made me laugh and laugh and laugh, then think about branding, then spare a thought for the poor Libyan people who have had to live under this guy, then laugh some more. One of these kids is not like the others Looking at this photo, and a hilarious set of Ghadafi’s crazy get-ups collected [...]