Canada

Dove and real beauty have become synonymous with one another but simply supporting women wan’t enough anymore.  Dove Canada decided to tackle the root cause of the problem, those pesky art directors and designers that photoshop real women into something far from reality.  This is where it gets interesting, Dove created ‘Dove Thought Before Action’ a sneaky plugin for Photoshop that when used would revert any image back to its un-retouched original form!  Clever stuff and certainly thought provoking.

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Shame I missed this.  What a wonderful campaign by John St., with the help of some awesome grannies of course, to raise awareness of and drive action for the WWF’s National Sweater Day.  Through the wonderful Granny Call Centre and call to arms was sent one telephone call at a time encouraging Canadians to turn down the heat at home and put on a sweater in order to save 4 megatons of carbon emissions.  Fantastic behavioural change campaign.

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Audi Canada and the awesomely titled agency Zulu Alpha Kilo have created the worlds first (supposedly) iPad controlled slot car instillation.  With 140 square feet of hand carved foam, painstakingly detailed 1:32 scale Audi’s and enough tech back ending it to make even the most speed obsessed driver break out in a grin, this has to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on in a public space with an iPad and model cars!  Kudos to the Canadians here, now send it down under si I can have a go!

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This is a great idea built around an amazing cause.  The Missing Children Society of Canada have created an instant, high reaching, trustworthy social network through volunteers donating their own Facebook and Twitter accounts.  The premise is simple, when a child goes missing and the authorities need to get the word out quickly and locally a post is made on all the relevant donors accounts.  The message then spreads through news feeds rapidly building exposure across devise until hopefully the child is found.

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This is a great idea from Canadian advertising agency Taxi.  Apparently there is a particular time of year when Montreal experiences really bad potholes, unsurprisingly this is called Pothole Season.  To help Montreal residents Taxi built this awesome app that automatically recognises a pot hole when you drive over (thanks to the iPhone’s accelerometer) maps it and shares it with other users in real time so they can avoid the pesky road craters! Effing genius!

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Another festive campaign out of Canada (those guys are mad for it!), this time from Canadian Tire.  The premise here is a Christmas tree covered in 3000 lights thats are powered, illuminated and directed by Christmas conversations online.  Using real time social monitoring the technology behind the Xmas tree picks up on messages that embue the holiday spirit and transform those festive worlds into ‘power’ for the trees decorations!  For a little extra surprise and delight certain key word activated easter eggs set off hidden light shows!

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Some of you may remember the fantastic light projection that ran in London turning the BT Tower into a light saber.  Well that great campaign could possibly just have been topped by McDonalds with their ‘Best Fries on the Planet’ campaign.  From now until December 8th the sky over Clark and Ontario streets will be illuminated by ‘Fry Lights’, also known as huge yellow beams of light!  The lights are so bright they can be seen up to 3 miles away ensuring that everyone in the local area will always be able to find the best fries in the world!

McDonald's Fry Lights

More McDonald's Fry Lights

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To promote Dollar Drink Day, McDonalds Canada created a massive ice sculpture with 4000 loonies (dollar coins) frozen within it. The public were invited to chip out a dollar or two, visit their closest McDonalds and cool off with one of their refreshing and cheap drinks!  Watching the video it appears the effort required to get a dollar out the ice certainly warranted a free drink!

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Creature of habit? I know I am, especially when it comes to shopping!  Well Tetley Canada is trying to help shake zombie shoppers out of their routine with a series of refreshing experiments, such as the provision of personal butlers instead of shopping carts!  Unsurprisingly the butlers where more of a hit with the ladies then they were with the gents!