A weekly digest of the most important stories and ideas in advertising and media, from our colleagues at Marketing.
Other items of note from Marketing:
January 28th marked the fifth year of Bell’s #BellLetsTalk campaign, which raises money for mental health organizations. The results from this year’s campaign far surpassed the number of messages sent in 2014. Marketing provides a by-the-numbers look at how Bell’s campaign has done through the years:
50,000,000
Texts, tweets and calls Bell registered for this year’s campaign as of 2:30 on Jan. 28
1,900,000
Total messages sent in 2014
$67,500,000
Amount Bell has donated to mental health organizations since it started Bell Let’s Talk in 2010
$5,470,000
Amount Bell donated to mental health organizations in 2014 as a result of #BellLetsTalk
In the next few years Canadians will finally be able to watch U.S. Super Bowl ads, thanks to the CRTC’s decision to eliminate simultaneous substitution during the year’s most-watched TV event. But until then, Canadians are flocking to YouTube ahead of this Sunday’s big game.
According to a Google consumer survey conducted earlier this week examining the top-trending Super Bowl ads on YouTube, 41% of Canadians visit the site to search for Super Bowl ads before and after the game. It’s their preferred method of discovery, followed by sifting through social networks (18%) and getting recommendations from family and friends (17%).
Canadian YouTube searches for “Super Bowl commercials” have outpaced similar searches in the U.S. for the past five years. Typically, when it comes to which ads Canadians are most interested in, big brands are king. Perennial Super Bowl advertisers like Doritos and Budweiser received the highest number of Canadian searches last February. (Scroll down to see which ads have received the most global views so far this year.)
Read how else Canadians are viewing U.S. Super Bowl ads.
Finally, Budweiser Canada is paying homage to the origin of the hockey puck. The 60-second ad, which was developed in partnership with the brand’s AOR, Anomaly, chronicles a surprise visit from Budweiser brewery workers to Soucy Baron, a Quebec factory in St. Jérôme that makes the pucks for the NHL. Ten Soucy Baron employees received customized ‘Budweiser Red Lights,’ which lit up and sounded of a horn each time a fan’s favourite tea scored a goal.
