But not the way you might have expected.

Christopher Redmond, Acart Copywriter/Videographer, wrote a short film called Ne Pas Reculer/Broken Clouds that was selected by Telefilm’s Danny Lennon to appear as part of the Canadian exhibition at the 2012 Festival de Cannes’s Short Film Corner.

You can view a trailer at Telefilm’s “Not Short on Talent” site.

This side project is a collaboration with Montreal Director Dominique Laurence, who has worked with Acart on some of our most successful TV campaigns such as “Victims Matter“, “Flash of Inspiration” and “Faces of Abuse. DOP is Jean-François Lord, and music is by Ariane Moffatt.

Christopher says of the honour, “In the film world, Cannes is the big show. It’s the most prestigious festival in the world and the best excuse to wear a bow-tie outside of a James Bond film. I would be thrilled to go in any context. But having short film to represent, even on a sidebar, is incredible.”

The film was also selected by SODEC to showcase Quebec in their program called “Nouveaux courts métrages du Québec”.
——
D’une manière plutôt inattendue!

C’est avec grand plaisir que vous nous annonçons que le court métrage Ne pas reculer/Broken Clouds, écrit par Christopher Redmond, rédacteur/vidéographe chez Acart, a été sélectionné par Danny Lennon de Téléfilm Canada pour faire partie de la délégation canadienne au Festival de Cannes 2012 dans la catégorie Talent tout court.

Visitez à la section Talent tout court du site de Téléfilm Canada pour visionner la bande-annonce.

Ce projet auxiliaire a été conçu en collaboration avec le réalisateur montréalais Dominique Laurence. M. Laurence a d’ailleurs participé à la mise en images de certaines des publicités les plus marquantes d’Acart, telles que « Les victimes comptent », « Éclair d’inspiration » et « Les visages de l’exploitation ». Le DP est Jean-François Lord et la trame sonore est signée Ariane Moffatt.

Devant un tel honneur, Christopher répond humblement : « Dans le monde cinématographique, Cannes,  c’est du sérieux. Il s’agit du festival de films le plus prestigieux au monde, voilà donc une excuse parfaite pour enfiler un smoking avec noeud papillon à l’extérieur d’un film de James Bond. J’aurais adoré m’y retrouver, peu importe le contexte. Mais d’avoir l’occasion d’y présenter un court métrage, même s’il s’agit d’une catégorie alternative, c’est absolument incroyable! »

Le film fait également partie de la sélection de la SODEC, qui met de l’avant les productions québécoises dans le cadre d’un programme nommé « Nouveaux courts métrages du Québec ».

C’est donc avec fierté et honneur qu’Acart souhaite un bon voyage et un bon festival à Christopher ainsi qu’à tous les autres représentants.

(French content by Vincent)

Edward writes:

“I think the reason people resent the bag fee so much is that it forces them to think about something they do not want to think about. “Do I need a bag?” They know, as we all do by now, that these little things are bad for the environment in many ways—they’re made of oil, they clog up landfills if they’re thrown out, they use up a whackload of energy if they’re recycled, they kill wildlife and produce unsightly litter if they get loose, as they historically and iconically do—and so the fee asks them to think for a split second whether they want those bags and if so, how many they want. The tiny, inconsequential fee forces both the retailer and the customer to spend a few seconds discussing the issue of bags.

[snip]

As it turns out, of course, that this has been effective, reducing the number of plastic bags used in Toronto by 53 per cent since it was introduced. Because when people have to think about it at all, when it costs them even a few seconds’s worth of income, they realize they can do without so many. When asked, they’d prefer to do right by the planet. But if you don’t ask, they don’t think about it.”

(He’s a very funny writer, BTW — I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing.)

As social issues marketers, reading about this kind of radical behaviour change should make us stand up and take note. Not that everyone will be supportive of government-imposed financial disincentives to negative behaviour. (It goes against the beliefs of anyone with a strong libertarian bent.) But nobody can deny that it puts the results of individual, unsupported social marketing efforts to shame.

This is where self-interest trumps community-mindedness. I stopped speeding so much, on the highway, after Ontario significantly raised fines. A similar effect has been noted as a result of the cell-phone handset ban — Health and Safety Ontario reports a self-reported 40% drop of in drivers reported talking on handheld and hands-free phones since the ban was enacted.

It’s the same thinking behind Federal and Provincial “sin tax” on alcohol and cigarettes, aimed at reducing consumption. Or Provincial and Municipal smoking bans, which really do work.

Social changes are not always the result of intentional effects. While there are heavy sin taxes on gasoline in Canada, market forces also push the price of gas up, leading to less single-passenger driving and more use of sustainable transportation like buses, bikes and carpools.

Great news for environmentalists and public health promoters. But if the answer is so simple, why even bother with social issues marketing?

I would like to argue my professional case on two strong facts:

1) Regulation follows public will

Think about the fight against tobacco. Two or three decades of massive social marketing campaigns gradually moved the needle on public opinion about smoking. When the bans came up, they had enough support to give legislators a strong mandate.

Social issues marketers are the advance guard on change. We work with governments, consumer groups, industry, and not-for-profits to introduce the issue and provide rational and compelling reasons for support. You can see it happening right now with the issue of indoor tanning.

That PSA was from 2008. Since then, tanning has become a subject of disdain and ridicule, and more and more jurisdictions are placing increased regulations on the industry (especially with teens). Cause promotion, pop culture and regulation are inextricably tied into this change.

2) Industry follows consumer opinion

McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King have all stopped sourcing pork from producers that use gestation cages on their pigs, after successful campaigns by PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. This is a big deal. A similar effect was seen when food safety advocates branded “boneless lean beef trim” as “pink slime”. This resulted in a massive drop in demand by fast food retailers, and caused a major producer (Beef Products Inc.) to shut down three of its plants.

In short, no big change — legislative or commercial — happens without a sea-change in public opinion. And public opinion change is the whole point of social issues marketing.

Scary, eh? It’s actually a big responsibility for those of us in “the business”. And it’s why there’s so much outcry when corporate social responsibility campaigns or products try to “greenwash” or “astroturf” — people want information they can trust. It’s also why smart consumer marketers team up with credible not-for-profits who can provide objective and trustworthy information to support the campaigns.

What social issues would you like to see begin the long trek from cause to normalization? Maybe we can help…

Thanks to Josh Rachlis for the inspirational tip.

Acart Communications has occupied The Acart Building on Nepean Street since the ’80s. In the years since, Ottawa has been through many changes.

A significant recognition of this change came last November, when the City officially designated six blocks of Bank Street, from Nepean to James, as “The Village“.

“The Village” is now an official neighbourhood, like Chinatown or Little Italy. But the group of people who lay claim to this stretch of downtown are Ottawa’s gay community. Moving into the area since the bad old days of oppressive laws and attitudes, they have prospered to become the major economic and cultural force in Centretown. (It’s also known as the “Gaybourhood“.)

“This is something the community can take an enormous sense of pride in,” says Village chair Glenn Crawford on The Village’s blog. “We now, for the first time, have an officially designated Village in Ottawa. That’s huge and it’s just beginning to sink in for me how big this is. We’ve known this has existed for many years, as we’ve seen the area grow and become more GLBT-friendly, but now, after years of hard work, the Village has become recognized by the City as a unique area of specific cultural importance.”

Being located half-a-block east of the Village limit at Bank and Nepean, Acart is now one of the “mainstream” businesses sharing the neighbourhood with more specialized services. What we all value is the diversity of our vibrant urban community.

So let me take this opportunity to let our neighbours of every belief, background and orientation know that I am proud to live and work in such an accepting community, and to serve all clients with equal respect and understanding.

For the second year in a row, York Region Transit has won an important national industry award for an advertising campaign created by Acart.

The continuation of our YRT brand campaign, “We Get Where You’re Going” was chosen by the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) for the 2012 CUTA National Transit Corporate Leadership Award in the Marketing and Communications category.

We’re thrilled to once again show transit systems across Canada the value of investing in strong ideas and creative executions to get results.

Following the launch of the branding campaign and launch of the new YRT web site, traffic to yrt.ca increased when compared to the same period in 2010 and previous years. In 2011 unique visitors to yrt.ca increased by 829,089 — that’s a 25 per cent increase.

As well, YRT ridership rose significantly in 2011, serving 19.8 million riders (up 1.9 per cent from 2010). Despite a transit strike in the final two months of the year, those were the best ridership numbers YRT has ever had.

Of course, a branding campaign cannot take the credit for YRT’s successful management of a large system in the GTA. But we’re proud to be part of the team.

Last year, YRT’s successful advertising campaign against fare evasion won CUTA‘s Corporate Innovation award.

If you’ve been visiting the CTV.ca, Bright Roll, Global TV, City TV or Canoe news sites this week, you may have seen our latest Social Issues Marketing campaign for the government of Canada, “Faces of Abuse.”

It is our latest work with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) to make people more aware of the issue of Elder Abuse.

HRSDC – Faces of Abuse from Acart Communications on Vimeo.

Our previous awareness campaign against elder abuse (which is still running on TV) gave the general public viewer the point-of-view perspective of a neighbour witnessing three types of elder abuse occurring in his or her community. The sometimes disturbing and violent imagery really struck a nerve with Canadians, generating some of the highest recall rates ever measured for a Government of Canada awareness campaign: 58% total aided recall, 53% unaided recall and 54% aided TV recall. It also won the IABC Ottawa Excellence in Communication Leadership (EXCEL) Award for the Social Responsibility campaign category for 2010.

Obviously, that first campaign is a hard act to follow. So we didn’t try to create a sequel. With a new brief from the client, aimed at making seniors and the people who care for them more aware of the specific dangers of financial abuse by both formal and informal caregivers, we set out to create an even more gripping ad.

In some ways, depicting verbal and physical abuse in the previous campaign was easier than the purely financial message. Financial abuse of seniors is something much more insidious, takes many forms, and can even be inflicted by a loved one.

HRSDC – Les Visages de lexploitation from Acart Communications on Vimeo.

Our solution was to create a scenario that looked completely innocent on the surface: an elderly woman having tea with a woman who could be a relative, care worker, or neighbour. Using a change of tone, we quickly take the viewer beneath the friendly exterior to show the kinds of abuse that could be taking place: pressure to help with a bad investment, flattery to coerce money, and threats of abandonment. As the elderly woman becomes aware of what is really going on, she walks away from the situation (presumably to seek help).

It’s a jarring approach, but one that our focus group research showed us will break through to the target audience. (One elderly woman in our groups was moved to tears.) That’s Work That Matters.

Credits:

Agency: Acart Communications
Senior Creative Director: John Staresinic
Creative Director: Tom Megginson
Associate Creative Director: Vernon Lai
Art Directors: Kerry Hodgson, Javier Frutos
Copywriters: Tom Megginson, Vincent LeBlanc
Production Manager: Lynn Norris
Agency Producer: Pierrette Bornais
Account Director: Gillian Todd-Messinger
Account Manager: Tania Glithero
Media Strategy: Sue McKinney, Kevin Scannell, Natalie Lafleche

Production House: La Cavalerie
Director: Dominique Laurence
Producer: Émilie Heckmann
Production Manager: Sébastien Poussard
DOP: Jonathan Decoste
Artistic Director: Susan MacQuarrie
Editors: Hubert Hayaud, Benoit Marcoux
Stylist: Marie-Claude Guay

Ever since Apple stunned the world with its legendary 1984 ad in Super Bowl XVIII, the big game has been as much about the epic battles of the advertising big league as about football rivalries.

While we didn’t get in there with all the major brands on the American broadcast, yesterday’s Canadian Super Bowl viewers got a look at our latest work for the Government of Canada.

This campaign, for Finance Canada, encourages Canadian workers and entrepreneurs to take advantage of incentives for education and training, hiring, and equipment upgrades offered by Canada’s Economic Action Plan. Each ad was shot separately in English and French.

Shot just a couple of weeks ago in Montreal by Director Pierre Dalpé at Moskito, these ads use the familiar setting of a coffee shop to show how benefits are accessible to everyday people. A simple but well-executed motion-matching effect allowed us to take the characters from the coffee shop, to the workplace, and back again in mid-conversation. This shows the immediacy and relevance of the benefits.

You can find out more about the programs available at the EAP web site.

Dans tout pays bilingue ou multilingue, toutes les campagnes publicitaires d’envergure nationale doivent être présentées dans les langues officielles. C’est l’évidence même. Malheureusement, nous sommes trop souvent confrontés à des traductions douteuses et d’adaptations boiteuses, ce qui nous pousserait à croire que le traducteur n’a pas fait son travail. Bien que tel puisse parfois être le cas, la plupart de ces maladresses ne seraient, selon moi, pas le résultat de l’incompétence, mais bien de l’incompréhension du type de travail nécessaire pour produire une adaptation publicitaire qui soit à la fois grammaticalement correcte et culturellement adéquate.

Le traducteur (que l’on nomme adaptateur publicitaire dans le monde des communications) a longtemps eu l’image d’un être solitaire qui effectue son travail avec comme unique compagnon sa pile de dictionnaires, Bescherelle et autres encyclopédies. Encore aujourd’hui, il se situe fréquemment à la toute fin de la chaîne de production et de diffusion des documents, et demeure un simple sous-traitant plutôt qu’un partenaire en qui l’on a confiance. Toutefois, dans certains domaines de spécialisation, l’implication du traducteur dans le processus créatif et sa collaboration avec les différents experts de la communication peuvent s’avérer très bénéfiques, voire même indispensables. Le cas de l’adaptation publicitaire est particulièrement éloquent. Les traducteurs publicitaires sont de plus en plus intégrés aux équipes de création et de production des agences, et œuvrent désormais étroitement avec les directeurs artistiques, concepteurs-rédacteurs, réalisateurs, infographistes, etc. Ces échanges permettent au traducteur de bénéficier d’une plus grande marge de manœuvre pour trouver des solutions efficaces aux problèmes traductionnels de tout ordre, pour ainsi produire un document d’arrivée dont la cohésion avec les objectifs communicationnels des clients est totale.

Cette participation procure donc au traducteur des ressources qui lui permettront de définir des objectifs précis et d’explorer avec confiance des pistes de solutions difficilement envisageables lorsqu’il n’a que le texte original comme outil de travail.

Pour tout dire, l’implication directe du traducteur dans le processus créatif aura non seulement pour effet d’augmenter considérablement son efficacité, mais lui permettra également de produire des produits ayant des impacts culturellement similaires à ceux de produits dans la langue source. Donc, sans contredit, le traducteur publicitaire ne peut être perçu comme un contractant de fin de ligne, mais bien comme un créateur à part entière si l’on espère produire des publicités multilingues.

It’s our moment in the spotlight. And we didn’t even see it coming.

Today, Acart is front page news in the print edition of The Globe and Mail (as well as being featured online).

It turns out we are the winningest agency in Canada when it comes to Government of Canada public ad campaigns.

Surprised?

Acart Communications is probably not what you would expect an ad agency to be like. It’s not a den of conflicting egos, divas and iniquity. We are a modest team of seasoned professionals who work hard and play fair.

In fact, our agency looks a lot like Canada. We are a bilingual, multicultural group from a wide variety of beliefs and backgrounds. We work together to help our clients give people information they can use.

It’s ironic that we are suddenly “known” by the mainstream media for being “unknown”. Clients in our specialized public, private and not-for-profit sectors already know us, as does the advertising social media community. It’s just that we don’t care as much about seeking awards and the envy of our advertising peers. What motivates us is doing work that really matters — with empathy, passion and meaningful results.

For example, in the public sector, our last elder abuse awareness campaign for HRSDC scored some of the highest social marketing recall results ever measured for a federal government campaign. A couple of years ago, we worked day and night with PHAC to keep people updated on the progress of H1N1, and how to protect themselves. And we communicate a lot of government programs that can help people help themselves.

The result of this commitment, over the past few years, has been high scores on some of our responses to government RFPs in the new era of bureaucratic, transparent and objective agency selection.

The process uses a grid to score agency proposals on objective criteria like experience and qualifications of staff, understanding of the requirements, appropriateness of the creative and media strategy, and the results of past relevant campaigns. Because we have done some solid creative and media planning that meets the stated objectives, we have our fair share of wins.

The moral of the story is that hard work and focus lead to success. But you knew that already, didn’t you? You’re probably the same way.

Christmas and the holidays are a time for reuniting with friends and family, exchanging gifts, indulging in good food and… giving out goats? Yes, goats.

It seems that every holiday season has its cause célebre and this time, it’s all about goats, just look at this December 13 article in the Globe and Mail!

Quick goat factoids:

• Goats are one of the easiest animals for a family with few resources to keep. They survive in challenging environments and are renowned for not being picky eaters.
• They are easy to breed, and have the ability to produce offspring twice a year, giving families the opportunity to raise a herd in a relatively short amount of time. Extra goats can be sold or kept to provide milk.
• According to the Journal of American Medicine, “Goat’s milk is the most complete food known.” It contains vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, trace elements, enzymes, protein, and fatty acids that are utilized by your body with ease. It is often used as a substitute for breast milk.

As an eternal skeptic, my first question would be: Can I really be sure the animal actually gets to its destination so that the families and/or villagers can enjoy all its benefits?

That’s exactly what filmmaker Christopher Richardson asked himself in his 2010 documentary “Where’s my goat?”, in which he follows his gift goat all the way to its new family.

So if you plan on giving to the needy during the holidays, why not a gift that keeps on giving? There are a lot of detailed websites around, but here’s one that’s absolutely crystal clear and explains how your money and the animal get where they need to go:

Plan Canada

Of course, Acart Communications will be donating not only one, but two goats this year and you are more than welcome to do the same.

Happy giving!

Joyeux Noël!

Our Agency Christmas card has proven to be quite a success. Rather than doing our usual holiday greeting, we wanted to show off our in-house video production abilities. So we gave Acart’s Copywriter/Videographer, Christopher Redmond, a pretty free hand.

We (the CDs) were very happy with what he came back with. He pitched us a script that was a parody of the Paranormal Activity horror franchise.

It was a stretch for us. Definitely not what people expected from Acart. But Al Albania trustingly gave us the green light, and we were off.

The little boy is my son, Jack. The spot was shot in one house in one afternoon and evening. It was written and directed by Christopher. Karl Roeder was our Director of Photography. Tim Coderre played the dad, Jack and Bridget Redmond (Christopher’s wife and a filmmaker in her own right) was the mom. The Director even had his Alfred Hitchcock moment in cameo as the evil Santa.

Once the video was soft launched last Friday, we got to work pitching it on adblogs. Ads of The World greenlit my submission on Sunday. The Inspiration Room and Creativity and Coloribus and Advertolog added it spontaneously. We tracked blogposts in French, Chinese, Spanish, German and Bulgarian. It’s also on Funny or Die.

As of this writing, we are sitting at 8,590 views — which is more than we’ve had for a self-promo before. And it’s really great timing since we just launched our new web site for the new year.

Have a great 2012.