Marketing Magic to a Thumping Beat.

Recently Marketing Magazine published a survey of where Canadian advertisers are spending their advertising dollars in 2007. The three Prairie Provinces account for 17.6% of the ad dollars spent in the country that’s 381.2 million out of the total pot of 2.2 billion. Canadian advertisers spend: 23.2% on Television spots 18.1% on Daily Newspaper ads 11.9% sending catalogues and direct mail 10.3% is invested in radio ads 9.3% goes into Yellow page ads 8.7% heads off into internet 5.1% ends up in Magazines 2.9% is sent outdoors 10.5% goes into the Misc. category TV advertising grew only by 7.5% in 2007 over 2006 The internet saw big gains scoring a 37.9% increase Newspapers held their own dropping just 2.4%. Radio went up 5.7%. Outdoor rose by 14.1%. If you are not investing 1 to 3 percent of your gross sales or are wondering what the perfect mix is for your business please call me. I can help you invest your marketing dollars where they will make you money.

In Help Me Over Teresa Levasseur sings that she is looking music that she “wants to dance to” and Low Fidelity certainly has more than it’s share of smoky dancehall numbers. Her voice is strong, yet feminine, and can hold it’s own in this bluesy mix of Toronto’s finest. Paul Reddick’s distinctive electric harp work, Derek Downham’s killer keys and David Gavan Baxter and Sean Cotton’s tasty guitar stand out for me. Low Fidelity begins with a horn blast that will part your hair and plays Treasa’s vocal scolding off Paul’s back talking harp. Yum!

Dido likes to offset her delicate, fragile voice and strummy acoustic guitar with big bass, synth and drum lines that create a sonic depth to her rather sparse recordings. All the songs on Safe Trip Home keep the beats-per-minute safely under 80. Loss of love and heartbreak are familiar themes and Dido is back with a pile more. Safe Trip Home is just that, a safe journey that does little to advance Dido’s diming career. She needs to get out of bed and do something exciting.

Glasgow band Travis is back with a new disc of rock lite singles. Guitar or piano driven with moody and earnest lyrics Travis has scored repeated hits in the UK. Ode to J. Smith is a bit edgier than some of their previous efforts, but still is closer to Dido than Oasis but is a step in the right direction. Guitarist Andy Dunlop carries most of the load and some of his work, especially the choppy, overdriven solo on Last Words, is worth a listen. Travis seems to be taking few risks and going with what got them success in the past. If you like Snow Patrol, Dido or Coldplay you’ll like most of Ode to J. Smith.

Any great music collection has to have a corner dedicated to the Blues. There’s electric blues, acoustic blues, Chicago, Delta and Southern blues but regardless of the label all blues begins in the southern USA and so will we. Blind Lemon Jefferson known as the “Father of the Texas Blues” back in the 1920’s had a high-pitched voice and picked a flat top acoustic. Pick-up “Black Snake Moan” for a taste of this pioneer. Robert Johnson’s legend has him at a dusty rural crossroads in Mississippi where he met the devil and traded his 27-year-old soul for blues fame. Try “Sweet Home Chicago” for a sample of his Delta Blues percussive acoustic style. Bessie Smith was one of the earliest women to record the blues and “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” makes me blush, even 80 years later. By the 1950’s the Blues was moving from the rural south to the urban north and artists like Sonny Boy Williamson 1 (aka: John Lee Curtis Williamson “Good Morning Little School Girl”) who brought the harmonica to...

A new year is always a good time to take stock and make a few resolutions that will make your life easier, more organized or enhance your skills. Let’s look at a few ideas you might consider in this a shinny new year. Back-up If you have no back-up system in place yet the new year is a wonderful time to start. You can burn files to CDs or DVDs, make a copy of the files onto a flash or thumb drive, add a separate hard drive dedicated to this purpose or use an online storage site. It does not really matter what you use it just matters that you do it….right now! Clean out the corners If you use a laptop with a smaller hard drive its not a bad idea to have a look at what’s on it that you can chuck or remove to storable media. The biggest space hogs are applications, videos and photos. You can open your Applications folder, video or photo folders and sort by size to see which are taking up the most room. Start a Blog Hey you’ve got opinions and thoughts why not share them online? Blogging i...

Many of us have a digital camera and are perfectly comfortable shooting all our images on the simple, easy and convenient AUTO setting. For 75% of our picture taking needs this setting gives us acceptable results but once in a while our images would improve if we took a little time to discover what the other settings on the dial will do for us. Let’s take a look. I am working with a Canon PowerShot A590 but many of the features we will be taking about will be available on Nikon, Samsung, Pentax, Kodak, Casio, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, and Panasonic point and shoot cameras. Many modern digital cameras have two types of specialized programs Scene Specific and Manual Modes. Scene Specific Scene specific settings like Portrait, Landscape, Night, Kids/Pets, Indoor, Sunset, Snow, or Fireworks. You may have more or fewer of these settings than this, but these are the most common. Each of these settings places a difference emphasis on either the shutter speed (how quickly the lens opens and closes)...