Lowe Roche Goes Fearless for Canadian Cancer Society

Lowe Roche has launched a new interactive campaign for the Canadian Cancer Society called “The Fearless Challenge,” which attempts to raise money online by asking people (such as the actors involved with the campaign) to face their worst fears for a certain price to be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society. If the goal is met, individuals honor their pledge by facing their fear head-on.

“The Canadian Cancer Society is committed to creating a world where no Canadian fears cancer, but we are not there yet,” explains Mike Kirkpatrick, director, marketing for the Cancer Society in Ontario. “We know that more work needs to be done because a cancer diagnosis is still one of the scariest things a person can face.”

The campaign attempts to help raise funds to help those with cancer, based on the insight that a cancer diagnosis, despite progress with managing the disease, is still a very fearful proposition. So in addition to helping to raise funds, the campaign also attempts to help tackle that fear in cancer patients by showing people conquering their own greatest fears. Celebrity endorsers and participants in the campaign include actor Jason Priestley, sports commentator Jesse Palmer, Shannon and  Sophie Tweed-Simmons of Gene Simmons Family Jewels and Shannon & Sophie, and Hedley bassist and cancer survivor Tommy Mac. But the campaign isn’t just relying on celebrity endorsements, it invites viewers to participate by filming their own video and making a pledge at FearlessChallenge.com. Stick around for credits and actor Jonathan Keltz‘s pledge after the jump. (more…)

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Lowe Roche Mines Data, Reveals Ad Folk Like to Drink Alcohol, Watch Porn Among Other Things

Lowe Roche respects the data. In a video for Strategy Agency of the Year Awards, the Toronto-based company provided some education on the habits of the ad employee demographic. Not just tidbits about dieting and working, but the juicy stuff: you know, alcohol and porn. As someone who works with data just about every day (for sports, not survey research) I definitely appreciate a math-based approach to an industry full of projects that often rely on intuition and copycat trends. Product-research data can always be manipulated or ignored or conducted incorrectly. Steve Jobs once said, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” and he was right. But demographic data is usually helpful and meaningful.

Here are a few lighthearted and self-deprecating mathematical takeaways from the clip, according to PMB Advertising Vertical Analysis 2013:

– Ad people drink nine times as much bourbon as the average Canadian.

– Ad people watch 1.7 times the amount of pornography as the average Canadian.

– And ad people are 1.6 times as likely to mute the sound in TV commercials as the average Canadian.

At least we can all agree that television commercials are typically bad. Buy some Jefferson’s Reserve. Drink up. Credits after the jump.

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Street Waxing: Advertisement or PSA?

As much as I appreciate a good fail video and laugh regularly from schadenfreude, Lowe Roche’s latest for Fuzz Wax Bar in Toronto just made me cringe. To advertise their dedication to smoother skin, Fuzz covered a male model in wax strips and sent him onto the streets. People could tear the strips (and hair) off him to receive a 25% off gift certificate. The strips were illustrated with grim-faced smileys, varying based on the amount of pain they would cause. Many people appeared to delight in making this man shout in agony.

“Street Waxing” seems to me the opposite of an attractive ad campaign. The selling point of waxing is the final product: smooth skin. In between appointments, one primary goal is to forget about the pain. That makes this experience more of an anti-waxing PSA. Fuzz Wax Bar reminds us, very viscerally, that waxing is not a pleasant experience. And adding insult to injury, (unlike this model), you’re going to have to pay to get yours yanked off.

Credits after the jump

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