In 2004 a very good friend of ours was diagnosed with breast cancer. This stunning news lead to our decision in 2005 to help launch Yard Sale for the Cure. Yard Sale for the Cure is now recognized by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation as second only to the Run for the Cure in order of priority. In fact, the endeavor has the full weight of the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation behind it, adding real scale to the effort. As it stands, it’s already an incredible legacy for Rachael Smith and her husband Andrew Howard, who simply wanted to give back to the community that helped her successfully battle the disease.

Rachael has an incredible way of describing the impact cancer has had on her life. She refers to it as “the power of strangers,” meaning that it is entirely dependent on people you never know or will know, collectively working to make a massive contribution to her fight and the fight of others. People who yearly donate, run, ride, and (of course) hold yard sales in tribute to those fighting the good fight. Any way you slice it, it’s an amazing deployment of the power of the human spirit.

This weekend on May 26^th hundreds of people in communities across Canada will hold yard sales and donate some or all of the proceeds to the cause. Thousands will shop them. Thousands more will shop the many community sales being hosted by 1-800-Got-Junk and ReMax, the charity’s national sponsors. It’s our hope that the proceeds from this year’s Yard Sale for the Cure will eclipse 1.2 million dollars – that’s 1.2 million more steps towards ensuring that our daughters never have to hear the words “you have breast cancer.”

Yard Sale for the Cure is the only pro bono account we have at Grip. That is a very deliberate decision on our part. We do it because we believe in it and have been personally connected to it since the beginning. It’s that simple. I have been known to be critical of how this approach is not shared by many in our industry. In retrospect, that may not be entirely fair; at the end of the day, for whatever reason, there are still many who willingly donate their time, effort, resources and extensive knowledge to worthy causes that may not otherwise be able to afford those services. As an industry, we’re pretty good that way. Whatever the motive, at the end of the day, good people benefit.

Good people like Rachael.

So keep doing your bit, or start doing your bit. Remind yourself of the power of the industry you’re in. And while you’re at it, remind yourself of the kind of change you wanted to make when you got into this business in the first place.

There are some questions that are so pressing – so fundamentally burning – they can no longer be ignored. In this, the Big Orange Slide’s latest series, we ask Grippers of all stripes to weigh in on one such question.

Share your own response in the comments section. It’ll be like our own personal round of “the more we get together” — but for advertising.

This week we ask: “Why did YOU get into advertising?”

“…It was either this or Marine Biology.”
- Bob Shanks, Managing Partner

“I needed a career that didn’t require me to wear a suit.  It’s true.”
- Randy Stein, Partner, Creative

“The founder of my university newspaper read a column I wrote and, while drunk, told me ‘You should go into advertising.’ I was drunk, and I dismissed him at the time. But 3 years later I (still drunk) decided maybe he was on to something.”
- Warren Haas, Copywriter

“It was the big time. It was exciting. It was fresh. It was a heck of a lot better than working at the local desktop publisher, getting drunk down at the pool hall with the locals, and living in my parent’s basement for the rest of my life.”
- AJ Quinlan, Print Producer

“I love sociology and human behaviour but realized I didn’t want to be a social worker. I deeply admire and respect creativity but realized I myself am not ‘an artist’. I’ve always been a very responsible, logical thinker who has a pretty good business sense…
So I guess when you merge all those things together you get an advertising account person :)”
- Michelle Czyzewski, Director, Business

“Bewitched! I watched reruns of Bewitched as a kid during the summers. After seeing how Darrin Stephens worked on ad ideas and how to influence people I knew I wanted to be part of it.”
- Steven Hudak, PHP Developer

“I get paid to be on Facebook. It’s not as glorious as it sounds. Okay, it is.”
- Patrick Tomasso, Community Engagement Manager

“Lots of different skills sets coming together into a creative fun force.”
- Lana Pawziuk, Manager, Business (Interactive)

“Completely by accident. My job on the client side was moving from Toronto to Montreal. I didn’t want to move, so my agency hired me. That was 11 years ago and I have loved it ever since.”
- Grace Debrabandere, Associate Partner, Business

I’ve just returned from an extended trip to Bangladesh. As someone with family there, I find it particularly frustrating that aesthetics and a “built to last” mentality are largely ignored. Elaborate designs and bright colours are too often employed to mask poor quality, craftsmanship and lack of maintenance. Colours run, lights flicker, roads are pockmarked with potholes, taxis fall to shambles, stairs sit without railings, and you’re lucky if traffic signals work even half the time.

In a country where a vast majority of the population can barely meet the expenses of food and shelter on a daily basis, “good enough” is defined as “it will have to do for now.” Coming from a culture where “good enough” is defined as “meets rigid testing standards and is aesthetically agreeable,” it can be a frustrating leap to make.

But is it a leap in the end? I began to ask myself how I define ‘good enough’ in my own work, life and environment. I recognized that it’s often difficult to breach the divide between “functionally complete” and “perfectly flawless.” Deadlines, budgets and profit margins interfere, and ‘good enough’ suddenly means “it’ll live slightly longer than its warranty period.” My last two laptops barely outlived their warranties before the cost to repair them was greater than the cost to replace them, and my cell phone was obsolete and almost unusable a year before its contract life ended. It seems that ‘good enough’ is defined as “barely marketable.” And North Americans are just as culpable as any other culture.

What is the yardstick for ‘good enough’? Is it just a feeling, like when artists know when to stop painting, or programmers know when to stop refactoring? At what point do we proclaim something finished – or maintained – to a superior standard? Or is it a question of pride; it’s ‘good enough’ when I’m willing to stake my name and reputation on its level of repair and visual appeal. That, surely, should amplify ‘good enough’ from merely being ‘good enough’ to ‘a point of personal pride.’

When I was in my teens and early 20’s, going to a Jays game was an entirely acceptable thing to do. Yes, the team was very good. And yes, the new state-of-the-art Skydome played a role in the team’s popularity. But even before the Dome, I remember spending many summer nights sitting in the bleachers of Exhibition Stadium cheering on the Jays. It was a fun night out with a group of friends. It didn’t hurt that the tickets were – and still are – relatively inexpensive. Beyond going to the games, wearing a Jays cap, or even just identifying yourself as a Jays fan was something you were more than happy to do. It was a badge you were happy to wear.

But then something changed. I’m not sure when. Or why. Or how. But it did. And dramatically so. Suddenly following the Jays – or even worse, actually going to a game – was something that old people did. Old people and baseball geeks. It wasn’t a fun night out. It wasn’t something anyone talked about. In fact, it was looked down upon. Baseball and Blue Jays fans suddenly found ourselves in the closet. We’d watch Jays games at home, but never talk about them. We’d never think of inviting a group of friends to a game. And we’d certainly never ask the bar to change the channel from Nascar/Golf/Soccer to put on the Jays game. And as for Blue Jays apparel? It was something you bought at Sears for your uncle’s 70th birthday.  It wasn’t something you’d actually buy yourself and wear. No, to those of us who loved the game and followed the Jays, we’d quietly pretend baseball didn’t matter. Because to the city at large, it didn’t. Sure the Jays were probably thriving in the old age homes across the country, but to those under 40 – and certainly those under 30 – the Jays were not cool. They weren’t even on the radar.

And then as quickly as they disappeared, they suddenly came back. Walk down trendy Queen St. West today and you’ll see a jays cap being worn proudly on every block, and mostly by people who weren’t even born when the likes of George Bell, Garth Iorg and Damaso Garcia were so beloved in this city. Those same people are watching the Jays in bars, going to the games and following young stars like Ricky Romero and JP Arencibia on Twitter. The Jays brand has literally risen from the dead.

As a lifelong fan, I’m thrilled to be able to come back out of the closet and talk Blue Jays baseball again. As a marketer, I’m fascinated. I mean, what the hell happened? Yes, the Jays are becoming competitive again – which helps a lot. But is it purely about wins and losses? Is it that the team is made up of mostly young, attractive guys? Is it that those young, attractive stars are also amazingly active on Twitter? Any way you slice it, it’s a testament to the unforeseen marketing genius of nerdy GM Alex Anthopolous.

Or is something else at play? Are the Jays simply a trend that’ll fade once again? Or have they found a recipe through young stars and social media to keep young people coming back for more? It’s hard to say. Whatever it is, it’s a remarkable recovery for a very recently irrelevant brand.

As for me, I’m just going to hope this enthusiasm for the team and sport last a while. Hopefully by the time it does fall out of favour again I’ll be one of those old guys in the nursing home.

It’s been nearly 6 months since our last installment of the 101 thoughts on advertising series. We’re half a year older. Hopefully half a year wiser. And yet we’ve been plagued by thoughts. Thoughts that wring their fists, begging to be shared with a readership of engaged marketers. And so here we are, proferring ten additional notions around the fact that

Advertising is:

72) the quickest route to both elevating and bastardizing any piece of art
73) the skillful manipulation of impulses
74) in the details
75) far less concerned with changing the world than it has any right to be
76) arguably more powerful when consumers buy an idea over a product
77) something Banksy hates because it “attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists”
78) inspired by opportunism
79) beset by the misuse of “flush” vs. “flesh”
80) society holding a mirror up to itself
81) just fun, ok?

Sure, April Fools day was yesterday. But thanks to “the calendar,” marketers got to reserve their water cooler chatter for today.

This year, April Fools saw a barrage of brands announcing fraudulent new products and services. WestJet announced Kid Kargo – its child-free cabin service. YouTube created a video announcing the “YouTube collection on DVD.” And Google (arguably the ultimate April Fools prankster) pulled out all the stops, proferring a NASCAR partnership in Google Racing, an 8-bit Google Map view for NES, and Gmail Tap, a morse code-based email service.

April Fools is like Hawaiian shirt day for brands. They can afford to up the ante on playfulness, without undermining their bottom line. So who did it best? Or does the expectation of pranksmanship automatically mean a failure to fool?

Remember the offbeat, hilarious internet fad of “Planking?” No? Remember the inane, grating, occasionally fatal Internet fad of “Planking?” Me too. And “Owling?” And “Tebowing?” As stupid as I thought these things were, I have to say that I was impressed at how fast they caught on. These things were full-fledged phenomena. People captured and shared thousands of photos, and the Internet was wallpapered with snapshots of people in all sorts of whacky configurations.

And then brands started to get on board. At the convergence of contrived “cool factor” and behind-the-curve trendhunting, we get stuff like AMC’s “Draping” (assume the position of Don Draper in the title sequence of “Mad Men,” seated with your right hand extended),  or McDonald’s “Shamrocking” (recreating an Irish jig in the spirit of the Shamrock Shake). Worse than the flimsy, uncreative ideas behind these “memes” is the Astroturf (read: fake grassroots) initiatives that are designed to “organically” propel them into virality: fake Twitter hashtags, dubiously anonymous Tumblrs and other sneaky tactics. Luckily, they usually get called out on it . So what do you think? Are you ready to drop to one knee for #debeersing? Pantomime armpit washing for #oldspicing? Personally, I came up with a new photo meme of my own. It’s called “#hating.” Just visit a branded meme site and capture a picture of yourself throwing up as you break your laptop over your knee like kindling.