SkipTheDishes’ new campaign pops with Katy Perry

SkipTheDishes ended its series of ads starring Jon Hamm last year, but 2022 saw the brand and AOR McCann make sure it didn’t lose its star power.

It began early in January with Snoop Dogg, but readers were even more interested in the summer campaign with Katy Perry. It featured the pop star singing about “sushi and a movie” and “subs in the tub” amid vivid colours and over-the-top outfits that made it feel more like a music video than an ad.

The ads Canadians will see during the Super Bowl

As per usual, people are eager to get an early look at exactly what brands have planned for the most-watched TV event of the year, and our annual look at who bought ads during Bell Media’s broadcast aimed to scratch that itch. Some of the ads this year included big global campaigns with local buys – like UberEats, BMW and Polestar – but also new, home-grown ads from TD, BitBuy and Harvey’s.

IKEA takes window shopping literally to launch its newest store

A big marketing priority for IKEA this year was its first smaller-format store, located in downtown Toronto and geared more towards urban consumers.

Rethink supported this goal by turning the windows of various Toronto dwellings – from single-family homes to apartments to condos – into living ads for the store by framing them up like billboards. The message was the IKEA was made for downtown living – regardless of the downtown space someone lived in.

Moosehead has a beer with your name on it

Sometimes, we can’t be sure whether people read a story because they want to know more about the marketing strategy, or if they really want to know how to get what is being advertised.

The latter could very well be the case with Moosehead’s spring campaign, created by AOR Conflict. The ad stars a Moosehead brewmaster on-site explaining how people can – and should – get a can of the beer with their name on it to celebrate their achievements. And those can be big or small, from finishing a degree to try trying stand-up comedy for the first time. The strategy was to play on a key characteristic of a Moosehead drinker: someone with a hard work ethic that appreciates a little recognition for a job well done.

Canadian Tire opens its 100th year with a retrospective

Canadian Tire did a lot this year to celebrate its 100th anniversary, but strategy readers were most interested in one Leo Burnett created that gave them a hit of nostalgia.

In January, the retailer’s first campaign of the year actually brought together three of its most well-known ads from the past: “Albert” from 1984, which showed how a young child getting decked out in hockey equipment from Canadian Tire grew up to be a deciding factor for his team; 1989′s “Bike Story,” in which a boy cutting a bike out from a Canadian Tire catalogue gave his dad a hint to what kind of gift he wanted; and “Wheels,” released during the 2016 Olympics, in which a boy finds a group of other kids in his neighborhood to play wheelchair basketball with.