Almost everything has a museum dedicated to it in this country.Even Albertan gophers. Seriously—it’s creepy as hell, but it’s right there in Torrington, smack dab between Edmonton and Calgary right off of Highway 2. How curious then, that Canada’s advertising industry has nowhere to not just reflect on its own heritage, but on Canadian history through a marketer’s lens. Marketing messages, after all, chronicle our world more than many realize. “History and archaeology will one day discover,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “that the advertising of our times is the truest and most faithful reflection that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.”
So what gives?
“Ad people know diddly squat about starting museums,” says Doug Linton. He should know, having chaired the board of the nascent Canadian Advertising Museum three years ago, when the idea was hatched by Joanne Lehmann, as an adjunct to Humber College in Toronto where she founded the media copywriting course and taught. “When she retired, she got Humber’s backing for the museum,” says Linton.
Despite its protracted launch, the museum is moving ahead in 2011, initially online at CanadianAdvertisingMuseum.com, led by chair Kate Taylor, co-president of Kaleidoscope Marketing and Communications Inc. and director Doug Robinson, chief creative officer of Doug & Serge. “We are working on a user-friendly and searchable website,” says Taylor. “We are also in negotiations with a back-end partner that will enable us to develop our database, collect donations and build an engaged community… through blogs and Facebook which will happen once the website is launched.
We will be approaching the industry to contribute to these initiatives.” Marketing magazine is one of the new partners, with publisher Lucy Collin added to the board last month. Once the online presence is up and running, the museum will move from virtual to physical. “Our long-term strategy is to have bricks and mortar as well as travelling exhibitions,” says Taylor. No matter where the work is experienced, it’s being curated with the same intent, she adds. “We want today’s marketers to be inspired and today’s consumers to be aware of the impact Canadian advertising has in shaping their needs, wants and desires.”
