blackjet inc.

Everyone’s talking about Blackjet…again.

blackjet — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:14:02 +0000

Thanks to Stimulant for posting our irreverent Christmas Greeting replacement (C.H.E.E.R.) on their site. They also sent it out to all their subscribers. Wicked.

Check out stimulant and our CHEER site. Read our CHEER blog.

Holiday etiquette meets your mother’s tongue.

stolkramaker — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:59:59 +0000

At Blackjet, we’re a bit different. Even at Christmas. When we were tasked to create our company holiday greeting, we treated it the same as anything else we work on. Make it fearless. Make it creative. Make it good. That said, the usual lame-ass animation or e-card or old-fashioned-warm-fuzzy card was out of the question. So we came up with C.H.E.E.R. – the Christmas & Holiday Etiquette Enforcement Regiment. We decided it was time to take a stand against poor holiday etiquette (in a passive-aggressive kind of way). We’ve all been embarrassed by a drunk uncle or cut off by a frantic shopper at this time of year, so we were determined to tap into that frustration. Not only did we design, print and mail-out a booklet with irreverent etiquette corrections; we also made it interactive and easily shareable on-line. You can slip someone an old-fashioned “notice” and run like hell or you can be equally cowardly by sending an “etiquette violation” via email and share it on your social networks. Of course QR codes are used to help make a donation to one of our “cause” clients, Reach Out Centre for Kids. This time of year is stressful enough. We wanted to have some fun. Mission accomplished.

Visit the Blackjet CHEER site

Thoughts on the Future of Radio

blackjet — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:15:04 +0000

The music industry certainly ain’t what it used to be. First Napster, then ultimately iTunes completely changed the game. Terrestrial radio has lost audience to iPods, Internet and Satellite Radio. And costs have never been higher to run a traditional broadcasting company in this country.

How do they compete with all of the emerging platforms? They don’t. But they should consider joining them. It struck me when I was listening to a new Black Keys song on the radio. My first thought “I love this song. I hope I remember to download it from iTunes tonight.” Wait a minute. Isn’t this the same problem most traditional media suffers from? A 1-sided communication with its audience? Why can’t I download the song right now? While I’m in the car. Captive. I want this song now. And I’m willing to pay for it.

Traditional radio still has the ability to deliver mass audience. They should give Apple a call. Imagine: Listen. Love. Download. How great would that be?

So Much Love for Print

blackjet — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:43:08 +0000

There are just some things digital can’t do. We recently designed this magazine cover for a local Home publication. The focus of the cover was a feature story on a housing development in Georgetown. The brief was simple: it’s a great place to raise a family. The timing was perfect (July issue). So we sourced a seed packet supplier and custom designed the cover and packet. You gotta love for the tactile experience only print can give!

View more images on flickr

There’s no Stat for Creativity

blackjet — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:33:34 +0000

There’s a downside to the information age: Everyone becomes an armchair expert. There’s a statistic for everything. “54% of adults used the internet for political purposes, 65% of adults sleep with their cell phone, a new study shows social media doesn’t impact online sales”.

Having access to all of this data is great. The danger arises when we use it to guide all of our marketing decisions. Original ideas are a rare commodity, groundbreaking ideas are even more elusive. There are no statistics for these. There is no historic data or metrics. This is terrifying for most marketers: “How can I justify approving a concept that hasn’t worked before?” “What kind of response can we expect?” “How many Facebook Friends will we get?”

We face this everyday. The reality is, nothing is guaranteed. You can’t always get caught up the stats, sometimes, identifying a great idea and running with it can create results beyond your wildest expectations.

The Ultimate Shoot

blackjet — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:50:50 +0000

Just before Christmas, we had a regular scheduled meeting with Endras BMW. What came out of it was anything but regular.

We chatted and in passing, they mentioned they needed an in-house blogger who could take care of their social media outlets. It’s odd when you can trace back to the inception of an idea. But that was it.

The Ultimate Blogger Contest was born. We suggested a contest positioned as a job search. And that search was to fill the role of the most performance obsessed blogger out there for Endras BMW.

Today, the Ultimate Blogger website is nearing 1 million page views in just under two months. And the campaign’s reach has gone far beyond local and even regional circles. With entries coming in from across Europe and the States, we’re both surprised and ecstatic over the success.

Working with Toronto’s Buck Productions and Director Peter Mishara, Blackjet’s crew starting shooting one cold January morning and squeezed 3 videos into the day. With some patience from cold actors and the help of Buck’s crew, we ended up with a series of light-hearted and funny spots.

Check out the Gallery on Facebook

VIRTUAL BROKER. ADVERTISING WITHOUT ADVERTISING

blackjet — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:19:38 +0000

The Background

Blackjet’s “Name our Condo” campaign garnered over 3,300 participants but in the end, there was only one winner. So, how do you monetize one of the real estate industry’s most successful social media campaigns? Turn participants into brand advocates.

The Strategy

After we captured the attention of 3,300 socially-connected contest participants it was time to monetize our audience. We realized that our contest participants may not be have been in the market for a new condo. But they might have known someone who was. So we invented the Virtual Broker program. A custom online broker app was developed and we converted contest participants into online real estate brokers. We gave them customizable, online marketing materials and deployed our online sales force.

Virtual Brokers were given bonuses by generating leads. The more leads they generated, the more prizes they won (everything from movie passes, shopping sprees to iPads).

The Result

Hundreds of Virtual Brokers participated in the program and thousands of leads were generated all through social media. Reporters portrayed our clients as pioneers in the marketplace. With tremendous PR and word of mouth, the project sold over 200 condos in less than two months. And all without advertising.

Be Authentic. Your Brand Depends on it.

blackjet — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:35:48 +0000

We undergo dozens of branding assignments each year on behalf of our clients. Old school brand experts have always preached that whatever your brand promise is, you must live up to it. Most brands paid this notion lip service and got by. Probably not an effective strategy, but it always made the CMO feel good about themselves.

Never before have brands had to work so hard to be relevant. There once was a time that brands could control the message and “force” their brand down the throats of consumers. The balance of power has shifted. The consumer is in complete control and they smell bullshit from miles away. Yet, it seems that most Brand Managers and VPs have a really difficult time being honest about their brand. This is where far reaching claims and painfully contrived messaging is born. A brand killer.

If you can’t find anything compelling to say about your brand, chances are it’s time to start re-evaluating your product offering. Get that right first. Authenticity will surely follow.

Process. The Creativity Killer?

blackjet — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:35:27 +0000

As our agency grows and more people are added, an increasing need emerges for more structure and process. This is a huge dilemma. Though our best creative work comes from organic development, it’s not ideal. In fact, it can be a very frustrating process for creative people when parameters are too loose. On top of that, there is a great sense of accomplishment knowing an idea is complete, approved and ready for execution. This, in my opinion is the great divide between old-school agency thinking and the new-school approach.

The old school approach was to come up with “The Big Idea” and then apply it to the various media. Launch and move on. In my opinion this process is inherently flawed because we are committed to living with our decisions and we stop challenging the merits or viability of our ideas.

But new school process is undefined because the media opportunities are so vast – there is no model. With the new media landscape, we are at a time when creativity and ingenuity are more critical than ever. We’re not just developing creative works that fit a mass media device, we’re creating brand new mediums, integrating in ways never known before and seeing the results in near real time.

There is no end to the process. It evolves, grows (or dies) and changes. It allows us to continually think add, adapt and change. This is the beauty (and challenge) of the new un-process, constantly evolving, challenging the idea and spawning new ones. The idea process should never end.

The big question, I guess, is how do you scale this new un-process? Hmmmm.

The Real Estate Industry’s Most Successful Social Media Campaign. Ever.

blackjet — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:35:14 +0000

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. When we decided to crowdsource the name for one of downtown Toronto’s newest condos, our goal was to build awareness and excitement online in a very crowded marketplace.

Toronto’s new condominium market is very noisy, dominated by projects with exotic names, ridiculous radio jingles and print ads filled with fashion models and hipsters. There was tremendous fatigue in the market and a desire for consumer engagement.

Rather than investing heavily in traditional media, we chose to engage influential bloggers first. Awareness quickly built. But one of the most critical components to the site’s success was the user experience that offered a simple and engaging user interface allowing participation from a broad user base.

The second phase of the campaign included an online advertising component, a tie-in with one of the city’s leading radio stations and a very modest print campaign. During the 6-week campaign, we achieved over 800 sites linking back to nameourcondo.com and the site cracked the 11,000 mark in the site’s Alexa rankings. The story was covered far and wide, was featured on CBC radio, mentioned on stephencolbert.com, featured in the National Post, toronotlife.com, and picked up by dozens of other media outlets. Not bad for a condo without a name.