Thursday September 4, 2014 – 11am
Posted Aug 29, 2014 12:23:59 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
11:00- Tim Williams, the Trivago Guy
As ad pitchmen go, he’s an anti-pitchman, the opposite of slick but not quite benign or quietly average either. “He’s so real you can practically smell the tobacco on the tips of his fingers,” wrote a blogger on ScarletHeifer.com, a boutique ad consultancy in New York. Unvarnished reality in a pitchman is an idea in itself in Ad Land, a place with a limited diversity of people ranging from anodyne families to arch fantasy personalities like Mr.Clean and Captain Obvious. But the response Trivago Guy has elicited is not just about his suitability as a television spokesman, it has something to do with male aesthetics. Middle-aged male aesthetics. Could it be that middle-aged men are becoming subject to the same uncharitable judgment women of a certain age endure? Is there such a thing as age-appropriate rules for male dress and behaviour? A woman past 50 who works hard to look as if she’s in her twenties and behaves in a youthful way is labelled a cougar. But men, for the most part, have had a free pass. The definition of a creepy old guy meant a geezer in his 70s who hit on twenty-something women in a dark bar, not a forty-something TV spokesman with stubble and green eyes. Good or bad, Trivago Guy has people talking, which is a measure of successful advertising campaigns.
11:30- James Mirtle, Hockey journalist at The Globe and Mail
There are few topics in the NHL that get people buzzing like expansion and relocation do. On Tuesday, Tony Gallagher and Howard Bloom both reported the league was looking at adding 4 teams. Gallagher said that NHL expansion to Las Vegas was a “done deal,” and then Bloom upped the ante by claiming that the NHL will add Vegas, Seattle, a second Toronto franchise and Quebec City by 2017, the 100th anniversary of the League. Bill Daly of the NHL said the four-team expansion is “not in” the NHL’s plans. Because what else is he supposed to say. Gallagher of The Province wrote with finality that the NHL was coming to Las Vegas through expansion: Sources close to the situation have indicated Las Vegas is a done deal, the only thing to be determined being which owner will be entitled to proclaim that he brought the first major league sports franchise to Sin City. We started getting an inkling that Bettman had changed his tune on Vegas when he moved one of the league’s signature promotional events there in 2009, but yes, this is a considerable about-face indeed!
Listen:
