Many years ago, shortly after I moved to Vancouver to pursue a career in video games, a pal of mine moved here to join a young ad company. Sick of working for one of the international advertising big dogs, he picked up roots and moved to Vancouver to start small. The company, Rethink Communications, has grown into a sort of marketing cultural force – you’ve probably seen dozens of their ads, and probably talked about at least one around the watering hole. A&W, Playland, Science World, you name it, they’ve come up with a plan to promote it, stopping only occasionally to make their own beer brand or unique floor lamps.

They get a great deal of attention for their unconventional outdoor campaigns, like sticking a million dollars or some plants in a bus stop shelter, or covering a billboard with road-side assistance gear from Canadian Tire and an offer for people to help themselves (then over a few weeks, gas cannisters and tire jacks go missing from the board.) But what I love are their print ads – the moving picture of a commercial or even the narrative of a radio spot leaves a lot of room to get a point across. But catching someone’s attention, holding it, and making a point with a single image… that’s tough.

My current favorite are the new BC Lions ads, featuring traumatized players from other teams hiding behind various sideline personalities (camera crews, furry mascots, etc.) If you like funny and/or smart ads, and you want to kill a couple of hours, their online archives of their various campaigns are worth checking out!

With Grey Cup madness happening on top of the Santa Claus parade the city was buzzing today. It was also a sunny afternoon, which we haven’t seen much in a couple weeks.

The heavily favoured BC Lions beat the Alouettes 25-14 and the Grey Cup is coming back to the West Coast.

The Lions last won the league championship in 2000, defeating Montreal 28-26 in Calgary. The Lions have captured the trophy in four of the eight Grey Cup games in which they have played. [CTV]

Congrats to the BC Lions on a great season & on winning the Cup – let’s just think of this as a warm up to that other cup win this city is dying to celebrate…

Update: Added pic of decapitated Cup.

BC Lions vs Eskimos

Originally uploaded by a_tuxedo.

Their website may have crashed following the win but the BC Lions are now through to the Grey Cup which is going to be held in Winnipeg on November 19th [cbc]. There they will face the Montreal Alouettes, who they beat in 2000 to win the Grey Cup in that year.

The Lions quaterback Dave Dickenson played well, and the team beat the Roughriders 45-18. Everyone downtown was almost excited, and only the rain kept from from really getting up.

Now I have to confess to not caring about the CFL, or NFL, or any form of American football. I’d just like to see the Canucks do this well, and be at the party on Robson when they finally win the only trophy that matters in this country, the Stanley Cup.

And yes the Lions website is totally down, though by the time you read this it may be working again.

Saskatchewan Roughriders

Originally uploaded by shanebee.

People love the BC Lions. I work downtown by both BC Place and GM Place and I see fans going to both the Lions games and the Canucks games but when people go to the Lions games they really go to the Lions games. What I’m saying is that you don’t see too many fans stomping around downtown with their faces painted for the Cancuks games.

Today the Lions are facing off against the Saskatchewan Roughriders [bl] for the Scotiabank West Championship. Fans have been streaming to the stadium for the past hour or so, and the flood has really picked up despite the typical Vancouver rain.

What’s more impressive though is the few Saskatchewan fans who’ve left their farms and their one gas station [wp] to parade around in the rain with halves of watermellons strapped to their heads singing songs like they were at an Arsenal game [as]. I guess when you don’t have an NHL team and the only entertainment is watching the ground to see if it thaws so you can plant your wheat, the CFL is a big deal.

So best of luck to the Lions today. Though it would be nice for Canucks fans to have something to be excited about, so we could all paint our faces and fill Robson street in an orgy of shouting, dancing and bottle rockets.

I have always avoided BC Lions games like the plague, as I have always had a sublime indifference to the sport of football. However, last night BC played Saskatchewan, and what an experience it was!

Our seats were close to the action, and I found myself constantly distracted by the many events that happen during a football game! The machismo! The athleticism! The cheerleaders! The tiny footballs! The lion mascot! The cheerleaders! And nobody got ZidaneD!!

And if you live in Vancouver and you don’t know who “Crazy P” is, you are missing out on one of the weirdest traditions this city has to offer. I definitely recommend the event, even if you detest organized sports like I do.

Well, I guess that if I’m ever going to get around to my first post here, I might as well make it memorable. I’m not trying to stir things up, mind you. Just a simple opinion. Regarding the BC Lions and the Grey Cup.

To be perfectly honest, I truly don’t believe that they should be in the Grey Cup. Yes, I know that they started 11-0. But they finished 1-6. Any team that falls apart so completely, doesn’t deserve to be in any league championship game.

I feel that, with the way they were playing, if they hadn’t hosted the Western final, they’d have been eliminated in the semi-final.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’d have been happy to see them get to the Grey Cup, but, truly, they really wouldn’t have deserved to be there after such a horrible collapse.

That said, I’ll try and post more positive stuff from now on. How ’bout them Canucks?

So as Grey Cup weekend approached for Vancouver and B.C. football fans are selling off their tickets, the Canadian Armed Forces are gearing up for a major operation. Yes the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League’s top prize, is so coveted that the military is guarding it. The Grey Cup was sailed into the city harbour on the HMCS Vacouver yesterday and CF-18 fighter jets are going to do a fly over during the celebrations on the weekend.

The CBC is reporting that this is raising some concerns amoung people who pay taxes and expect the military to defend more than a football trophy. They quote a representative of the Canadian Tax Payers Federation as saying:

“The level of involvement is certainly going to be a big price tag for the taxpayers, and for the military which is constantly reminding taxpayers and the public of how little resources they have.

“To be spending it on such a gratuitous public relations campaign is certainly questionable.”

The navy apparently thinks that sailing a warship into the harbour is a great recruiting tool, hoping I suppose that drunk Grey Cup fans from Edmonton and Montreal will get so wrapped up in the festive mood that they enlist for a tour of duty. Because people recruited after a Grey Cup bender are the sort of people we want to give guns to.

Grey Cup football CFL military

So we’re having the Grey Cup in Vancouver this weekend, and while it’s perhaps not the once in a lifetime experiance that hosting Expo ’86 was, or the Olympics will be, it’s still a pretty big event for the city and aside from the Stanley Cup the Grey Cup is the most important team sports trophy a Canadian team is able to win. I know people who’ve gone previous Grey Cups and even though they’re not football fans, they’ve had a wicked good time. If I wasn’t working I’d go.

So it’s sad to see the CBC reporting that now that the Lions have been eliminated by the Edmonton Eskimos masses of Vancouver football fans are trying to offload their tickets. There was never any gaurantee that the Lions would get into the final, so why did they buy the tickets in the first place if they weren’t willing to to go see a non-B.C. Grey Cup? Come on people, it’s the Grey Cup. Crazy old people with buttons all over their clothes go to them every year no matter where they are and whose in it.

Are we all just not going to show up for any Olympic events if a Canadian, nay a Vancouver-ite, doesn’t have a shot at the medal? Should we all just jump off the Canucks bandwagon now because we all know in our hearts of hearts we can’t win the Stanley Cup (at least not with Dan Cloutier between the pipes). And if you’re going to jump off the bandwagon want to sell me your tickets?
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So Edmonton beat Vancouver in the West Division final today. Had the B.C. Lions won they’d be going on to the Grey Cup that Vancouver is hosting next week. Having a horse in the race next week would have amped up the excitement to a degree that I think would have made the people on radio sports talk shows simply explode. But thanks to Edmonton there’ll be no exploding pundits and no dream Grey Cup for the people of Vancouver.

Looks like we’ll all be watching the Eskimos and Montr