Sackville Fire in 2006

Two years ago, on the night that I returned to Sackville from my summer on the West Coast, there was a large fire in downtown Sackville, my hometown. The date was August 11th, 2006.

It started out fairly innocently. I had just arrived at the Pub minutes before, when someone came into the bar and said that they had just been kicked out of Ducky's because the fire alarm went off. This was (and still is) a fairly frequent occurrance. Everyone assumed that it was a false alarm. This was still fairly early in the evening, shortly after 9pm.

An hour later someone else come up to the Pub and reported that the building really was on fire. Fifteen minutes later, another call came in to tell us that it was a major fire. A couple of us decided to walk down to see what was happening, and I grabbed the video camera.

When I arrived, we immediately realized that this was definitely a major fire, it didn't take long to realize that the building would be destroyed. I stayed at the scene for about an hour, and the police officers, recognizing who I was, allowed me close enough to get some pretty good footage. A lot of my video footage was used on a couple of the regional news networks the following day.

Anyway, I also took some of the more interesting shots and put together a short video, about seven minutes long, and we put a copy of it online on the Pub website, so alumni and students from out-of-town could see what happened. The Pub website had over three thousand visitors in the following 24 hours as word got around. I was also happy that we were able to use the video later that same year in putting together a fundraising/awareness video for the Sackville Fire Department.

Anyway, I found a copy of the video yesterday, so I put it up on YouTube. A lot of students at MTA right now (everyone in first or second year) won't have ever seen what the downtown used to look like before half the block burned down. Here's a copy of the video:



Here's a direct link to the YouTube page, for Facebook readers who can't see the video as an embedded object:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9ZoR4N7hlM

Marketing Brilliance

As a marketing major in my undergrad, and also having taken several marketing courses when completing my MBA, I tend to analyze various marketing campaigns that I come across in the world around me. And I tend to appreciate unusual, intelligent, or subtle marketing ideas, because there aren't enough of them in the world today. I also tend to really shake my head at other marketing approaches. For instance, what about WalMart's plan to market products for the Chinese New Year, by proclaiming that the products were "authentic products for the Chinese New Year, made in China!" Um, someone can correct me here if I'm wrong, but isn't the majority of stuff sold by WalMart made in China already?

Anyway, I'm in Vancouver this afternoon, and I came across a billboard that was so creative and yet stunning in its simplicity that I didn't know whether to clap or shake my head in disbelief. The ad is for NEW Diamond Shreddies. I was always a big fan of Shreddies as a breakfast cereal, so I was intrigued by the "new" Shreddies. Well, as the photo below will attest, the difference with the new cereal is that they turned a Shreddie around when they took the photo, so it looks like a diamond rather than a square.




Just don't be disappointed if you find that they taste similar to the square ones.

And by the way, what is the proper spelling of Shreddies in the singular? Is it a Shreddie or a Shreddy?