Robin Heisey knows the winners, but good luck getting them out of him.
As the judging chair for this year’s Bessies, Heisey, executive VP and creative director at Harrod & Mirlin FCB, Toronto, is tight-lipped as to which spots have been selected as the best this country had to offer last year.
Regarded as emotionally draining by some and the catalyst for more therapy by others, Heisey sees the chairing job as more fun than any one person has a right to.

Halifax’s Ocean Entertainment and Toronto’s Northern Lights are championing their new documentary series Reinventing Ritual. The three one-hours are being produced for Vision TV by Ocean’s Johanna Eliot and Northern Lights’ Luc Bourgon and Ian French . A deal is pending in the U.S.
‘What we are doing in each episode is looking at a different rite of passage, the big transitional periods in one’s life, and trying to see how North Americans are handling them today,’ says director Sonya Jampolsky. ”Reinventing’ is the apt word, because most people have some historical knowledge or have some family history of rituals and they are just adapting them for the times. It is really fascinating when you start to explore ritual and what it actually is.’

‘Get over here, man. You’ve got to see this.’
The Players Film Company president Philip Mellows motions a newcomer on the set to join him and a dozen or so others crowded around the monitor to watch the biggest shot of this particular shoot. The Players crew is about to detonate a tank holding 1,800 pounds of water, which will spill down through a one-quarter-scale subway tunnel model, simulating a major washout.
The monitor thing seems somewhat odd. After all, just yards away a humongous water tank is about to explode – full scale. But Mellows’ childlike excitement wins the day and all gather around the small screen.
The glass holding the water in the tank is being sacrificed today for Toronto agency Ammirati Puris and client Clarica. This is the second of two spots being shot over the course of four days, with Players director Gary McKendry at the helm. Creative for both spots has been provided by APL cocreative directors Stephen Jurisic (art director) and Angus Tucker (copywriter) and continues the Clarica theme, ‘There’s a lot to be said for clarity.’

Jeff Finkler recently left a cushy job at Leo Burnett, Chicago, to return to Toronto where he has taken an executive VP, creative director post at Saatchi & Saatchi.
Finkler had spent nearly his entire career at Burnett, first in Toronto (where he’d risen to the post of executive VP, chief creative officer), then in Chicago (as vice chairman, executive creative director), before first reporting to Saatchi in early March. He says the decision to come back to Toronto was not a difficult one to make.

The remote control and urine – an advertiser’s two worst enemies. (Sorry if you were reading this over lunch!) There are other anti-ad distractions as well: the refrigerator, the kids, the dog, but the remote and pee are the main enemies….

Who’s gone where? From where? And when? As the Revolving Doors spin, we put the spotlight on spot-makers on-the-move….

Post-production and its powers are personified in this column. We’ll cover new techniques, technologies and the creative personnel and companies giving them vibrant visual life….

The Web is still a murky area for some advertisers, and many seem unsure about how exactly it can be of benefit. If they are to follow the example of Nike, Molson, Roots and others, and contact Vancouver’s noisemedia – a…

Bryant Fulton & Shee may not be the biggest agency in Vancouver, but it is certainly respected as one of the best. Two of the reasons for this may well be its cocreative directors, Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk. As a creative team, art director Francilia and copywriter Scherk have won a mantelful of awards in their five years together. Ruling over the BFS creative roost with humor and a strict work ethic, the two epitomize the notion of a creative team.

When Shaw Communications went in search of a new agency last spring, the ‘smart, funny’ creative and ‘button-down’ sensibilities of Bryant Fulton & Shee cocreative directors Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk brought the cableco to a screeching halt….

Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk, cocreative directors at Bryant Fulton & Shee, have etched themselves on the Vancouver commercial market with quality spots most production and post houses are anxious to work on. …

The PNMD Communications creative duo of copywriter Stephane Charier and VP, creative director, art director Martin Beauvais is big in Quebec. How big? Well, at Christmas they were in direct competition with the Beatles. If the Beatles are bigger than Jesus (thank-you, Mr. Lennon), then what exactly does that make these ad guys?
The competition with John, Paul, George and Ringo was over a CD Beauvais and Charier championed over the holidays last year. As an extension of their ongoing campaign for Quebec’s milk producers, Le Federation des Producteurs de Lait du Quebec, a CD featuring the music used in their popular ads was battling it out with the lads’ greatest hits album for top spot on the Quebec music charts.