Cute little 30-second ads for World Cup coverage in my employer's newspaper from Guillaume Blanchet.

http://vimeo.com/12427369

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Especially when you're hopping roofs on the way home.

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For 364 days a year, Canadians don't care about what the CRTC calls "simultaneous substitution" - the policy whereby cable and satellite providers replace a U.S. channel with a Canadian one when both are running the same program. (The logic behind this is so the Canadian station gets all the Canadian viewers and can charge higher advertising rates.)

For Montrealers especially, the U.S. ads are pretty forgettable. Local ads for Burlington businesses or ads for products and services that Canadians don't get. Besides, commercials in general are meant to be ignored. Nobody really cares whether the Ford ad lists prices in Canadian or U.S. dollars.

But then there's Super Bowl Sunday. And while two teams fight for the National Football League's championship trophy, many television viewers will be looking at the full experience, which includes a halftime show and insanely-expensive commercials. Advertisers turn Super Bowl commercials into events, building up hype and spending through the nose on celebrities and special effects to justify the through-the-nose spending they're doing just to get the airtime.

So if you're a Montrealer watching the Super Bowl and want the U.S. commercials, what can you do?

Here are your options:

1. Watch the U.S. network over the air. As much as the CRTC would like, it can't stop U.S. stations from transmitting across the border. So you can hook up an antenna and watch it that way. The U.S. network affiliates in Vermont and New York have good coverage in Montreal if you have a good antenna. The catch is that since 2009 they broadcast only in digital, which means you need a television with a digital tuner (most recent HDTVs have this) or a converter box (like this one or this one). Elias Makos has more details for Montrealers wanting to watch U.S. stations over the air.
2. Watch west-coast feeds. This method has mixed success. The cable and satellite companies are supposed to replace all feeds they're asked to, but some forget (or aren't asked?) to do this for west coast feeds, which carry the Super Bowl live at the same time as the east-coast stations do. There's no guarantee of success with this.
3. Watch the ads online. These advertisers aren't about to sue people who put their ads online, and they're more than welcome to you watching them as many times as you want after the game. YouTube and Spike TV have special sites setup with Super Bowl commercials. The latter includes an archive of past Super Bowl ads. Adweek has a section on Super Bowl ads too
4. Get the feed illegally. If you subscribe to DirecTV or other U.S.-based satellite services, this whole post is moot and you'll get the U.S. feeds. You can also try hunting for website streaming the Super Bowl from a U.S. location, but the NFL works diligently to shut those down, and if the entire point is to watch the ads, then you might as well just go to YouTube and see them there legally.
5. Go to a friend's house or bar that has done one of the above. Of course, the harder it is for you to get the feed, the harder it is for them too.

Ways that no longer work:

1. Watch the U.S. network in HD on Videotron Illico digital TV. Videotron made a point of announcing in the past that they would have the U.S. feed untouched in HD. They can no longer do this for customers in the Montreal area with the setup of CFCF-DT in 2011.
2. Watch the game on Bell TV. The CRTC closed a loophole in 2009 that would have allowed Bell to give most of its subscribers access to the U.S. Super Bowl feed. If you use Bell TV satellite service, you're out of luck.

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Especially when the repo men come calling.

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Mario Dumont likes to point. And do things in slow-motion.

(via the Clique)

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Because I've been a bit serious lately, here's a kid with cookies.

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Some more selections from the Quebec advertising archives from Johnnys96 and ladyjaye27:

While sexism may be bad, cultural stereotypes will live on forever.

Who knew Ricardo Montalban spoke so well in French? (KHAAAAN!)

This TurboGrafx16 is the future. Within a year everyone will have one! Even francophones who don't mind playing on an English-only system.

A condensed, 30-second version of Il fait beau dans l'métro.

Still a pretty good argument for taking public transit in winter.

A feel-good-about-Montreal video, centred on a pre-Nagano MSO. Also see two videos which were part of the mid-90s "Montréal, c'est toi ma ville" campaign.

Who knew televised bowling was so exciting? I guess in the era before Habs games, RDS had to find some way of attracting viewer interest.

Claude Meunier's Van Halen impression, and a chance to win a dancing Pepsi can!

Ladies and gentlemen, Patrice L'Écuyer.

A RadCan promo for the 1993 NHL playoffs, with the kind of graphic finesse you find in YouTube hockey compilations today. I know the Habs are underdogs, but I have a good feeling...

Not so great feeling about Montreal's other major-league team.

TQS really should go back to a squirrels-and-children motif.

If you don't remember Macha's Pharmaprix commercials (in either language), you must have been comatose in the 90s. Here's another. And another. And another. And another.

If you don't remember Jojo, you've suppressed the memory.

And if you don't remember Bleu Nuit, you're lying, you pervert.

Super Mercado! YAY!

Misez juste, sadly, did not last long. Perhaps it's time for a comeback?

Speaking of show formats that can't possibly fail...

Vote Johnson '94! (Honestly, I had no clue any of these people besides Pierre Marsan were once in the provincial Liberal party.)

Are you prepared to let this Jean Chrétien guy become prime minister of Canada by wasting your votes on this "Bloc Québécois" party? Jean Charest says no, and you can trust him. Vote Campbell '93!

The MacBook Air totally ripped off that laptop-in-an-envelope idea.

And there's thousands more where that came from.

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Another gem from the digger-upper of retro Québécois commercials. This one for my newspaper. (Don't call that number, it's about 20 years out of date.)

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Of course, for those who want to see them, they're all over the place online: Just for Laughs, Spike, NFL, FanHouse, YouTube, MySpace. Some include so-called "banned ads" and other attention-grabbers.

Dominic Arpin provides some of his favourite ads. But really, they all suck.

Oh, and that was a good game today, even if I could pay only half attention to it.

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It's Super Bowl Sunday, and for those of you who have no idea which NFL teams are playing in the big game, you'll probably want to avoid CTV.

The national television network is carrying over 10 hours of Super Bowl coverage on the main network, plus a bunch of stuff on TSN and even MuchMusic and Space (convergence marketing yay!)

We'll remind you at this point that the Grey Cup, the championship game of the Canadian Football League, wasn't carried on CTV but rather CTV-owned TSN.

In case you're more interested in the commercials than the show (CTV News says it's one of the big reasons to watch, without a hint of irony), well there's bad news for you. CTV has ensured that as many loopholes are closed as possible to prevent Canadian viewers from seeing any non-CTV commercials. Bell TV is being forced to simultaneously substitute CTV for NBC nationwide, and Videotron has apparentl agreed to do the same across the province, according to the CTV press release I've pasted below.

CTV is planning on giving Canadians access to the commercials online (assuming I'm reading this correctly) at the Just for Laughs website. But I don't think that'll satisfy viewers.

So during the broadcast, we'll be stuck with whatever CTV has to offer (assuming they even fill all their spots). We don't even get the privilege of a spousal cheating ad.

Those of you who want to (legally) watch NBC's Super Bowl commercials live have one remaining option: Hook up an antenna to your TV and tune in to WPTZ.

CTV blocks commercials yay!

CTV Delivers SUPER BOWL XLIII in Stunning High Definition and 5.1 Surround Sound to Quebec Viewers

– Bruce Springsteen highlights half-time show on CTV –

Toronto, ON (January 30, 2009) – CTV confirmed today that viewers in Quebec will be able to see complete coverage of SUPER BOWL XLIII in stunning High Definition and 5.1 Surround Sound on CTV HD. Despite suggestions otherwise, CTV’s presentation of SUPER BOWL XLII will feature “spectacular image and sound quality” on CTV HD, available to Videotron, Bell TV, Star Choice and Cogeco subscribers.

CTV’s exclusive Canadian coverage of SUPER BOWL XLIII, featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers taking on the Arizona Cardinals, begins at 12 noon ET from Tampa, FL, with six hours of pre-game programming (visit CTV.ca to confirm local broadcast times). The CTV HD broadcast will include the greatly-anticipated half-time show featuring Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street band.

CTV encourages viewers interested in SUPER BOWL commercials to visit www.justforlaughs.com/superbowl, where many of this year’s advertisements have already been posted.

Calling the SUPER BOWL on CTV is the NFL broadcast team of Emmy Award-winners Al Michaels (play-by-play) and John Madden (colour analyst), while reporters Andrea Kremer and Alex Flanagan patrol the sidelines. Emmy Award-winner Bob Costas hosts the pre-game, post-game and halftime shows alongside co-hosts Cris Collinsworth, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, studio analysts Tiki Barber and Jerome Bettis, reporter Peter King, and special guests – and SUPER BOWL champions – Tony Dungy, Mike Holmgren and Matt Millen. The SUPER BOWL halftime show, sponsored in Canada by Diet Pepsi, features Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, while Faith Hill sings ‘America the Beautiful’ and Academy Award-winner Jennifer Hudson sings the national anthem prior to kickoff.

For more information on CTV’s extensive multi-platform coverage of SUPER BOWL XLIII, click here.

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I actually remember this ad from 1994, when the then-STCUM introduced and publicized its seemingly revolutionary system where you could call a phone number and get the arrival time of the next bus.

The Telbus system (in which each stop for each route had a phone number attached to it) was eventually replaced with the current AUTOBUS, which has a single phone number and a five-digit code for each stop.

A second ad returns to a dry, if accurate, talking point for public transit: It's cheaper and more reliable than a car in the long run.

Plenty of other (non-transit-related) retro Quebec ads uploaded recently too, including some related to the 1994 Quebec election, a station ID for Musique Plus and a French ad for CHOM FM.

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The following videos are ... not nearly as cool. They're from the dark period of lame 80s/90s Quebec song commercials. All three have the same message: the bus and metro are much faster, cheaper and less stressful than driving a car and dealing with traffic and parking and accidents and stuff.

(via CPTDB)

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Dear FinallyFast.com,

I understand computers are hard, and that filming a commercial with people you found off the street can be difficult.

FinallyFast.com is for PC Computers Only

But when you say your product is for PCs only,

This iMac is apparently supposed to be a PC in the magic fairytale land of FinallyFast.com commercials

perhaps you shouldn't show people using what are obviously Macs (albeit with the logos covered up).

BSOD on an iBook.. err, PC laptop

I can't tell you how often I've gotten a blue screen of death on my iBook. Oh wait, yes I can. It's never.

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Discovery Channel Canada has started airing its version of the adorably awesome 60-second "Boom de ah dah" commercial developed by its American counterpart. See if you can spot the lame Canadian insertions.

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And Best Buy is there to rub salt in the wound:

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In one of those moments that marketing geeks wet their pants over, RDS apparently agreed in December to cut out the visual feed for 10 seconds of its Sports 30 recap of a Canadiens game, replacing it with an ad for the Quebec Foundation for the Blind which was mostly a black screen. The audio feed was left as is.

I can find no news coverage of this feat, nor anything from RDS, so I'll just have to take the word of the marketing agency that this actually happened.

I suppose with all the product placement, pop-up ads and other junk that increasingly attacks our television viewing experience, something like this is inevitable. Let's just hope this idea isn't expanded to commercial advertising.

(via iPub)

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A little place to get your revenge for My Lil' Reminder and its ilk.

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Fortunately, some people have taken it upon themselves to do just that. There's even a blog, Publicités poches du Québec, that has tasked itself with that mission, uploading recordings of these ads to YouTube.

Here are some of my favourites:

• Céline Dion hawking a Dodge Shadow and Diet Coke.
• A Jean-Pierre Ferland song and some underage-looking kids making suggestive gestures with popcorn for a butter commercial
• TV Hebdo is some sort of magic remote control or something
• Distribution aux Consommateurs works hard for their money, with the big hair, purple suits and giant eyeglasses that make the 80s so regrettable.
• Radio-Canada are there pour vous divertir, avant tout.
• La clef de sol offers a Pentium 133 with a Statue of Liberty on its screen for no apparent reason, and you don't have to pay until 1997.
• Brault & Martineau is so cool it hurts.
• Wal-Mart doesn't want you to buy too much soap.
• Froot Loops c'est bon c'est bon.
• Cita-Cita-Citadelle.

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