The Art of Marketing, a one-day $399 six-speaker conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — promoted in the above video — had at least a few of its 1,200 attendees tweeting like it’s 2009, despite no Wi-Fi on the premises. But this bunch just wants to be inspired — a decade ago, companies had to turn to former college football coaches to deliver those 21st century pep talks. Now, enough geeks have perfected their spiels to offer advice on selling absolutely anything! And, just like the horoscopes in the newspaper, the platitudes are kept general enough to apply to everyone. There is no room for error when virtually nothing said is capable of stirring argument. Continue Reading

Harlequin Romance Report is a fake-news generator to anticipate each year — with only 17 shopping days till Valentine’s, it’s a reminder for their lovelorn readers to pick up a few bodice-rippers to curl up with on February 14. Their online survey results might be a bit skewed, though: a “Temptometer” pie chart in the breaks down what indulgence respondents would not sacrifice during the recession, and 75 per cent answered “Books.” The latest innovation from the Torstar-owned publisher is anything but: 33 Harlequins are being made available in Japan for the Nintendo DS. Last fall, the company caught flak after announcing a new vanity imprint, Harlequin Horizons — resulting in a firestorm that included censure by the Romance Writers of America, its name was changed to Dellarte Press, whose self-publishing solicitations (“Take control of your dreams”) are extra-careful not to evoke the H-word. But now, romance is in the air, and the Harlequin report concurrently courts American and Canadian outlets with space to fill and time to kill. This year, press releases on both sides focus on the biggest temptation on the modern female mind: not romance, but how much money is earned by the temptress next door.

Grant McCracken, who started the youth-friendly Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, has published intensely academic thoughts for the past few years on a personal website called This Blog Sits At the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics — and he puts old-fashioned footnotes at the end of each post. Who else can you trust to explain how Levi’s lost a billion dollars in sales in a single year by missing out on the hip-hop trend: “Somebody on the creative strategic team said, ‘Who knew baggy pants were a paradigm shift?’ To which the answer is, well, actually, that’s your job. That’s why the world needs people with cultural sensitivities and maybe a Chief Culture Officer.” Conveniently enough, that’s also the name of the new book he is coming back to town to tout, including a Tuesday night appearance with Indigo’s “Chief Booklover” Heather Reisman. For an example of what he’s on about, a recent Harvard Business Review article called “How Ford Got Social Marketing Right” — by giving 100 consumers a compact car in exchange for their via Oprah-style feel-good storytelling with strategic placement for each Fiesta. Chief Culture Officers are the arch enemy of the 1990s concept of the coolhunter: “The trouble with coolhunters is that they are a little like cats,” McCracken explains. “Cats have more rods in the retina than we do and this gives them the ability to see movement better than we do. The price that cats and coolhunters pay for this adaption is that they are not very good at seeing things when these things are still.”

McNally Robinson Booksellers have joined CISS-FM “new country” radio proponent Rawlco Communications and Toronto One television owner Craig Media as media companies from Western Canada that fizzled fast in Toronto. But, since a retail store isn’t licensed like a broadcaster, all they can do is hastily depart the premises leased from Shops at Don Mills developer Cadillac Fairview, now left with a conspicuous vacancy. This week, a tractor-trailer is pulling up to the outdoor mall, to be loaded with inventory being hauled to Saskatoon for a bankruptcy sale. Tory McNally, dispatched east last year to manage this outpost of the business her parents started, wouldn’t wish the custom-built school board-esque location on their worst enemy: “Indigo would be crazy to move in here,” she told Quill & Quire, “but they’re welcome to it if they want it.” The eight-month life of McNally Robinson in Toronto followed about two years of planning — when their Winnipeg independent retail legacy was exported by another daughter to New York City, where the store now operates as McNally Jackson, it seemed natural for Toronto to get one too. And while area opposition to a prefab lifestyle centre in Don Mills filling the space of a dowdy indoor mall inspired Toronto Star columnist Christopher Hume to write the whole thing off, the anti-Cadillac Fairview faction behind the website Don Mills Friends thought the bookstore was the only redeemable part of the revamp. Printed words were never the entirety of the McNally business model, though: the Prairie Ink restaurant was built into the shop, evoking the department store cafeterias of yesteryear, but with a fancy menu, and quotations from the likes of Philip Roth on the wall. Perhaps, in the spirit of the centre’s Douglas Coupland clock tower inspired by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation constructions that shaped the country’s first suburb, all the neighbours wanted was a new place to get a warm tray of chicken pot pie, bowl of Jell-O cubes on the side.