Montreal vocalist Nikki Yanofsky turns 16 today — old enough to annoy a critical mass of viewers of the Super Bowl via CTV, who were hoping to wake up Monday morning with renewed enthusiasm for The Who, and left instead with their ears ringing with one too many impressions of the network’s theme song for their Vancouver 2010 coverage, “I Believe.” But now that you can’t count on most folks to be familiar with the No. 1 song on the download charts — incidentally, this week in Canada, it’s the FIFA World Cup anthem “Wavin’ Flag” by K’Naan — a tune that a critical mass can despise is an ideal metaphor for the Olympic spirit. While first tasting fame as a tweenage jazz vocalist, Nikki couldn’t say no to the exposure afforded by the anthem composed by Stephan Moccio, with lyrics by Glass Tiger stalwart Alan Frew. Toronto Star pop scribe Ashante Infantry described the results as “‘I Believe I Can Fly’ set to the Chariots of Fire theme” but no one will mistake this bombast for R. Kelly and Vangelis. Now available in retail stores — accompanied by French and bilingual versions, “J’Imagine,” sung by Annie Villeneuve — this is sure to be the biggest retail CD single in Canada since Elton John’s tribute to Diana, “Candle in the Wind 1997.” Then again, major record companies gave up on releasing CD singles after that. Continue Reading

Noel Biderman, the founder of Toronto-based Ashley Madison, was the closing speaker at the Social Media Week edition of CaseCamp — presenting in the same afternoon as the BRANDAID Project for Haiti relief, and one of the founders of Boxee, showing off a new high-tech way to inspect the tattoos of the Suicide Girls. The adulterous online dating service seemed to have the surest business model, though. Starting his presentation with the question “How many of you have cheated on your spouses?” Biderman assured the audience at the Rivoli that they are “just really good at Plan B.” Which is really Plan A — like having their streetcar advertising wrap rejected by the Toronto Transit Commission, despite offering subsidize each ride on said trolley by 50 cents, generating even more publicity for a service nobody will ever admit to using. Also learned: AshleyMadison.com is three times busier than usual on Monday mornings, and an ominous traffic bump is experienced on Father’s Day. However, a report earlier this week via Reuters speculated that parent company Avid Life Media Inc. was having trouble following through on its plan to raise $60 million in an initial public offering, to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange: “They are trying to diversify their revenues away from Ashley Madison,” said an anonymous source. Avid Life’s other properties, CougarLife.com and EstablishedMen.com evidently serve the same kind of clientele, only without the homewrecking connotations. Ashley Madison’s never-ending publicity blitz continues to slither along, though: barred by the NFL from running commercials in the Super Bowl, the site successfully bought airtime “in select markets” last weekend during the Pro Bowl: “I’ve always maintained that Ashley Madison saves more marriages than it hurts,” brags Biderman. “Unfortunately, illegal gambling and excessive alcohol consumption which are also closely tied to America’s favorite game can’t make the same claim.”

PREVIOUSLY: Social Media Week Toronto brings Suicide Girls to life

A pilot partnership placing digital screens in the hallways of four high schools was unveiled last week at Harbord Collegiate by tweeting Toronto District School Board education director Chris Spence — his 7-year-old son was fiddling with a BlackBerry during dad’s brief speech, about the technological transformation of our times. What has also changed since the days of Naomi Klein protégés rallying against branded Pepsi vending machines — a 2004 five-year deal school trustees narrowly voted to continue last summer — is the likelihood of any student to draw a distinction between the messages being projected on a fixed monitor and the ones being beamed through their personal devices. Harbord students talked of being able to control the messaging themselves, whether for a sports team update or fundraiser for Haiti, and a police officer turned up to explain how the screens will allow for spreading the word about missing kids. David Haynes, who writes the Sixteen:Nine blog about the digital signage industry, has been left wondering what attracted the Onestop Media Group to seize this opportunity — noting that the press release was careful not to use the word “advertising.” But a report from the launch via Marketing magazine got Bolton to clarify that “third-party messaging” would be part of a longer-term relationship: “This isn’t advertising,” he said. “Advertising is jeans for $39.99. Sponsorship is the milk marketing board putting forward ideas around [kids] drinking more milk.” Onestop boss Michael Girgis mentioned the Toronto Transit Commission, for whom they also provide screens, as a contributor to their cryptic funding model. “My guess is the model is to get in the door,” writes Haynes, “prove the sky didn’t fall and this thing isn’t the high school hallway shopping channel, and slowly get the board and parents loosening the rules. If it works, Girgis may have something. If it doesn’t, he’s out maybe $20K in gear and lots of legwork and resource time.”

PREVIOUSLY: Students don’t really mind corporate-sponsored poetry

Currently preparing to perform a “compact melody” of theme songs from sundry CSI television shows to football fanatics in Miami is the band who released The Who Sell Out around the same time as the first Super Bowl. So, what are Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey going to do for an encore? Chances are, this halftime is their final opportunity to perform for a broadcast television audience — although that was also the idea at Maple Leaf Gardens on December 17, 1982. “Perhaps it’s because it has more of a European feeling and we’re more at home there,” said Townshend of the choice of Toronto for The Who’s farewell, at an October press conference on the Hollywood backlot of 20th Century Fox, who were facilitating its transmission. He also held forth on the then-sorry state of the music business: “I think rock has lost its penetrating power with audiences, which reflects a change in the passion of the artists making it, as well as other things — radio becoming more streamlined, more format-oriented and tied to advertising.” Not that this stopped them from having the It’s Hard album tour sponsored by Schlitz — while a supposedly last last-ever press conference, hosted by J.D. Roberts, took place at the Molson brewery on Fleet Street. Someone had to pay for the satellite transmission, whose 11 cameras included one mounted on a crane, although Gardens proprietor Harold Ballard was obviously raking in the most. And once a reunion tour was booked in 1989, the concert turned out to be more of a break than a break-up, although punk progenitor Townshend made sure it ended in the sloppiest way possible: having late bassist John Entwistle lead a butchering of “Twist and Shout.”