In a campaign that builds off its first spot, posted earlier on Pushing buses here De Lijn continues to promote buses in Brussels as vehicles of social good.

It's turning out to be a light (no pun intended), likeable campaign which does more to increase ridership than most transit advertising I've seen in a long, long time.


Article and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2009






Indian English is being a bhelpuri language. It is being sweet and hot and tangy.

In a most excellent piece first published in 1987 in the New York Times, Steven Weisman (who was being the Times' New Delhi bureau chief), takes a big, big bite of this most zabardast dish. Please to try it by clicking on post title, and I am promising you will be coming back for more.

Shown above: the first ads in Indian English ever written in Canada. I was writing these while being employed at Vickers and Benson for Asian Television Network and Bell ExpressVu. The ads were attracting a readership of their own - and the kind publications were offering to carry a second round just like that only, for free! All gods are great I am saying!


Article and blog: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.






Barrett and Welsh, submitted 5 entries in this year's Summit Creative Awards, an international award show that recognizes the creative work of small/independent agencies.

All five entries won.

Four of them (2 gold, 2 silver) were for York Region Transit's summer "dump the pump" campaign featured in an earlier posting on Pushing Buses - the winning entries are shown here again.

It's only possible to do good work when you have good clients and good suppliers.
To both, thank you.

This brilliantly wacky spot for Coke benefits from the fizzy mix of a Bollywoody dance sequence and bhangra homeboy Gurdass Mann's kickass delivery. Arre, chak de!

An outstanding report from the NYTimes.com, this video on a Pakistani business illuminates, surprises and challenges our preconceived notions of what Pakistan is, whether there is any tolerance in an Islamic context, while celebrating plain old chutzpah and entrepreneurship. It's a perfect piece for the crazy multicultural mosaic that is our world. A sublime bit of bizarre for the bazaar.


http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/04/27/world/1194839708301/a-pakistani-underworld.html

The debate on Chinese script carries on in the pages of the NY Times. Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, professor of Chinese literary studies, Eugene Wang, professor of Asian art, Hsuan Meng, writer at World Journal Weekly and Norman Matloff, computer scientist all weigh in with their opinions and considerations. The score? All the experts prefer the ability of traditional script to capture nuances and subtleties but 3 out of 4 say that there is room for both. Read and enjoy the original article by clicking on the title of this post.

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About the ideawallah

Gavin Barrett is Owner/Founding Partner + Chief Creative Officer, of award-winning Toronto agency Barrett and Welsh. In pursuit of big ideas he has: nibbled on pigs' ears (not on a live pig at the time); gone elephant-back in the Thai jungle (no elephants were hurt); gambled in a Macau casino (was utterly destroyed). His ads: have run in 35 countries, helped elect prime ministers, attracted the ire of the lawyers for Dolly the clone sheep, drawn an angry crowd in Lagos, have been studied in business texts in Canada and India and received derisive mention in a John Irving novel. His poems: can be found in Penguin’s anthology of 14 contemporary Indian poets, Reasons for Belonging. He cannot: sing.

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