Oh look..Toronto Tourism is helping to bring in International press and buyers…

I would say how brilliant they are except, this is exactly one of the things I indicated to Andrew Weir their illustrious VP of Communications when I approached Toronto Tourism a few years ago…(among the others was moving the venue to a more downtown location)… 

Now this post isn’t  a ‘look at me and how brilliant I am’ . This is a ‘look at them and how clueless they are’.  They have almost gone through my list..so it will be interesting to see what they come with next cause I know they’re not smart enough to pull off the rest of what I had suggested…(their stolen tag line and beautifully misspelt ads prove my point). 

It’s absolutely fantastic that there are those that endeavour to emulate a great fashion capital such as New York (even though it’s an hour plane ride away on Porter).  It is, however, irresponsible for an agency like Toronto Tourism to fund that unattainable goal. 

Because, really, besides that ad spread last year that looked ridiculous and like my friends nephew photoshopped it together, what type of positive press have they got for the million bucks?

So I ask, is this not a case of the blind leading the hopeful?

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This is going to be the basis to our ad campaign and positioning for TWOS08.  I basically decided on this after reading this quote by Coco Chanel :

“Fashion passes, Style remains.”  

After doing some research online on this, I came across this very cool blog posting that I found awhile ago on Danielle’s blog.  

And then this quote by Jeremy Laing during his speech at Mass Exodus: “Toronto doesn’t need to try and be New York. We have a world class fashion week 8 hours away.” 

It got me thinking about Toronto’s place in the world….
One of the reasons that Toronto Fashion Week never has and never will reach the size and importance of a true fashion capital such as New York and its’ fashion week is because we don’t have the infrastructure for it.  New York alone has at least a dozen stores twice the size of Holt’s.  Wall Street is one of the financial centresof the world, so they have the money to support a purchasing pipeline and  they have Madison Avenue, the most important street in Advertising in the world.The bottom line is that they have all of the tools required for an established designer/brand to really make some money. 

The issue is that you can’t go to New York to create and/or tweak your brand.There are well over 300 designers showing during New York Fashion Week and everyone of them is ready to take orders and mass produce their lines within weeks.(btw…congrats to Jeremy Laing for being able to do this).  So trying it out in New York is just not fiscally prudent. 

Which brings me to Toronto. We don’t have a strong fashion industry. We have hundreds of the most creative, fantastic, talented and inspiring designers in the world here. We also have, however, no real body that understands how to market them and help them become a global brand like they do in New York, Milan, Paris, and London. We have a body who screams ‘look at us, you have to like us because without us you’re screwed’.  And with them being the only body around, people are forced to listen. 

We do however, have a great style industry (put what style industry is here).  Toronto has created and/or help refine and grow design, fashion, music and gastronomical movements that have gone on to act as the foundation for the global trends that fashion follows. 

Now I go into all of this because this is where the Toronto Week of Style fits in and the reason for the adoption of the fantastic quote by Madame Chanel  We are not trying to be New York Fashion Week like Toronto Fashion Week is so desperately trying to do.  We are creating anew way to show fashion to the most powerful buyers out there…the consumer.  At the end of the day, buyers and media work for consumers.  Once upon a time, consumers looked to media and retail outlets for guidance on what to wear. This is when Fashion was at its most powerful.  Today, however, that is not even close to being the case.  The internet has made the consumer more knowledgeable than the industry that was created to serve it.   

So why do we need a middle man? 

This question is at the heart of everything we do.  We don’t have thousands of the same disinterested people who fall asleep at shows and who couldn’t care less what marketing messages are being shown to them.  We have thousands of people who live, breath, write about, discuss and devourall aspects of the industry. They look to us help make up their minds on how they want to brand themselves.  They are the ones who make up the cultural tastemakersthat define pop culture. They are the influencers who can create a movement by simply utteringa few word or typing a few keystrokes. 

They are the style icons.
They are the leaders. 
..and it was about time there was an event for them

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