Great City Chicago!

 

What a GREAT weekend, give yourself a gift—go and visit a GREAT CITY, CHICAGO! That city is a GREAT inspiration for transforming Toronto!

  

Mmmmmmm, Millennium Park—it surrounds you with its magnificence, with the brilliant design features of our Canadian, Frank Gehry…we need more of his work here in Canada! “Millennium Park honors and builds on several proud Chicago traditions at once—beautiful architecture, landscaped and protected parklands, and the ongoing celebration of the arts.” said Mayor Dale

http://www.millenniumpark.org

 

You soooooo must do the new Modern Wing at The Art Institute…to frame Millennium Park from another perspective and let the daylight touch your soul while absorbing the most incredible collection of 20th- and 21st-century art in the fabulous new wing designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano. Kudos to Piano!

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/modernwing

 

 

Don’t forget the culinary haut design, Chicago is for foodies! Awwwwwww, Charlie Trotter’s never disappoints: Chef Trotter is devoted to divine dining and spoiling yourself rotten, I deserve it! It’s a not-to-be-missed experience at one of the world’s finest restaurants, don’t you agree? 

http://www.charlietrotters.com 

Tell me, don’t you just love Buckminster Fuller?! “So I said, call me Trim Tab.” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago has the best Buckminster Fuller exhibit on right NOW…what a guy, so smart, empowering and achieving of greatness. Who is Canada’s Buckminster Fuller??

 

Buckminster Fuller is often cited for his use of trim tabs as a metaphor for leadership and personal empowerment. In the February 1972 issue of Playboy, Fuller said: “Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab.”

http://www.mcachicago.org

 

Just sayin’! Have a GREAT time in Chicago! Toronto has huge potential, what will it take to make Toronto the inspiration for Chicago?

Brands Misbehaving…

After much internal debate, belladonna has selected the 3 companies below as some of the worst brands. What brands would you nominate?

 

COFFEE TIME

“The crack house of coffee shops. At least they are consistent at being bad.” Coffee Time recently relaunched with a new messy logo and identity platform that could be reminiscent of either the smell of coffee or more likely the strong odor of cigarette smoke that still permeates their retail locations. Consistent in poor marketing and brand experiences, Coffee Time delivers an overall dismal coffee shop encounter.

 

GO TRANSIT

The little engine that could not deliver—union strikes, cancelled service, late trains, “cattle call” packed trains/buses and increased pricing all leave GO as one of the worst brands to deliver on its brand promise of safe, convenient, and efficient transportation to the communities of the Toronto area. As a clear monopoly they win by default, not by design.

 

AIR CANADA

“It takes years of neglect or mismanagement to destroy a strong brand, and even longer to rejuvenate a brand that has fallen into disrepair,” Alan Middleton, Professor of Marketing at York University. Years of bad service, late flights, government bailouts and other frustrating experiences have left a mark on Air Canada’s brand. Regardless of what new marketing tactics Air Canada tries, its consumers will always remember that their experiences were inconsistent with the brand’s promise.