Back in ’09 my client, designer George Argyropoulos — then a partner with Jib, now running his own shop, Meta Design — approached me with a few small jobs for Far Coast’s Canada-wide brand relaunch. What began as a trickle grew to a Niagaral flow, culminating in a vast 2010 Vancouver Olympics marketing blitz (Far Coast having won Official Brewed Beverage Supplier status for the Games).

Below, some of the ads and posters used at and around Far Coast cafes and kiosks in Whistler and Vancouver.

The Far Coast website served as a key vehicle for the brand launch. In time, the Olympics sort of took it over. A few screen shots show how the various coffee and tea blends were communicated — using audio and rolling text. (If you visit the site, take note that I am responsible for the two blend descriptions shown below. The others existed before my time and aren’t quite to my, uh, taste.)

Far Coast also commissioned students from Emily Carr University of Art + Design to design and build seating for its cafes from ‘blue pine’. The timber gets its name and blueness as a result of the nasty mountain pine beetle having invaded the trees it comes from. I thought the initiative was brilliant, and so re-purposed the old ‘when life gives you lemons’ line to explain Far Coast’s adoption of this perfectly good wood, which due to its colouration is not viewed by the timber industry as commercially viable.

Since May 2, the day of The Autists, I’ve not had a moment’s rest. Pitching new clients, launching a new business and keeping up with demand from existing clients. So a quick postmort.

In sum, a massive success. We sold off virtually everything on auction, both the live and silent versions, at generally strong prices. We had three exceptional musicians — Chaka Khan, Matt Savage and Samantha Mutis — perform for us at what several conductors and musicians have already ranked among the finest concert venues in North America, Koerner Hall. And we raised a considerable sum for Geneva Centre for Autism, the exact amount I do not yet know.

I have big plans for The Autists in future, which I’ll share as they inch toward fruition.

Vast thanks to all those who worked with me, donated product, time and sweat to help our event rock the world. In no particular order they are:

Charles Pachter, for curating like the true master he is, and bringing in all those talents whose work gave our event much added oomph

Albert Schultz, for selling the goods, making us laugh and making it look far too easy

Peter Doig, for donating a fine and valuable work that helped our cause immeasurably

Stan Morantz, for saying yes to all our printing needs faster than it took him to read the list of them

Wallace Edwards, for donating a fabulous work (two actually — long story) without hesitation

Curt Detweiler, for hooking us up from San Fran with a top ad creative team in Toronto to do the outdoor and print campaigns

Jon Freir & Chunky, for producing those ads quickly and tastefully

David Shephard, Dali and Cornelius, for the blog design, ad tweaks and other last-minute favours

Fidel Pena & Claire Dawson, for designing The Autists logo and invitations that set a high and early mark and made a mere idea shine a few million candlepower brighter than it would’ve in lesser hands

Chaka, Matt & Sam, for singing, playing and giving all and remaining at the top of your respective games throughout

John Alcorn, for organizing the music, bringing such consummate pros to back up Chaka, to the extent that she took the time to write and thank us for making the experience unusually rich for her

Hindy Abelson, for believing, acting on it, tapping her people, and watching my back

Holly Bannerman, for watching Hindy’s back, and being a calming presence throughout many typhoons of uncertainty

Katie Wilson, for feeding me much useful info and enabling me to experience more personal organization than I’ve ever known, or may ever know again

Boss Marg Whelan, for saying yea not nay to a loony fundraising event, then being such a class act while attending it

The Koerner Hall-ers, for your professionalism, understanding and endless assistance

The staff at Geneva Centre, for doing what you do and making an absolute difference to the lives of people who really need a difference made

Wills & Co Media Strategies approached me with Do Over Day. For a viral campaign, it went totally bird flu. TV news and talk shows, radio stations, bloggers, surfers went nuts over it. Anyone who heard about it generally got caught up in it. The videographer, sent out to ask punters what their do overs would be, hit a pub in Cabbagetown, did some interviews, and when he returned a few hours later, everyone was still talking do overs.

I wrote the copy for dooverday.ca along with collateral — T-shirts, notepads, etc. — which I’ll post as soon as I can get my wife to shoot it all with her fancy-ass new camera that I can never get into focus.

Top design work by Laura at Messenger. Hope to be doing more with her, also my collaborator on the OurStage work.

SAS, the software giant, not the Swedish airline, asked my client Jib to come up with a viral campaign based on what life would be like without SAS products. SAS makes terabyte-crunching software, the brains behind everything from synchronized traffic signals, to keeping beer fizzy, to optimizing power grids and cable television networks. Collectively it’s called analytics.

I wrote up the complete package (video, e-blast and microsite) and, when Jib couldn’t find an actor who fit the gig in the video, played the lead as well.

Prospects first receive this e-blast,

which connects them to a page like this (there were a few variations):

The cut that I favoured is the one at the top, but a need for brevity saw it shortened down to this.

The viral program launched in mid-Sept ’08.

Our work got coverage on CTV: http://watch.ctv.ca/news/clip92494#clip92494

And how’s it doing? SAS Canada’s marketing chief says response has been solidly on the side of good, and people are surprised that it’s come from a company like SAS. A few don’t get it all — which, given the unusualness of it, is no huge surprise.