Canadians are renowned for their quirky sense of humour, but the frequency with which local marketers refer to the fact that California has the same population yet produces higher GDP is no laughing matter.

The country’s socio-economics continue to be dominated by the gravitational pull of its neighbour from which multinational brands have often treated Canada as a 51st state.

Of late though, there’s been a resurgence of local creative media. “Up to the mid-1990s there wasn’t much bullishness among Canadian copywriters,” says Zak Mroueh, creative director at Taxi. “Since then, there’s been a renaissance in creativity, a feeling that we can compete globally.”

Taxi has picked up global awards for its work on Mini, while Ogilvy Canada is winning plaudits for the runaway success of its viral “Dove Evolution”, which shows a woman being transformed into a dazzling model.

“We are becoming less provincial,” agrees Taxi Toronto president Rob Guenette. “Part of the problem that plagues Canada is that we’re a receiving country. Multinational brands are more likely to use large [Torontobased] media agencies to sign-off on adaptations of US campaigns.”

Not only are there strong cultural similarities – US programming dominates the top 20 TV ratings and 80% of the population lives within 100 miles of the US – but with a domestic market 10 times smaller than the US “there are limits to the quality of production,” says Cossette co-founder Pierre Delagrave. “For TV especially we are seeing less creative campaigns.”

“There’s a prevailing North American view of how brands need to be supported and in that context Canada can be seen as relatively less important,” adds Fred Forster, president at PHD Canada. “The Canadian market is different and requires local knowledge and local creativity.”

The biggest difference is Frenchspeaking Quebec, which demands language adaptation if not totally separate creative. Yet Toronto itself is home to 120 actively spoken languages. “ Canada is bilingual but it’s too simplistic to characterise the country that way,” Mroueh observes.

In fact, Canada is regionally defined, divided into five time zones and five key markets: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. Toronto is the financial hub but the oil boom has rocketed incomes in Calgary, while Vancouver, also growing rich on natural resources, looks to Asia for its influences.

“Where the US is characterised by network sales and household audiences, Canadians focus on individual markets,” notes Karen Nayler, managing director at MindShare Canada.

Media consolidation is a concern. The proposed US$1.5bn takeover of speciality cable group Alliance Atlantis by CanWest Global leaves it battling with TVglobemedia, which recently acquired third-placed radio and TV operator CHUM, as the country’s major media conglomerates.

Both deals await regulatory approval with strategists convinced that further concentration spells inflated prices.

“This deal is not good for advertisers,” says Forster. “It’s going to make it more difficult to keep prices in line because another round of consolidation will create less ability for advertisers and agencies to negotiate fair prices.”

CTVglobemedia already owns the largest TV network, CTV, and the country’s largest daily The Globe and Mail. CanWest also owns number two national  newspaper National Post and the Global TV Network.

“Consolidation is destroying the art of media buying in Canada,” believes Guenette at Taxi, which has just hired its first in-house media planner.

With a weak magazine market comprising only a dozen national titles and flat to declining daily newspaper sales – as in many markets readership has been cannibalised by free commuter sheets – plus widespread feeling that the linear TV spot has passed its sell-by-date, planners are shifting budgets online.

Cossette’s biggest division is interactive from which it created Club Thirst, a two-storey environment for Coke Sprite in community site Habbo Hotel. For car manufacturer GM it developed an online “virtual advisor” featuring 1,200 video clips enticing youth targets to customise assets of the vehicles. It proved so successful that Cossette’s New York office is now executing a similar plan.

PHD devised the Fashionista Challenge for Unilever Ultra Clear, which used a mix of print media to drive 300,000 unique young females to play an “advergame” online.

Another online success has been Dashboard’s Mindi, a video avatar that can inhabit the desktops of young men with the Axe message.

Budgetary restrictions have enabled creative solutions to flourish. Nowhere is this more apparent than in out-ofhome and experiential marketing – media in which Canada excels.

 With the mass of population inhabiting just five key cities and a lenient nationwide signage policy, campaigns can be easily concentrated. “When used correctly, out-of-home can punch way above its weight for return on investment,” adds Nayler.

Vancouver shop Rethink believes guerrilla marketing pays dividends for local advertisers. “We’re using traditional media in non-traditional ways,” declares partner Chris Staples. To publicise the city’s sculpture biennale the agency commissioned large sculptures of a female breast or man’s face for an outdoor site with the tagline “art you can feel”.

Similarly, a promotion for the city’s Contemporary Art Gallery involved a wall of 50,000 buttons that passers-by could take. Each button was printed with one of 100 different words that are often used to describe modern art.

For a vendor of bullet-proof glass it filled another shelter with a million dollars of fake money and tempted people to grab it by surrounding it with the security glass. “The production cost U$7,000 but the press and TV coverage it received was worth a million dollars,” says Staples.

Out-of-home stunts are also a key part of multi-platform campaigns for multinational brands: MindShare targeted business travellers for Cisco with a fully functioning 6ft phone installation at Toronto airport; and Taxi and Cossette linked Nike to the Canadian ice hockey season with a series of massive billboards depicting hockey stars.

The bulk of adspend, however, remains in traditional media, a point Media Experts founder Mark Sherman is keen to emphasise.

“Agencies use guerrilla tactics as a calling card when the vast majority of their advertising is in traditional formats. While innovative out-of-home is strong and the momentum is certainly with interactive, Canada appears to be no different to the rest of the world in currently putting most store in the 30-second spot,” he says.