Julia Franziska Bendzko Wehrmann

March 25, 1921 - February 19, 2018

My mother Julia passed away peacefully on February 19, 2018. She is survived by five of her children: Petra, August, Martin, Barbara and Frank and their spouses, extended families, friends and neighbours.

Julia was predeceased by her husband Heinrich, her partner for 64 years and by her son Henry.

Julia was born and raised in Halle, Germany. During the war she worked for the red cross as a nurse and in a military garrison's children's day care center.

The family emigrated from Bremerhaven, Germany on November 28, 1954 and immigrated to Quebec City, Qc. Canada on December 10, 1954. Their first home in Canada was an apartment at 221 Agusta Ave., in Toronto’s Kensington Market District. From there the family moved to 18 Garden Ave. in 1956, and then to 66 Pine Crest Rd. in the High Park District in 1963. 

When she was able, not busy raising six children, Julia was a proficient and talented multi-media artist. Oil, Acrylic, Water Colour, and enamel work inspired her - as did the classics; ballet, opera and literature.  

 A celebration of Julia's life will take place on Sunday, March 25th at Glen Oaks Funeral Home, Oakville at 2:00 p.m.

Donations may be made to War Child Canada or to a children's charity of your choice.

Julia is fondly remembered by all who knew her.

She now rests peacefully with her God.

Long before I became an Account Director and a Creative Director, I was a Media Estimator, Buyer, Planner, Manager and finally a Media Director.

Being a Creative Director is fun because I’m the one responsible for coming up with the “big idea” that the client’s advertising campaign is built around.

Being an Account Director was also a lot of fun because the Account Director is really the one who drives the client conversation and is the one that determines if the client’s campaign is going to be very innovative, repetitive + boring, serious, insightful, wicked, funny, effective or benign.

But being a Media Director was the most challenging role and in hindsight the most interesting line of work. The Media Director determines where the stories will be told. Great media planning, buying + deployment are an amazing process of research driven information orchestrations.

Great media plans put great creative in a position to sell. (A great story at the right time + place presented to the right audience.)

A great media plan + poor creative works, but not as well. (An O.K. story at the right time + place presented to the right audience.)

A bad media plan + great creative is a waste of time + money. (A great story that the right target group never gets to see or hear.)

This, my friends is the 2016 / 2017 edition of the CMDC Digest.

It’s an executive summary of the kind of data today’s Media Directors use to assemble smart, insightful + effective media plans and recommendations.

• It’s an amazing assembly of facts and figures.
• It’s all about Canada (not the U.S.)
• It’s available for free at cmcd.ca
• And a quick search will turn up guides from previous years.

Enjoy!

I just saw this copy on a Dyson display case and I really like it for a number of reasons.

• It echoes the brand’s strategy – to do things differently than the competition.
• It helps reinforce the brand’s positioning and sales strategy at the retail level (among those) who probably will never be exposed to the high level Mission, Vision and Values of the Dyson brand.
• The short, well written, provocative copy encourages you to stop + think.

I’m posting this little gem because it’s a rare retail example of a clean, simple and practical (communication) alignment between what the brand claims to be, its market positioning, and its retail voice. 

Charlie died at 7:00 PM, Saturday June 24, 2017. In our last eleven years together I worked from home. Charlie hung around my office as I worked, was at my side on our three daily walks and at Michelle’s feet at night. We took over 14,000 walks together and covered over 25,000 kilometers.

For the time we had together I’m eternally grateful.