Sarah Thompson, dentsu Canada
Deborah Gurofsky, Media Pulse
Andy Braunston, Wavemaker Canada
Jan Kestle, Environics Analytics





Who can forget ‘Lemon’, the seminal work by Orlando Wood (published as a book by the IPA) and its argument that a golden age in adtech was definitely not matched by a golden age of creativity. Promotional text for Lemon declared: “The advertising brain has stopped working properly. It has lost its power to persuade, its ability to make people feel, and its talent to entertain.” It bemoaned how advertising, once a dazzling art form, admired for creativity, had become a dreary science. This panel is focused on creativity, and making audiences feel, and entertaining them. We are looking for best practice in Canada today – what is working and how that is changing (including ideas, as well as the creative presentation of those ideas). But we also want to know how science can be applied to the process of making people feel – by improving creative and its outcomes. Our panellists also consider whether interactive ads and calls-to-action can be ‘right brain’ as well as ‘left brain’ in character, whether we can make better use of still graphics on the TV screen (from interactive overlays to pause ads), and the role of targeted creative personalisation.