Around this neck of the woods, Thursdays at noon are the time when things go mostly quiet and we flip on CBC Radio One.
That's the time for "O'Reilly and The Age of Persuasion", ad man Terry O'Reilly's look at his business.
There's no way to describe the show and goodness knows the CBC website for the thing would definitely not lead you to suspect you will be getting a half hour that provokes and entertains while it educates.
That's okay.
There's a blog, but it really isn't very exciting.
That's okay, too.
Over at the website for O'Reilly's agency - Pirate Radio and TV - you will get every conceivable indication of just exactly how creative and possibly insane O'Reilly and company are. Pirate does its own work but it also subcontracts production for other agencies.
This is the Internet presence of a truly inventive bunch of people. Click on "Reels" in the top menu and you get samples of their work.
Like the Irving Mainway radio spots for Target that - if memory serves - won an award the first time they aired. O'Reilly directed them. They are actually a variation on a concept originally used for Labatt in another market to push its bedrock line, Blue. The Labatt concept involved having an actor making calls at random to unsuspecting businesses - out of the blue, get it? - with a simple but potentially funny scenario. The whole thing dependend very much on getting the right person on the other end of the phone but odds are good that with a few calls, you could wind up with 30 seconds or so of radio that truly stands out from the clutter.
In the Irving spots, the calls were to people who had won an item in a Mainway contest. They worked really well the first time they aired, since it was hysterical listening to some guy answer questions about winning a bottle of juice as if it were a million bucks. He's humouring this over-the-top chick making the call. However, by the second or third season, the whole thing got tired.
There are some devastatingly funny radio spots for everything from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to a Toronto car dealership. None of it - absolutely none of it - is conventional.
Is there talent enough to do this kind of creative work around here?
You betcha.
The challenge is finding the clients willing to go with it.
