Dave Foreman spent thirty plus years in the marketing/advertising business. A former president of Gordon Hill Advertising Western Ltd., Dave formed his own company, Signal Marketing Services, in the seventies. After 25 years of operating Signal, he took a full time position as General Manager of The Manitoba Electrical League Inc. for ten years handling government relations, event coordination and membership recruitment. He is now semi – retired and works as agent and manager for his wife Debbie (Author D.T. Mann). They live in Ontario Canada.

I’m a published author – now what?
Unless your name is James Patterson, Agatha Christie, Danielle Steel, Harold Robbins, J.K. Rowling or one of the many other best-selling authors, getting published is the first step and only the first step (after the work has been written and edited of course). It is, however an extr... continue reading

(What’s in your Library part 2, part one can be read here)

Last time we discussed the emergence of erotic romance novels as standard reading for a great many standard people.

This time we’ll take a look at some of the facts of erotic romance readership.
According to the Neilson Company, romance book buyers are g... continue reading

E-Readers, eBooks, files on computers- that’s the shape of reading in 2016. A few years ago, I gave a copy of a book I had written to a county library in Southern Ontario. I still have the press release. (encl)
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It was a CD with a pdf file of the novel on it and a label stuck onto the disk with a device called... continue reading

Last time we talked about picking your market segments. Finding the market segment you want to approach is not difficult but deciding how to approach it can be a daunting task.

How many times have you seen a grocery store advertise “Fresh Produce”. To the average customer, this is almost meaningless. On seeing thi... continue reading

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I ran my own business for thirty years (still am) and I’ve learned a lot. Some of it by making mistakes, some of it by osmosis and some from the advice of friends and consultants.

I’m presenting this article to you in the hope that:

a) it will help you avoid some of my mistakes

b) it will a... continue reading

In this column, I'll provide some stories, taken from my somewhat checkered career as an ad agency/writer, president, and account executive. I filled those positions, or to be more accurate, occupied them, over a protracted period of time - something in the area of twenty-five years.

I hope you'll find them amusing... continue reading

This segment is about advertising. Before launching into an ad program that has been put together by ad salespeople, you have to deal with a few very important issues. The most important is realizing what business you are in.

Sounds simple doesn't it? "We make widgets and sell them." Sorry, wrong answer. Well,... continue reading

We all should have been suspicious when businesses started calling
us consumers instead of customers. Tom Peters once said consumers are
statistics, customers are people. So now we’re all consumers.
Customer service training is a growth industry. Believe me I know
because I’ve done a lot of it. The problem is that... continue reading

“Why not put the sofa on the front lawn?” Brian Gould was, and is, one of the best photographers on the planet (bgould@mts.net) and I always listened to him no matter how wacky his ideas sounded.
We were working for a very upscale furniture client and we wanted
something different and arresting for a full page color ... continue reading

There was the time when we spent three days shooting a television
commercial for a large grain company. When we were all ready to get
into the smoke filled van and head for the airport and our flight home,
the director realized we didn’t have a sunrise shot. We were in a
little town in Saskatchewan which consisted ... continue reading

This happened during the shooting of a commercial for Mini-Van. Art Director: “The park isn’t wooded enough. We’ll need another tree – right there.”
Account Executive: “Maybe we should just find another location.” (the
account executive is the person who will be charged with the
responsibility of explaining to the ... continue reading

It all began with the decision to make a television commercial of a
large luxury sedan. It was a beautiful automobile but today, it would
be pounded to a pulp by tree huggers with sledge hammers, the handles
of which would all be made of wood. The problem that people nowadays
have with such an automobile is that it... continue reading

Throughout my advertising career and I use the word “career” advisedly,
I became familiar with the industry jargon. I’m not talking about the
trade terms such as “Progs,” which used to mean “progressive proofs” or
“T-nap” which was a system I have never understood. All I know is, it
was a proof that made your ad lo... continue reading

Advertising is an industry loaded with catch phrases, oblique
artistic references and “inside” trade terminology. These fall into a
variety of categories but share a common purpose: To
convince the client that if the work is not up to, or even in the same
area code as, his expectations, it is, in fact, the best thi... continue reading

There was one very dismal period in my Agency career. Nothing I
wrote seemed good enough. Not good enough for the clients, not good
enough for the art department. My creative ideas sucked. Even the
20-year old gum-chewing receptionist said so. Regularly.
Just when I thought my morale had reached its nadir, I was gi... continue reading

The Day of the Chicken The agency I worked for had a chicken
account. Well, that’s actually an understatement. We had, as a client,
one of the largest fried chicken producers in the country. The
CEO, Hans Wende, was a tough guy. He was an excellent businessman and
had grown the company from a couple of fast food ta... continue reading

“Bob Wilson is doing an album,” said the creative director. “It’s a
series of live concerts he’s recorded. He wants us to design the cover
and do the liner notes.” Rockin’ Bobby Wilson was a local
rock celebrity. I’d never met him, but his star had been rising and I
knew this was a big opportunity for us. I was all... continue reading

Clients broought me a variety of challenges. On the day I describe
here, I learned a lesson about listening . . . before talking. The
client was a sharply dressed graphic artist. I would have known he was
a graphic artist regardless of the setting because they all have one
arm slightly longer than the other from ca... continue reading

When I was 17 years old I fell in love.  Hopelessly, completely and irrevocably.  I met the lady as I disembarked from a train with a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket and my total worldly belongings in a tote bag with a broken strap.  I carried the bag with the strap over my shoulder and supported ... continue reading