Planet In Focus Film Festival Campaign and Seneca College Creative Advertising

This week The Planet in Focus Film Festival opened here in Toronto for their 10th year and I am proud of the involvement of my full-time students of the Seneca College Creative Advertising Program and a personal project I have been involved in for the establishment of advertising education at the high school level.

The Planet in Focus International Environmental Film and Video Festival is Canada's preeminent festival of its kind and for ten years has championed the growth and development of environmental cinema. For ten years the festival has positioned itself as a creative and cultural leader in the of international environmental film festivals. For ten years audiences have celebrated and experienced the environmental works of Canadian and international filmmakers.

Back in the the early spring Cundari Advertising of Toronto gave my program at Seneca College a chance to create campaigns for Planet in Focus (PIF) and Slava Vodka from "real and live" creative strategy/briefs, a vision I felt was and is missing form most advertising education. The result, "real world" experience and opportunity. To date these relationships with Cundari, DueNorth, Taxi, zig, DraftFCB, and DDB Toronto have given the students the experience of development, execution and presentation to these agency partners and often the clients. In addition, students on the winning team have received internships and other opportunities.

This spring, the students put a great deal of hard work into the Planet in Focus case as many had a personal passion on the subject of teh environment. One group of students known as BGE (Best Group Ever) wowed Cundari and the PIF enough to land the job. I was proud of all the teams presenting, but even more so for this team now that their all of their hard work has been realized into a full campaign launch to the public.

If you are in and around the Greater Toronto Area this week, you will see these ads for the Planet in Focus Film Festival it was developed by the students of an advertising program that puts the students into the industry on real terms. I congratulate these Seneca Creative Advertising alumni with much respect to Slava Yedlin, Christine Porto, Victoria Morozova, Francesco Fiore, Steven Tran, Cole and Keely Powell for a great campaign and for earning the opportunity to make "power" moves straight out of college.

In addition to my great pride in the students from my program, I have been honoured to assist and mentor Diana Prior a high school teacher in Brampton (a suburb of Toronto) who developed the first "Creative Advertising" at the high school level. Ms. Prior has had a difficult "sell" to the local board of education and now I believe has the proof of the value and development of student skills in this area. After Cundari offered the brief for Planet in Focus to my college program students
I took a pared down version of the brief to Ms. Prior's class at St. Margarite D'Youville Catholic Hogh School. The result, PIF gave a team of students summer internships to develop materials and expand upon a commercial a team of students developed for their presentation. The result, high school students filmed, developed and launched the "official" trailer message for the 2009 festival.

View Planet In Focus Film Festival Official Trailer

The high school program is entering its third year this spring, the results have been better students entering the various college advertising programs at Humber College, Ontario College of Art  and Design, Sheridan College and currently I have 6 students in my program who are showing the passion needed for success.

Amazing the future of our industry has many young talents heading its way.