Tings Go Better With Sponsorship. Off-the-Wall ideas for the Caribbean Carnival

SPONSORSHIP AND THE CARIBBEAN FESTIVAL

I am not involved in the search for a new sponsor of the annual Toronto Caribbean Carnival. If I were I would probably be promoting the philosophy of thinking outside the box. Recognizing that there aren't many companies that can committed to investing BIG money in the annual festival this year, I would push the idea of finding two companies willing to join together and invest a SMALLER serving of money to feed to the Caribbean festival rather than coming up with the whole roti!

Might not be that hard to partner two competing companies to support and market a festival that attracts over a million, young hip urban people to downtown Toronto. There are also millions who watch it all on TV, online and of course through social media. This is the perfect place to launch a new slogan for the festival and its two NEW non-alcoholic drink partners.

I am suggesting that Jamaican bottlers Desnoes and Geddes Lrd work with Atlanta based Coca-Cola to be the presenting sponsor of the parade under the banner TINGS GO BETTER WITH COCA-COLA. (of course truth be told D&G produces one of Jamaica's best-known exports, Red Stripe beer, but sold off the rights to Ting to the UK's PepsiCo in 1999. Oops, but hey, I am just the ideas man!).

Tings Go Better With Coke!

OTHER SPONSORSHIP BIG IDEAS AND BIG PARTNERS

Friday Night's Pan Aleve!

I believe the Festival should work to get a drug company to sponsor the annual Friday night Steel Drum competition at Lamport Stadium. Now loud music can cause headaches, so, with this sponsor target we will have to change the name of the event to Pan Aleve!

Party Downy

Big name Soca Stars make big money in Toronto  in terms of royalties and appearances when their music is used on the road.  Machel Montano and singer Angela Hunte  can give back to the parade and enhance their brand by working with fabric softener maker Proctor and Gamble to sponsor the festival's final event of the year - the Island Family Picnic. 

The pair could donate a new tag line to the island family gathering.  This event is often called "THE LAST LAP". With their star power and P and G dollars, the new line could be Party Downy!

Highway 407 is now billing drivers with American licence plates who travel on the privately owned freeway. The highway could sponsor a carnival event and put their brand in front of over 250,000 US visitors who drive to Toronto every summer for the big party.  To cut costs they can team with Pizza 

967- Oh- 4 -OH - 7 Hey Hey

Pizza to sponsor the Malvern based Kiddies Parade.  

Of course it will mean having to move the Junior Carnival Parade a bit north to 407. 2,000 kids will love dancing along the slow lane of 407 one Saturday in early July. The young revellers  will have no trouble remembering the catchy slogan they should adopt. 967- Oh- 4 -OH - 7 Hey Hey.

Susan Pedersen wins the Cundill Prize!

The Guardians wins Cundill Prize in Historical Literature

Susan Pedersen wins coveted $75,000 US grand prize

                    

November 3, 2015 – The winner of the 2015 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill was announced last night at a gala awards dinner held in Toronto. Now in its eighth year, the Cundill Prize is the world’s most lucrative international award for a nonfiction book.  The Guardians took home the top prize of US$75,000. 

Dr. Susan Pedersen is a professor of history at Columbia University in the US.  She was born in Japan to Canadian missionaries. She continues to be a Canadian citizen.

Susan Pedersen’s The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire is a riveting work of global history.  At the end of the First World War, the Paris Peace Conference saw a battle over the future of empire. The victorious allied powers wanted to annex the Ottoman territories and German colonies, Woodrow Wilson and a groundswell of anti-imperialist activism stood in their way. The countries reluctantly agreed to hold and administer those allied conquests under the new League of Nations. The Guardiansenables us to see the League with new eyes, and in doing so, appreciate how complex, multivalent, and consequential this first great experiment in internationalism really was.

There were three international finalists in the running for this year’s prize. The three are American historianSven Beckert for his book, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf), Canadian historianSusan Pedersen – The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press) and German philosopher Bettina Stangneth – Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer (Bodley Head).  The finalists were selected from 159 submissions received from publishers worldwide.

In addition to the winner, the two remaining finalists were each awarded a “Recognition of Excellence” prize of US$10,000. 

Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History is an epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism. “Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism” writes Sven Beckert. The award winning historian tells the story of how European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world.

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer provides the world with, for the first time, a true understanding of the Manager of the Holocaust, Adolf   Eichmann.  Hamburg-based philosopher Belinda Stangneth has used previously unmined archival sources, particularly Eichmann’s own compulsive notes made in exile, in conjunction with a recently discovered series of taped conversations to give a  chilling portrait  not of  a  reclusive, taciturn  war  criminal  on  the  run in Argentina,  but  of  a highly  skilled manipulator with an inexhaustible ability to reinvent himself, an unrepentant mass-murderer eager for acolytes to discuss past glories and political plans for the future.

“Celebrating the vital work of historians and the role of history in our societies is fundamental to the core values of the Cundill Prize.  McGill University is proud to administer the Cundill Prize and we are delighted with the quality of the books that were entered,” said Prof. Hudson Meadwell, who serves as Administrative Chair of the Cundill Prize. “Each year we see growing interest in this Prize.  The Prize will continue to identify and to reward those works that shape our historical understanding of the world.”

This year’s Cundill jury includes Anthony Cary, British Commissioner of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan; David Frum, author and editor for The Atlantic; Chad Gaffield, University of Ottawa Professor of History and University Research Chair in Digital Scholarship; Maya Jasanoff, Coolidge Professor of History and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University  (Liberty’s Exiles:  American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World); and author Anna Porter, (Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy, The Ghosts of Europe) winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

About the Prize: The Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill is the world’s most important international nonfiction literature prize. It was established in 2008 by McGill alumnus F. Peter Cundill, who passed away in January 2011. The prize is administered by McGill University’s Dean of Arts, with the help of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC), and is awarded annually to an individual who has published a book determined to have had a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history.  

Contacts:

TORONTO:

Stephen Weir & Associates

Stephen@stephenweir.com

416-801-3101 416-489-5868

www.mcgill.ca

Cynthia Lee,

McGill University

cynthia.lee@mcgill.ca 

514-398-6754

For more information: www.cundillprize.com

Follow us on Twitter: @CundillPrize    

www.mcgill.ca

STEPHEN WEIR
Stephen Weir & Associates | stephen@stephenweir.com
109 Castlefield Avenue, Toronto, ON
CANADA. M4R 1G5
Tel: 416-489-5868 | cell: 416-801-3101
www.stephenweir.com twitter: sweirsweir 

Media Alert For World's Biggest Non-Fiction Book Prize

Media welcome to cover (No dinner seating provided )

Monday November 2, 2015
Cocktails 6pm Formal Dinner: 7pm / Announcement 9:15 p.m.  
Shangri-La Hotel, Toronto

WHY COVER:
One of this year's three Cundill Prize Finalists will be announced as the winner of the $75,000 US prize on Monday, November 2^nd. The announcement will take place at approximately 9.15 p.m. as part of a gala dinner celebrating these important authors and their shortlisted books.

WHERE:
The Shangri-La Hotel, Third Floor Ballroom, 37 King St. East,188 University Avenue

Meet this year's 2015 Cundill Prize and learn about their books:

•   Sven Beckert – Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf)

•   Susan Pedersen – The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press)

•   Bettina Stangneth – Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer (Bodley Head) 

Harvard Professor Sven Beckert researches and teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political and transnational dimensions. The Cundill Prize nominated Empire of Cotton: A Global History, is the first global history of the nineteenth century’s most important commodity. The book won the Bancroft Award, The Philip Taft Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Columbia Professor Susan Pedersen specializes in British history, the British Empire, comparative European history, and international history.  Her nominated book is The Guardians:  The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire and details the League of Nations and its impact on the imperial order. Dr. Pedersen is the lone Canadian in the running for the Cundill Prize. She was born in Japan (her parents were Canadian missionaries) and has retained her Canadian citizenship.

German philosopher Bettina Stangneth has written a book that debunks the myth that Adolf Eichmann was a banal stooge for Hitler.  Her book Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer has been translated into English and has been hailed as the most important historical book about Eichmann in this century.

Most Prize Jurors & Foundation Members available for Interview/Comments: 

The jurors for the 2015 prize are Toronto award winning author and publisher Anna Porter, Harvard History Professor Maya Jasanoff, University of Ottawa Professor Chad Gadfield, Author, Journalist  David Frum and Commonwealth Scholarship Commissioner Anthony Cary

The Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill (Cundill Prize) was established in 2008 to recognize and promote literary and academic achievement in history. The award is offered each year by McGill University to an individual, of any nationality and from any country, who has published a book determined to have had (or likely to have) a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history.

Media Contacts:

 TORONTO:

Stephen Weir & Associates

Stephen@stephenweir.com

416-801-3101 416-489-5868

For more information on the Cundill Prize:www.cundillprize.com

Follow us on Twitter: @CundillPrize

The World's BEST History Authors in Toronto at IFOA and the Cundill Prize. This Weekend and Monday

 

The World’s Best History Authors Together On Stage

Cundill Prize Finalists to Speak At IFOA Saturday Afternoon!

October 25, 2015  The three finalists for the world’s richest non-fiction book prize – the Cundill – will be on stage together this Saturday afternoon as part of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.  They will join moderator McGill professor of History, Gil Troy, at 3pm on October 31^st at Harbourfront’s Studio Theatre.

The three finalists appearing are:

•   Sven Beckert – Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf)

•   Susan Pedersen – The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press)

•   Bettina Stangneth – Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer (Bodley Head)            

Harvard Professor Sven Beckert researches and teaches the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political and transnational dimensions. The Cundill Prize nominated Empire of Cotton: A Global History, is the first global history of the nineteenth century’s most important commodity. The book won the Bancroft Award, The Philip Taft Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Columbia Professor Susan Pedersen specializes in British history, the British Empire, comparative European history, and international history.  Her nominated book is The Guardians:  The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire and details the League of Nations and its impact on the imperial order. Dr. Pedersen is the lone Canadian in the running for the Cundill Prize.  She was born in Japan (her parents were Canadian missionaries) and has retained her Canadian citizenship.

German philosopher Bettina Strangneth has written a book that debunks the myth that Adolf Eichmann was a banal stooge for Hitler.  Her book Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer has been translated into English and has been hailed as the most important historical book about  Eichmann in this century.

Moderator Gil Troy is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s, published by Thomas Dunne Books. He is a Professor of History at McGill University and a Visiting Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He writes a regular column in The Daily Beast and The Jerusalem Post.

 The Cundill Prize in Historical Literature at McGill (Cundill Prize) was established in 2008 to recognize and promote literary and academic achievement in history. The award is offered each year by McGill University to an individual, of any nationality and from any country, who has published a book determined to have had (or likely to have) a profound literary, social and academic impact in the area of history.

Saturday, October 31, 2015 - 3:00 PM

Author appearance, Round table, Special Event: IFOA

Studio Theatre

235 Queens Quay West

Toronto M5J 2G8

Cost: $18/$15 for supporters/FREE for students & youth

Tickets can be purchased online: https://my.harbourfrontcentre.com/single/SelectSeating.aspx?p=26117, over the phone (416 973 4000) or in person at 235 Queens Quay West.

Bettina Stangneth (top), Sven Beckert (left) and Susan Pedersen (right)

Media Contacts:

 TORONTO:

Stephen Weir & Associates

Stephen@stephenweir.com

416-801-3101 416-489-5868

For more information on the Cundill Prize: www.cundillprize.com

Follow us on Twitter: @CundillPrize

    

Bettina Stangneth (top), Sven Beckert (left) and Susan Pedersen (right)