I’ve just launched a set of city tees over at shopATC. To start, there are 4 cities (Toronto, New York, Vancouver, and London) and each one is available in either black or (ATC) orange. They’re printed on a super soft American Apparel tee and cost only $30 each. I picked the cities based on readership levels. I hope you like them.
Click here to zoom in / download a copy
I’ve been meaning to introduce infographics and diagrams into my posts at ATC for quite some time now, so I’m excited to introduce the first one: How many households in Canada live in a condominium? I hope to make this a regular feature.
While a lot of the new development happening in Canada is condominium – particularly in cities like Toronto and Vancouver – the vast majority of households in Canada still live in non-condominium dwellings. Only 12.1% of households are condominium households, which could be high-rise, low-rise, row-housing, or other, according to Statistics Canada.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Vancouver CMA has the highest percentage of condominium households at 31.4%. I would have expected Toronto to come second, but Calgary (20.4%) actually takes that position (probably) due to an abundance of low-rise condominiums (38.8% of all condos in the CMA). However, Toronto has, by far, the highest percentage of high-rise condominium households at 67.4%. This isn’t surprising to me.
All of the data for this infographic was taken from Statistics Canada and the total number of households in each Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) was assumed to be “occupied by usual residents.” StatsCan defines this as households that are permanent as opposed to ones that could be second homes and so on.
I hope you like the first ATC infographic.
Most people would agree that branding is a powerful and important exercise in the world of business. We recognize that brand equity is something that pays dividends in the future.
When you walk around a city with a Starbucks, Tim Hortons, or some other coffee cup in hand, you are sending signals about who you are as a person and consumer. So, you could argue that you’re consuming the cup, as much as you are consuming the coffee.
But one area that still feels like it’s in its infancy is place branding. That is, the branding of nations, regions, cities, and places. I’ve talked a lot about the business of cities and how impressions are created around cities, but I’ve never explicitly talked about place branding.
However, it is an area on the rise. Monocle has written extensively about the importance of nation branding and there are firms, such as Vancouver-based Resonance, that now specialize in the strategy and branding of places.
Here’s a short 5 minute video that they prepared talking about place branding and their approach to it. If you can’t see the video below, click here.
//player.vimeo.com/video/66920801
But at the same time, there are more grassroot ways in which a place brand can emerge. Think about the number of times Jay-Z has referred to himself as the Brooklyn boy or Drake has promoted Toronto in one of his videos. It’s hard to measure the impact of these sorts of things, but I am sure there is one.
Here’s another example – a 4 minute video of Drake talking about why he loves Toronto. Click here if you can’t see it below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3TrbGEJbio?rel=0]
Recently, you may have heard that Drake is about to give Toronto a new moniker: The 6. Some think it is in honor of our two main area codes 416 and 647, and I think that’s probably a good guess.
But whatever the reason, I thought it was an interesting exercise in place branding. So I decided to partner with Toronto-based design firm Badd Press and make a “The 6” t-shirt (shown at the top of this post). You can get yours for $30 by visiting shopATC.