By Kathleen Martin

The Wreckhouse International Jazz and Blues Festival blew into St. John's last week, with an advertising campaign featuring full-sized cut-outs of people swept off their feet by a strong wind.

Aside from the traditional print, radio and television spots, the eye-catching cut-outs were posted on the sides of buildings, in transit shelters and hanging off of poles.

Wreckhouse is a stretch of land at the edge of the Long Range Mountains in southwestern Newfoundland famed for winds that routinely reach 150 kilometres per hour-strong enough "to blow trains off the tracks and trucks off the road," says festival founder, president and artistic director, Kirk Newhook.

Associating wind and music was a natural choice, says Newhook. "Sound is airwaves moving. The slang for improvising or soloing is ‘blowing,' and, in jazz and blues especially, you get a lot of horn players."

Radio spot talks about the history of "wind mining" in Newfoundland, noting that it was ultimately banned because of an increase in "blow-me-down syndrome, a wind condition where the buttocks is physically removed from the body," followed by the tag line, "Get blown away at Wreckhouse, the international jazz and blues festival."

Created pro bono by Target Marketing and Communications of St. John's, the campaign helped launch both the event and the festival's new name. Its previous moniker, the St. John's Jazz Festival, was too limiting, says Newhook. This year's festival sponsors included the St. John's Telegram, Coast 101 FM, and CBC radio and television.
Originally published in Marketing Magazine, July 2008