Steve and Ron were cut from the same cloth and they did some good radio. It was Steve who convinced us to do a series of hip hop radio spots. Come to think of it,
I bet that was the first rap to CHUM ever put on the air!
Grant Darbyson
PRESIDENT
DARBY'S
My dad was always a phone call away when I needed his take on something. Otherwise, it was up to me to front-line execution.
WIJA Foods began as a branding and packaging mission. They were interested in a new way of packaging Jamaican patties for as an alternative to the traditional little bag. This led to an interesting little battle with food label regulators about generic use of the word "Patty", which to them could only be a flattened clump of hamburger meet. They finally relented and we could call a patty a patty. Actually, we branded it Pati-Mahn. I still see our "Have a Pati-Mahn" posters in convenience store windows from time to time. Surreal.
Darby's was a series of radio driven retail campaigns. "Valentine's Is Ovuh" is the one Grant was talking about. The bed was samples of Chic's Good Times. We also branded a warehouse outlet they put into the basement in the old Sherwin Williams Paint factory they occupied on Sorauren Avenue. We went with Clothes Outs.
McMarketing Concepts
Partner
1979 - 1981
Toronto
My father, Ron taught marketing and sales promotion at Sheridan College. When GRT folded in '79, my dad and I formed McMarketing Concepts around two accounts: Darby's Female Fashions (40 stores) and WIJA Foods who were in the wholesale Jamaican Patty business.
We also did a few radio spots for touring artists like Bruce Cockburn (CBS) and Styxx (A&M). McMarketing folded abruptly with the passing of my father in 1981.