Canadian Advertising Museum

The Canadian Advertising Museum is established to preserve and keep a record of our business and culture through advertising. This is a unique project in Canada but similar endeavors already exist in America, Japan, Germany and the UK.

A Canadian Advertising Museum is an important cultural element of our past and the goals of the museum are threefold:

  • A business and educational resource to provide a bank of information for further learning on the history of companies and services with their practice of advertising. This would be in place for both business learning and student education.
  • A central resource to study the artistic elements of advertising as expressed in all of the different media available to agencies and advertisers for their communication requirements.
  • A means to look back at the social elements of advertising as it reflected the historical and cultural norms of the time and era in which they were created.

As in any museum, this will be an on-going project with new material constantly being added to the collection. It will celebrate the best of the historical work that was produced and record their impact on our business and community.

Importantly too, the Museum will acknowledge the outstanding work of the individuals whose creativity and business acumen were behind the creation of the selected works.

Vision

The Canadian Advertising Museum will provide for the advancement of education by establishing a museum in Toronto, Ontario, to identify, gather, catalogue, archive, and display distinctly Canadian creative advertising. This collection will provide students, academics and the public access to this branch of human knowledge for education, research and information.

The Canadian Advertising Museum will display significant creative advertising work primarily on a website in an electronic format, to allow the widest possible access to the collection. The CAM will also store, archive and display advertising work through exhibitions and seminars on topics of interest. This approach will enable students in advertising, copywriting, graphic design, and marketing; academics from disciplines such as art & design, anthropology, and sociology; and members of the wider public to review, study, research, and enjoy the great Canadian advertising campaigns. We also intend to profile the top advertising creative producers to highlight the genius behind the award-winning and successful advertising campaigns.