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Alan Gee’s Toronto agency GJP plans a “closing down liquidation fire sale”Louie Palu/The Globe and Mail

1. Never mind how you get to Carnegie Hall; what does it take to snag a Cannes Lion? Turns out, maybe just some chutzpah and a little cash, because next Thursday Alan Gee's Toronto agency GJP will hold a so-called "closing down liquidation fire sale" in which it'll dispense with its accumulated trinkets and trophies as it shuts its doors, with all proceeds going to Jake's House for Children with Autism. The news about the fire sale caused a brief scratching of heads in the industry: Was GJP really shutting down for good? Most people knew better; old ad guys never actually leave the game, they just rebrand.

2. Speaking of old guys - er, we mean our elders and betters - congratulations are in order to Geoffrey Roche, who picked up the coveted Les Usherwood Lifetime Achievement nod at this month's Advertising & Design Club of Canada annual awards. In winning the honour, which celebrates someone "who has made a major contribution to the Canadian creative community," Mr. Roche joined such luminaries as creative director Ian Mirlin, composer David Fleury, and illustrators Anita Kunz and Barbara Klunder. To commemorate the occasion, Mr. Roche promptly refreshed his website, GeoffreyRocheIsAHack.com, and loaded it with some of his recent greatest hits. Is he trying to tell us his lifetime isn't finished achieving yet?

3. Braniff International Airways may not be done, either. The name of the U.S. airline, which folded in 1982, is one of the classic brands that will go up for sale at an unusual auction of more than 150 out-of-use trademarks next month at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Among the other names going to the nostalgically inclined are Handi-Wrap, hair care brand Short & Sassy, and Saturday Review, the magazine which published from 1924-1986. (A full list is at trademarkauctioninfo.com.) If you're hankering for something less musty, there's always Infoseek, the once-hot search engine that shut down in 2001. It was all of seven years old. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

4. But then, neither is China. For a communist state, it keeps engaging in what seem to us to be awfully full-bodied celebrations of capitalism. This week brought the annual auction of prime-time advertising space on CCTV, the state-run channel that pulls in the bulk of the country's TV advertising. AdAge.com informs us that the upfront-like auction is a full-day televised affair that unfolds like a variety show, with performances from some of the channel's hot stars (interspersed with marketing executives holding up auction paddles). This year's edition netted pledges of $1.86-billion (U.S.), up 15.5 per cent from last year. Looking to work in a frenzied ad market? Go East, young woman.

This article has been corrected from an earlier version.

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