MONTREAL, CANADA 1967
Expo 67 - Man and His World

Yves Jasmin, Public Relations Expo '67 - Expo 67 was the crowning achievement of Canada's Centennial year. Time magazine said that compared to Canada's effort to mark its centennial, the US BiCentenary celebratinos were pallid. Canadian politicians and the general public viewed Expo 67 as a great Canadian achievement, once the Exhibition was underway and a demonstrated success. But, prior to its completion, and during its preparation, the Exhibition was viewed by many as a bone thrown to Quebec nationalists and as Jean Drapeau's folly (Drapeau was a very strong force in Canadian politics and a veritable locomotive for Expo 67). So, my first objective as stated in 1964, was to persuade Canadians that Expo 67 was NOT a national catastrophe. Depressing, but necessary if we were to achieve success.

Media fed that resentment, adding that there was no way Expo could even open on time and that the name itself was nonsense. Expo is an abbreviation of Exposition, while in English, Exhibition was the word. Weinsistedon establishing a difference between our Exhibition and New York's World Fair(1964-65) which was severely panned by the US media. Once Expo opened and an instantaneous success, our media critics claimed that our detractors were wrong, forgetting that they were our main detractors themselves. Montreal media were half warm and half cool, the English media more cool than French media. Their universal opposition were to my departments efforts which they felt were not performing.

I maintain that we did an excellent job with the meagre resources at our disposal.With an overall budget of 12 million dollars, from 1964 to 1966, not expecting any increase in 1966. We had to perform on the world stage and this budget included salaries, administration expenses, etc.(This was far less than Kelloggs had to spend in Canada for advertising only, selling a well known product, the Expo concept was unknown in America, being the first universal and international exhibition ever held on this continent).I attribute our success largely to the organization of press visits, first with Canadian media and, after the close of the NewYork World Fair, to the US media. We had fantastic US magazine coverage, all enthusiastic, in the weeks prior to opening day.(Some of their enthusiasm was due, I think, to their hostility to the New York Fair).

An unexpected fall out of this positive publicity was the Canadian reaction, up to then somewhat hostile, particularly in the West and Ontario, which realized that Expo must be better than generally thought by them and their media. But the negativism of the media served us well. We were asking for more money to publicize Expo.We made several presentations saying: This is what we will be doing with what we have left, This is what we want to do if given more money.The message got through and, to protect their already huge investment in Expo,we were given an extra 9 million dollars which we spent quickly and well.

There were many new ideas created for Expo, new approaches to age old problems. Many examples can be further researched. Here are a few, The ideograms representing toilets and the like were practically invented at Expo to avoid the problem of translations, and often had to be modified, for example, the skirt of the woman on toilet signs had to be stressed to establish a real difference with the mans outline. The native Indian pavilion had a strong message which impressed visitors. It was later indicated that this pavilion and its presentation was the first effort to unite our natives in a common effort, leading to the creation of the First Nations.

The admission ticket to Expo was a daily visa, a three day visa, and a permanent passport.This passport looked like a passport, had the photo of the recipient and allowed as many visits as desired. It contained pages which could be stamped at pavilions with the pavilions own signature.It encouraged visitors to visit as many pavilions aspossible, even minor ones which risked being ignored, to collect these stamps.There are thousands of visitors who still treasure their passport, a vivid memento of an unforgettable summee. Interactive cinema, hailed & recently as a new approach to movies in Hollywood, was a feature at the Czech pavilion, where the audience was asked to vote on how the action should follow (Should the guy let the stranded naked girl in his apartment? Should the driver of the runaway car stop for the police?) Today,with computers,this is relatively easy, but the Czechs offered 19 different scenarios to their film.What ever you finally chose made no difference, the ending was the same. You cant escape your fate.Expos theme Man and His World was not a slogan, but a real theme to which most exhibitors subscribed heartily in the presentations. To our knowledge,it was the first time that the theme was so endorsed by participants and by Expo itself in huge theme buildings. The theme was chosen by Mayor Drapeau out of Antoine de Saint, Exuperys novel Terre des Hommes (translated in English as Wind, Sand and Stars).The appeal of the theme was enthusiastically endorsed by most participants. There were a few who did not follow.