COREL INCREASING AD SPENDING
By Adnews Staff
Ottawa-based Corel Corp. is spending $70 million on worldwide advertising this year, and is doing so all by itself. The software company handles all its creative and media placement in-house. "We have a pretty substantial team to do it," media relations manager Fiona Rochester told Adnews this week. The company makes standardized global ads, then localizes them for each market. Corel is increasing its advertising to $70 million this year from $25 million last year because it will soon have more to advertise. Corel has made an agreement to buy WordPerfect from U.S-based Novell Inc. The deal could close as early as next week. Separately, Corel and Animatics Multimedia Corp. have teamed up to produce a soap opera on CD-ROM and the Internet to be launched in May. Called Club Mode, the dual product "marries a physical meeting place in Ottawa-based Globe Bistro and Wine Bar with a virtual meeting place," says a release. The interactive social drama will run as a weekly episode on a Web site run by Corel. Animatics will provide the interactive content. The weekly episodes centre around a pilot that will come out on CD-ROM with 90 minutes of full-motion video.