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| Â Airline: Air Canada |
| Â Title: Essential/Essentiel |
| Â Â FREQUENCY: Quarterly |
| Â Â PAGINATION: 68 (including cover) |
| Â Â CATEGORIES (including adverts): |
| Â Â Emphasis on local items: Strong |
| Â Â Quality of paper: Average |
| Â Â Photo quality: Good |
  Pre-order: No |
| Â Â Website preview available?: Â Â Yes, at www.aircanada.com/essential |
  Website sale available: |
Source: ©The Moodie Report  |
Recent reviews |
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CANADA. At 68 pages including cover, Essential/Essentiel is one of the industry’s smaller inflight magazines. Yet, despite being thin on categories – gadget fans will be disappointed at the absence of consumer technology, for instance – Air Canada’s Winter 2006/07 offering still manages to fit a lot between its covers without ever appearing cramped.
The Fragrances section, in particular, gives its products – which are supported throughout the publication by good-sized images, and English and French descriptions which are thorough without being overly wordy – room to breathe, with rarely more than two per page.
Full left-hand page fragrance advertisements are common throughout the first half – Armani Code, Calvin Klein Euphoria and Euphoria Men, Chanel Allure and Allure Homme, Miss Dior Chérie, DKNY Red Delicious (which also features on the front cover), Gucci Envy, Flower by Kenzo, Lancôme Hypnôse and YSL Opium contributing to a stylish look.
There are a good number of duty free exclusives, flagged up in red, across all categories, but most noticeably in Cosmetics and Jewelry where a third of the items in each are exclusives.
New goods are plentiful and again clearly indicated. One that catches the eye is Liquid Oxygen Drops by O2 Spa Bar (C$25), said to help with jetlag, among other benefits: “Just add it to water or juice to revitalize while you’re flying.”
The local goods on sale in the Canadian Collection commendably include several for children, such as an Air Canada Airport Play Set containing an A340 model aircraft plus a variety of airport vehicles and signs (C$19), and a Plush Monkey soft toy by Kids’ Horizons (C$15), profits from which go towards helping children’s and youth charities in the country.
Two pages of Special Asia Buys for those travelling to or from the continent include The Contemporary Collection by Bvlgari (seven mixed sex fragrance miniatures, C$47) and Ballantine’s 30yo Scotch whisky ($343).
And there follows the pièce de résistance – the whole publication translated into Japanese, complete with thumbnail photos, condensed into six pages. It’s a nice touch at the end of a simple, effective duty free resource.
