THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED

On Wednesday, October 13th, Lauren More, Vice-President of Communications for Ford of Canada, will deliver a presentation on Satisfying Consumer Mega-Trends.

Ms. More’s presentation will take place at the Sheraton Hotel (150 Albert Street, O’Connor Room) from 11:30am to 1:30pm.  Costs: $50.00 for CPRS Members, $65 for Non-members and $40 for CPRS Student Members.

Spaces are limited. Please register by October 8, 2010 on the secure CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau website at https://vws3.primus.ca/www.cprsottawa.com/register/event-registration.php. VIsa and MasterCard are accepted.

About the Presentation:
As business people and communications professionals, we certainly live in interesting times. We are witnesses to unprecedented shifts in the global economies – new population growth patterns are emerging, market purchasing power is changing and consumer preferences around the world
are converging. Many of the decisions we make today, during this unique economic era, will shape our companies for decades to come. How do we ensure we’re delivering the products and services customers and clients really want? In this session, we’ll explore some of these consumer mega-
trends from a global perspective.

About Lauren More:
Lauren More is the Vice President of Communications at Ford Motor Company of Canada, Ltd., where she manages multiple media communications programs and serves as a company spokesperson on a number of topics, including: corporate news, manufacturing and assembly operations, environment and safety, human resources issues, and crisis communications.

Ms. More has more than 20 years experience as a communications professional and daily newspaper reporter. Prior to joining Ford, she served as the Public Relations Manager for Canada at one of the world’s largest technology and management consulting firms and has held a variety of
positions at Toronto-based public relations agencies.

As a journalist, Ms. More earned both national and regional awards for her work covering everything from educational issues and local politics, to high-tech and the automotive
industry. She holds an Honours Bachelor of Journalism degree from Carleton University and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from York University’s Schulich School of Business.

[Ford is a client of Thornley Fallis and Keelan Green is President of CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau]

Sometimes good things come in twos, and with the hire of two senior marketing communications practitioners, who both started at the company in early September, the Toronto office of Thornley Fallis & 76design is now bursting with senior thinking and strategic smarts!

Sean Howard joins as Vice-President of Digital Communications.  For over 15 years Sean has delivered insight and innovation to clients in the digital marketing space including Aeroplan, Aviva, Unilever, Microsoft Xbox, Pfizer and TD Bank. Most recently Sean was Strategy Director at Twist Image, where he was co-creator of the emerging strategy discipline.  Prior to that he was Director of Strategy and Innovation at Lift and he also ran his own digital media firm, Spinglobe Inc, from 2002-2007.  Sean has worked with clients and agencies on product innovation, UX and the development of digital strategies.  He also helped plan and launch TVO’s AgendaCamp where they used open innovation techniques to engage Canadians across Ontario.

Sean’s immediate responsibilities will include taking on the social media/digital communications team lead role, but he will also be driving new business in the digital space.

Deborah Knight has joined as a Senior Consultant in the traditional communications practice.  Deborah is an experienced publicity, promotions and marketing strategist with a solid track record in the arts, corporate and entrepreneurial environments.  Her category expertise includes B2C package goods, beverage and alcohol, automotive, telecoms, financial, food, retail, airline, healthcare and entertainment.  Prior to joining Thornley Fallis & 76design, Deborah ran her own firm, dkpr public relations, and she also spent two years at WestJet as National Manager, Public Relations and Communications, and three years at SkyDome Corporation as Public Relations Manager.

Deborah will step in immediately to take media relations capabilities to the next level.

In order to reinvigorate and revitalize downtown Ottawa businesses hit hard by the recession and the bus strike, Thornley Fallis and 76design  conceived, developed and executed the Picture it Downtown campaign for The City of Ottawa, where residents were encouraged to go downtown, snap a photo and share it online.

Point, shoot, share – a simple concept to get Ottawa excited about all it has to offer. The “Picture It Downtown” concept we developed served to visually promote downtown Ottawa as a whole, but also the eight specific areas being promoted:  Byward Market, Downtown Rideau, Sparks Street, Bank Street, The Glebe, Chinatown, Preston Street (Little Italy) and Wellington-West Village.

Residents could participate in the campaign contest to win daily ($50), weekly ($250) and grand ($500 to $1200) prizes by taking pictures of downtown activities and uploading them to the campaign website.

The campaign included a media launch event involving the Mayor, a website with a list of downtown activites, a description, videos and photos of each area, contest rules and regulations, a photo gallery for people to submit and view photos, and YouTube videos, featuring all that’s cool in several neighbourhoods, print, radio, online and transit advertising, weekly news releases and ongoing online outreach using other social media tools including Twitter and Flickr.

Thousands of people participated and competed for prizing provided by local businesses.

The campaign was to remind Ottawans of all the diverse experiences and excitement downtown Ottawa has to offer, and entice them to visit downtown — ultimately spending money while engaging in the various activities highlighted in the eight main areas being promoted.

For the City of Ottawa, running a marketing campaign with a heavy online and interactive component was not only a smart business and communications decision, but its creativity generated a lot of buzz within Ottawa and got people sharing ideas and photos of great things to do and see in the city.

The fall 2009 campaign resulted in over ten thousand unique visits to the campaign website, more than 1300 entries (photos uploaded to the website), significant earned media in targeted outlets, photo and video assets for future use by the City, and a general buzz across the City about the creativity of the campaign, particularly by government.

Picture it downtown would not have been possible without our lead technologist Brett Tackaberry, senior web developer Steve Lounsbury, our superb designer Steve St. Pierre, the ad campaign led by Laura Mindorff, the videos by Ryan Knuth, writer and producer LeeEllen Carroll and our SEO expert Shaun Scanlon. Special thanks to our GM Keelan Green, who has a knack for assembling the best teams to deliver outstanding results.

Thank you IABC for the recognition. It’s nice to bask in the spotlight… and great to share successes. As I used to say in my former journalistic career, you’re only as good as your last story. So that means back to work. Right now.

In an attempt to reduce the cost of its annual report, The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) engaged 76design and Thornley Fallis for our unique concept of a paperless report. Highlighting achievements and documenting successes,  World Class Care (TOH’s 2008-2009 Annual Report) contains a special feature allowing readers to create their own versions of the report including only the sections and stories appealing to them.

For some, those stories include the 6808 hospital births, the woman who was paying it forward by donating her kidney to a stranger because her own husband was receiving one from an anonymous donor in Ottawa – who had selflessly stepped forward to transplant hope, or the CF soldier, blown to bits in Afghanistan after coming into contact with a land mine. He died. Twice. The second time he was resuscitated during his evacuation flight. He arrived at TOH doped up on morphine. Months of therapy and compassionate care in the Rehabilitation Centre got him back on his feet- running in fact – he recently took part in The Olympic Torch Relay Race, with a new ‘bionic’ leg.

Allow me to cast the awards spotlight on other members of our talented team, who took those stories and turned them into an attention grabbing report: writer Bradley Moseley-Williams, who’s never met an adjective he can’t love, web developers and code masters- Brett Tackaberry and Steve Lounsbury, Mr. Shaun Search Engine Optimization Scanlon, ‘video is the new media’ Ryan Knuth, Resource and Account Manager Laura Mindorff, video killed the radio star LeeEllen Carroll, and top 40 under 50 SVP and GM Keelan Green.

A very special thanks to TOH’s CEO Jack Kitts and VP Nic Ruszkowski for renewing their investment in TF and 76 by inviting us back to partner on their next online annual report.

Here’s to more success stories for The Ottawa Hospital, Thornley Fallis and 76design, our peers at IABC and everyone in our communications community.

I am pleased to announce the launch of Thornley Fallis & 76design’s new online presence.

Our new websites, conceptualized, designed and developed by our team of creative masterminds and technology all-stars, exemplifies our capacity to push the limits of innovation in the world of social media and digital marketing.

Thornley Fallis & 76design is made up of individuals with fun, smart and professional personalities; personalities that have all contributed to the success of marketing & communications projects. To fully demonstrate the range of personalities, talent and intelligence our team has to offer, we’ve done something a little outside the box. Something very brave… or maybe something very stupid – we’ll let you know

We’ve created a live LifeStream for every one of our employees. This is more than just a standard funny profile picture and biography. It is an aggregate of their work and online profile, intended to paint a picture of who they are, what they do, what they think and what they are interested in.

To explore the diverse and unique characters at Thornley Fallis and jokers at 76design, take a look through our people profiles and find out who you could be working with on your next project.

Not only is our team exceptionally talented (and good-looking), we are experienced & passionate about the work we do. While adventuring through our People pages, zoom over to the Work & Services sections to see what Thornley Fallis & 76design has to offer.

My colleagues and I hope you enjoy perusing through our new sites.

Oh and one more thing… if you like what you see, don’t hesitate to call us, we’d love to hear from you!

Readers can consider this a blog post by popular demand. The blogosphere and twitterscene (a word I hope I just coined) are small places; look around and you’ll see a familiar handle.

Futurecasting—something I enjoy as a mild hobby—is a career byproduct. Most PR counsellors practice it at some level. As a lazy blogger (I want to, but I find I don’t make time for it) I have been encouraged to blog more, worry about it less, and go for broke.

This, therefore, is broke. This is what I am following, noticing, observing and paying attention to across various media, scenes, sites and places:

The world’s greatest ponzi scheme is unfolding; Bernard Madoff (which google) is in jail and the legal entities of the United States and Elsewhere are now eyeing his family’s assets with narrowing eyes and a sceptical expression. In a time when many people are questioning how oversight bodies (SEC et al) failed to catch a theft of such magnificent proportion it behooves government agencies to now—perhaps “at last”—step in and show that they are up to the job at hand. That means that la famille Madoff can expect a large team of forensic accountants to exhume every cheque, chit, IOU and other financial instrument going back to who-knows-when and—I hereby predict—confiscate anything that isn’t nailed down. (Even the family piano, according to one report, is under threat of immediate confiscation.) Taking possession of Mrs Madoff’s piano will not nullify her husband’s crimes, but it looks good (the optics of it, if you will) for a public eager to see justice served no matter how late or cold.

Live cheaper to live better? When times get tough people turn to kith and kin for solace and comfort. What is more comforting than a home-cooked meal? A pleasant stroll through a local bookstore conglomerate reveals the new reality of kitchen fun: Cookbooks promoting casserole cooking, slow cooking (see: Futurecasting) and all manner of delectable meals on the cheap are currently in vogue. The very notion of “cooking” is now back in vogue after a long-ish hiatus as a pleasant pass time for busy people. Cooking—the dreary need to prepare meals for yourself or family—was a basic fact of life through much of history. In the latter end of the 20th century, however, cooking—the bane of housewives for eons—morphed into a soci0-economic totem of the good life. Cooking became an activity for couples to share as they entertained on weekends with artfully turned out meals paired with the proper wines, artisan cheeses and unique appetizers. By the turn of the century (that is, 1999 into 2000) fast food, take-out, home delivery, personal chefs and “assembled meals” had taken precedence at the family table and cooking was firmly established as a hobby.

Luxury that shows is no longer desirable. Famous brands (Royal Daulton, Waterford Crystal, Wedgwood) that reigned for the longest possible time in the finest homes and dining rooms are facing the sad fact that they are in trouble. Public Luxury—which used to something most people aspired to—is now unfashionable. While it is possible to hide your luxury at home (you can drink beer in a Waterford goblet if you draw the curtains) it is impossible to hide your luxury in public. Famous automobile marques (Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Bentley and so forth) will sit longer on the showroom floor while a careful public reconsiders its values. Marketing luxury in an economic storm requires a deft touch; the focus needs to change to “value” and “craftsmanship” and there can be no references to ego-features (custom stitching on leather seats, say, or engines with 8 more cylinders than are strictly required) as in the good old days of joyful and exuberant conspicuous consumption.

This blog is dedicated to Jason Ashton.

Last year, I did this post about Holiday/Christmas cards after receiving several crappy electronic cards, some of which were simply sad looking emails with “Holiday/Christmas” clip art in them.

As I said in my post last year, a Holiday card is an opportunity for contact with your network of customers, partners and suppliers, and like all such contacts with those parties, it is an opportunity to build the relationship, so it should be done right. 

When you meet a client for breakfast, lunch or dinner, you don’t go to McDonalds.  When take a client to a hockey game, you don’t buy seats at the top of the upper level.  And when you take client golfing, you don’t go to the $14 green fee municipal course.  So why then do some senior corporate executives think that it is acceptable to send out a Holiday email that clearly took no more than 5 minutes for their assistant with zero graphic design skills to prepare?

Anyone that has ever been in my office can attest to the fact that when comes to paper, I don’t want it around.  But I’m sure I’m not the only person that likes to put received Holiday cards up on the window sill.  Now I’m not saying e-cards can’t be well done.  I have seen several clever ones and even forwarded a couple to friends and colleagues.

At Thornley Fallis & 76design a lot of what we do is electronic communication (websites, multimedia, online communities, blogs, etc), but I still think its important for our staff to send their network of contacts a physical Holiday card that will stay around their office longer than the time it takes to open, maybe read, and delete an email message.

We usually start work on original concepts in October, we then have them printed, pull together about 1000 addresses/labels, and get them in the mail first week of December.  Over the years, I think we’ve come up with some pretty good cards that reflect the ‘personality’ of our firm and the people that work here. 

This year, our Creative Director Dom Coballe and Designers Shawn McCann, Jeff Young, Ben Watts and Meghan Gough took things to another level.  We asked staff to bring in personal Christmas/Holiday photos on themselves from when they were young.  We then designed a series of four retro-looking cards (shown below) that the photos were incorporated into.  We identified the staff members in the photos by name, current title at the firm and age at the time the photo was taken (e.g. Keelan Green, Vice-President & General Manager, Age 4).

We also produced a website so card recipients could view the other three cards in the series and we added in an interactive photo album so we could include more of the staff photos we collected.  The website address (www.onepiecesnowsuit.ca) is on the back of each card.

Now, of course, not every organization can design a card in-house like we can, but firms like 76design are available for hire. If you can’t do it in-house, hire a design agency or freelancer to help you do it right.  It won’t cost that much and it will enhance this contact with your customers, partners and suppliers.

While we can’t be accused of opening a hardware store, our front lobby has started to accumulate a nifty little collection of awards. Last week we were honoured at the inaugural CPRS Awards Gala when we won the PuRe Elements Awards of Excellence for Innovation in Communications (Water category). VPs Aimee Deziel and LeeEllen Carroll accepted the award on behalf of Thornley Fallis and 76design. They were part of a great team that ran the SHARP 1080pD82 challenge and helped Sharp succeed in getting Canadians to identify the Aquos television as the leader in high definition televisions. To take the TV from trade publications and into family living rooms, the team conceived and ran an integrated campaign which engaged first time bloggers in social media while reducing their carbon footprint.

Emcee Stephen Heckbert entertained the audience with his “Top Communications Moments of 2008″ presentation and he announced the winners of each category when he opened the sealed envelopes. “This was a creative ad compelling program with a great use of new technologies and an innovative way to involve your audience,” Heckbert quoted a judge as saying.

Canwest’s David Akin was the keynote speaker of the night. He regaled the audience with his behind-the-scenes take on CIBC faxing private banking information to a junk lot in West Virginia. It was a story he uncovered while working at CTV News. Listening to his storytelling was like imagining a kimono being unwrapped. Except this story involved the nation’s most trusted anchor.

Three other awards were presented. The Earth Award for Internal Communications went to the Queensway Carleton Hospital, the Air Award for External Communications was awarded to the Canadian Association of Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists, and the Fire Award for Communicator of the Year was bestowed on Robyn Osgood of Blueprint PR.

CPRS pulled off this inaugural event by pulling together a solid group of volunteers, led by CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau President-Elect Laurie Murphy, LeeEllen Carroll (Thornley Fallis), Leisha MacDonald (76design), Katie Boland (Algonquin student), Adam Weitner (Service Master), and Calline Au (Queensway Carleton Hospital).

“We have very talented public relations practitioners in this area who uphold the values of the profession and of our society through their excellent work,” said CPRS Ottawa-Gatineau Chapter President Danielle Côté. “It’s important for us to recognize their work and their contribution to the field of public relations. Awards like these allow us to celebrate this excellence and share it with other who can learn from their work,” she added.

Last night at the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce Business Achievement Awards, the Ottawa office of Thornley Fallis & 76design won Bronze in the Professional Services Firm of the Year category.

 While it was great just to be one of the 8 finalists, it was even more rewarding to be one of the three businesses selected for an award.

Other finalists in the Professional Services of the Year category were:

• Gansen Lindsay Design Consultants Inc.
• Genivar
• Gladstone Aerospace Consulting
• Hendry Warren LLP Chartered Accountants
• Herzing College
• Royal LePage Performance Realty
• Stevenson & White Inc.

Congratulations to fellow award winners Gladstone Aerospace (Silver) and Hendry Warren (Gold).

I just received my welcome package to Fairmont President’s Club Premier.

I don’t normally get excited about stuff like this, but this was a very impressive, first rate effort by Fairmont.

Included in my package (shown spread out on my desk in the photo above) was:

• My 2008 Membership Card,
• Three room upgrade certificates,
• Two certificates for $25 off lunch or dinner, and
• Three luggage tags with my name on them and a Fairmont phone number and email address. If someone finds my bag(s), they (presumably after removing any valuables ) can contact Fairmont who will contact me to arrange for my luggage to be returned.

This is the type of customer service/relations that guarantees I will always look to stay at a Fairmont Hotel when travelling.