Thornley Fallis & 76design CEO, Joseph Thornley, today announced the promotion of Keelan Green, Senior Vice-President & General Manager of the firm’s Ottawa office, to the position of President.

“When you join a company in an economic downturn, you have the opportunity to cower or to stand out. Keelan Green stood out from the beginning and he continues to stand out,” said Joseph Thornley, CEO of Thornley Fallis & 76design. “Keelan has always demonstrated a will to succeed. He demonstrates the truth that that good enough isn’t good enough. Work has to be great to be worth doing. Clients love him. And team members gravitate to him. Over the past two years, he demonstrated his leadership by bringing our Ottawa office through the recession, not only surviving but growing. So, I’m looking forward to working alongside him as he takes responsibility for the entire company.  I’m sure even greater success lies ahead for Keelan and Thornley Fallis & 76design.”

This announcement comes in the wake of several new hires at Thornley Fallis & 76design over the past few months, including Jo Langham, Senior Vice-President & General Manager of the Toronto office; Pierre Killeen, Vice-President, Public Engagement; Laurence Smink, Creative Director; Carrie Croft, Consultant; Eric Portelance, Consultant; Laura Townson, Account Manager; Brent Charbonneau, Senior Web Developer; Frank Carr, Senior Web Developer; and Samantha Hartley, Account Coordinator.

“This is of course a great and very exciting opportunity for me personally,” said Keelan Green. “But, I think what is most exciting is where our firm is right now and the tremendous opportunities I see for us in the months and years ahead.  While the past 18 months was a difficult period for our industry, our agency included, we have come through it with several new, high-profile client relationships, a strengthened team, and an improved and expanded our service offering. Thornley Fallis & 76design is definitely well-positioned to continue providing outstanding service to our existing clients and to take advance of the growing number of new opportunities we are seeing in the market.”

About Keelan Green
Keelan Green joined Thornley Fallis & 76design from the federal government 8 years ago as a Consultant. Since 2002, he held a series of progressively more senior roles until becoming General Manager of the firm’s Ottawa office in January 2007.  Keelan leads many of the firm’s top accounts, including Lockheed Martin, Ford, Enstream, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), a variety of Government of Canada organizations and the City of Ottawa. In 2008, Keelan led the firm’s Ottawa office to the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce Business Achievement Award for Professional Services Firm of the Year and was selected as one of Ottawa’s “Top 40 Under 40” by the Ottawa Business Journal. He serves on several volunteer boards and committees, including the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom, the Salvation Army Ottawa Advisory Board and he is President of the Canadian Public Relations Society Ottawa/Gatineau Chapter. Born and raised in Ottawa, Keelan attended Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia where he received a Bachelors’ degree in Business Administration. Keelan is an avid golfer at Rivermead Golf Club and plays on two rec league hockey teams. He lives in downtown Ottawa with wife Laura and son Peyton.

About Thornley Fallis & 76design
Thornley Fallis is an innovative, full-service public relations, communications and marketing agency that helps organizations reach, connect with, and build and sustain positive relationships with their communities through the integrated use of on-line and off-line communications tactics. 76design is a creative services and web development agency that conceptualizes, designs and develops brands, identities, print materials, website applications, widgets and tools that enable organizations to reach, connect with and create value for their communities.

Contacts:

Jo Langham
416-515-7517 ext. 340,  langham@thornleyfallis.com

LeeEllen Carroll
613-231-3355 ext. 231, carroll@thornleyfallis.com

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.

[Ford is a client of Thornley Fallis.]

On Saturday May 29, nearly 200 Ford Mustang drivers came out for Dupuis Ford Lincoln’s Mustang Poker Run and helped raise $101,666 for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. The grand total was double what they expected and surpassed last year’s record donation. The tears of joy I witnessed at this event gave me enough goose bumps to lift the hair off my skin.

Breast cancer research ranks amongst the top causes Ottawans support and will do anything for – including running a marathon to raise money and awareness for what matters most: the women they love.

Six years ago, Dupuis Ford Lincoln in Casselman decided to take their fundraising initiative for CIBC’s Run for the Cure to a whole new level. For decades, marathon and Race Weekend participants have ran, biked, or rollerbladed across the Eastern Ontario region. A dealership stocked with horsepower and  transmissions, Dupuis Ford Lincoln has a need for speed and a commitment to one of the longest community support initiatives in the Ottawa  area. It was their passion and support from the community that helped create their unique and innovative fundraising event, the Mustang Poker Run.

The 6th edition Mustang Poker Run covered the Eastern Ontario region for a distance of nearly 230 km. Participants stopped at five stations and collected playing cards in attempt to win the grand prize with the best poker hand. Entertainment for the whole family included, “Show & Shine,” “Ford talk,” contests, games, a used books sale, and live performances from local band Hometown.

The fun-filled day was complete with caring families and their beautiful Mustangs, sports car drivers sporting shirts saying “Je t’aime ma femme” or “Je t’aime ma maman,” and stories of survival, honour and praise.

Time spent at the Mustang Poker Run proves there’s more to the pink ribbon campaign than just tying up laces or revving up engines:  there are real people, true stories, and thousands of battles worth fighting.

R to L: Nicole Bourgeois (Cancer survivor and pace car driver), Marie-Claire Ivanski (Organizer), Martin (Son of Nicole), Sylvie (Daughter of Nicole)

L to R: Nicole Bourgeois (Honourary guest), Marie-Claire Ivanski (Organizer), Carole Séguin-Millaire (Organizer)

Michel Dupuis (Owner of Dupuis Ford-bottom right) and Mustang Poker Run team

Mustang Poker Run participants

"Show and Shine"

It is with great pleasure that we announce the launch of the City of Ottawa’s Light Rail website!

Many Ottawans felt as though they were left in the dark when it came to the City’s big Light Rail Transit (LRT) plans. Well folks, there is no longer any need to feel mal-informed. Thornley Fallis and 76design in collaboration with the Light Rail Implementation Team have created an “information-sharing mechanism” that arms the citizens of Ottawa with more than sufficient information relating to the project plan.

The communications efforts applied by Thornley Fallis & 76design were strategic and smart; we have received positive results on the site and its search functions, information content, structure and ease-of-use.

The website in particular has proven to be the most crucial piece of the puzzle. The website we’ve created is meant to engage the entire City; to provide all the facts our users require to fully understand the project and to provide them with a platform to communicate their feelings towards the project.

With the integration of various social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), interested citizens are able to keep up-to-date and connect with the Light Rail Implementation Team with any questions or concerns. Any questions submitted to the team will be answered in a timely fashion; responses will then be posted on the website. The LRT website helps make a difference by providing comfort to Ottawans by reminding them that Light Rail green and it will only improve the City.

Since yesterday’s launch, the LRT project is getting great media play, print and radio; it is noted that there are happy people all around.

When traditional newspapers, periodicals, learned reviews and anthologies enjoyed an unfettered media landscape the natural division seemed to be between the quality press and everyone else.

Originally, “quality press” referred to a category of newspapers in national distribution throughout Great Britain that were characterized by their seriousness, distinctly conservative editorial positions, and cozy relationships with the ruling elite. North American newspapers also produced a quality press, which generally espoused conservative fiscal policy, business interests, and the maintenance of the status quo.

Newspapers—and magazine empires—were also the private domains of individuals who understood that their common lot was not with the common man.

Another hallmark of the quality press was a steadfast objection to moving with the times, with the possible exception of the advertising and classified departments. Occasionally, this would manifest itself in such charming quirks as 1970s references to “Miss Gloria Steinem, the editor of Ms. magazine.”

New voices are changing our understanding of quality press and its less respectable cousin, disposable media. The latter is proliferating chiefly through digital formats while the former is evolving, also chiefly through digital formats.

It works like this: In order to be relevant to the audience you need to deliver your messages directly to them. Online versions of respected publications all over the world are now “delivering the news right to your door” just as they always did. Instead of a paper carrier you have the Internet.

Gossipmongers, society shenanigans and celebrity exposés were made for the Internet; easy to produce and easier to delete. The same equation works for more challenging, important, serious, worthwhile and necessary topics.

Freed from geography and habit, consumers today can explore the collected output of leading thinkers from digital sources that no longer feel constrained by an editorial calendar geared to support the interests of the upper echelons of society.

The new quality press is everywhere; the change is a good one.

Consuming news today is a vibrant, exciting and diverse activity. Resources from around the globe—with divergent opinions, thoughts and ideas—can be read, saved, clipped and shared and sent on a viral tour that has no boundaries. New voices are joining the ranks of the quality press without ever seeing their name on a masthead. Independent thinkers, writers, observers and citizen journalists are influencing larger audiences than ever before.

The main difference, I believe, between the two will be proliferation versus evolution. This distinction will preserve quality while keeping disposable media safely where it belongs.

The Winter Olympics in Vancouver are the first every winter games to feature bloggers as reporters, commentators, critics and shmoozers.

It is now possible to enjoy the games from the point of view of a citizen blogger; fresh, real and usually unscripted. (And in many cases, “unspell-checked”, too.) This changes the way the rest of us—who are not in Vancouver or commenting from our living rooms—will see, experience, enjoy and participate in future Olympiads.

Some of the blogs belong to accredited journalists who file a story for their home base—newspapers, magazines, or television news outlets—while the majority are written by citizens who have an Internet connection and a desire to publish their thoughts.

Even a cursory google search will bring up an astounding and impressive number of results for “Olympic Blogs.”

Always a place to be surprised, amazed, shocked and startled the Internet doesn’t disappoint when it comes to blogs about the Winter Games. Pictures of the crowds in downtown Vancouver are popular and designed to foster a sense of “being there” without actually having to “go there” in person.

Many people believe the new maxim “I blog therefore I am.” Mainstream, hardcore journalists have taken this to heart. Fashion journalist Jeanne Beker is blogging for Fashion Television, her home base. Jeanne is blogging about fashion at the Olympics.

Jeanne Beker is no lightweight in the world—and business—of fashion. She enjoys an international audience and her face and reportage are recognized around the globe.

A number of years ago I interviewed Canadian figure skater Matthew Hall and ended up in hot water when I stated—in print—that no sport could hope to be taken seriously if judges were expected to consider “costume” in the tabulation of scores.

Jeanne proves me wrong.

I recently watched Jeanne chat it up with the folks at CTV discussing, of course, the fashion sense (or lack thereof) of the figure skating competitors. Jeanne and the two reporters from CTV spent a reasonable amount of time discussing the various costumes that competitors were sporting (pun intended). The segment ended with a robust invitation to Jeanne to return before the Olympics end to continue the discussion.

Other fun blogs provide tips on where to eat (always handy) or what to see and do in Vancouver when a break from the Olympics is on order.

Not to be outdone, the tweeple* of Twitter are also busy spreading the message, 140 characters at a time. Of course not every tweet is worth writing home about. Just visit @wintergames for proof. Equally disappointing is the lost potential at @olympicgames where 140 characters is 140 too many.

The blogs are worth reading; real opinions and fun.

* With a nod to writer, actor, bon vivant and Twitterer Stephen Fry. I follow him on Twitter and I first encountered the word “tweeple” on his feed. I now use it shamelessly.

The developed world—particularly the wealthy nations of Canada, the USA, Mexico, and a rich island or two in the Caribbean—have opportunity staring them in the face in Haiti, should they care to look beyond today and see tomorrow.

The immediate need is to alleviate the current suffering that has captured the lenses of the world.

The community of nations, however, has a short memory and an even shorter attention span. One axiom of crisis communications is that another crisis is always looming. Bide your time and soon the eyes of the world will be diverted. The scale and magnitude of the devastation in Haiti (a scale so great that many grasp the wrong word—enormity—to describe it) is mesmerizing. The images still dominate the media and social media applications that matter. They should; we should be shocked, horrified and sickened to see people suffer such misery.

The secondary need, however, is slippery. What we have to do is prevent Haiti from slipping even further away from stability, democracy, dignity and opportunity.

Even in its best days, Port au Prince, was, by all accounts, a dismal place of violent crime, broken government and hopeless people. Numb from decades of dictatorship (a belated thanks-for-nothing to the Duvalier family and their henchmen), corruption (reportedly endemic) and environmental disaster (deforestation seems to have been a sport) have left Haitians with few expectations from the outside world. Nobody helped them when Papa Doc and his cronies crushed them; nobody cared when Baby Doc continued his father’s iron-fisted and corrupt rule. (There was a matriarch of sorts in the form of Madame Duvalier, too, who was sometimes known as Mama Doc, but not to her face. Her influence declined when her son married and booted her out of Haiti.)

We need to remain with Haiti until the nation can stand on its own two feet. This means we have to ignore kooks like Hugo Chavez who accuses the USA of occupying Haiti under the guise of giving aid. It means we have to tell religious crackpots to shut up when they lay the blame for the earthquake on a pact made with Satan. (Thereby giving all true believers a free pass on making a relief donation, or even giving a damn for that matter.) We also have to ignore our own desire to fix the problem quickly and go home.

The opportunity is that Haiti will be rebuilt. Physically—with safe buildings erected by competent contractors who follow real building codes—and governmentally with the foundations of a true democracy that works for the benefit of all the people and not just a selected few.

It takes a certain type of optimist to see a silver lining in such a tragedy. But optimism is not needed to recognize the reality of a society in complete collapse. In the absence of government there will be leadership and there will be rulers. In a place such as Haiti, however, rulers can be determined by who has more guns, ammunition and hired goons. Leadership can be exercised by whoever has the firmest fist, without any pretense of a velvet glove.

Haiti’s rich, developed neighbours (I include Canada as a neighbour) must respond with money, aid, support and patience.

The last item will be the hardest to source. It will also be the most valuable.

From time to time we can all be surprised by our own humanity. While evil has been described as “banal” (see: Hannah Arendt) there are fewer descriptions of destruction, natural disaster, or catastrophe.

Evil is active where natural destruction seems, in comparison, to be passive. It occurs but it does not require an agent to encourage it along. We can fight evil, but we can only respond to natural destruction. It is our response to it that makes us part of the human race.

Global media are consumed with the earthquake in Haiti; this is a valid and understandable response to such magnificent tragedy. The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere—already suffering from decades of neglect, abusive regimes and greedy oligarchs—brought even lower by natural disaster.

What strikes me as significant, however, is how in this time of instant video reporting, camera crews on the ground and teams of reporters arriving by special flights (media stars were dispatched in record time to report from the scene) it is the still photograph that can cause us to stop, stare, wonder and respond.

Reputable newspapers (in Canada, The Globe and Mail, National Post and Ottawa Citizen) are all filled with images from the disaster. The all-too colourful images of Port au Prince call to mind the stark black and white photographs of war torn European capitals from previous wars.

The speed and efficiency of video transmission renders the images powerful, but somehow fleeting. A still photograph invites the viewer to linger and note things that would be lost with a moving image.

The look of despair, resignation and even defeat on the faces of the victims is something terrible to behold, but only visible if you can absorb the entire image and allow it to sink in. It is our ability to be moved—and subsequently to reach out and, somehow, respond—that reminds us of our shared humanity.

Want to help? Reputable relief agencies are soliciting money to help Haiti. Three smart questions:

1. What will you do with my money?
2. When will you use my money?
3. How much of my money will go to administration expenses?

Yesterday a colleague noted that the front page image of a major Canadian newspaper was credited to Facebook, the social media site that many use to keep in touch with friends and families. Birthdays, family vacations and pictures from a golden wedding anniversary are the stuff of social media lore. Long-lost high school chums finding one another on Facebook were, for a time, a staple of soft journalism.

In an earlier era the Personals section of daily newspapers often carried short ads from people looking for lost loves, estranged family members, past neighbours and so forth. There was an element of sympathy for the person who placed an ad encouraging someone to “call home, all is forgiven” or wondering whatever happened to the boys from the Cub Pack.

We read these ads knowing we would never know what happened to long-lost Uncle Joe, or if John and Marsha patched things up.

The Viet Nam War—a miasma of grief broadcast to hundreds of millions of living rooms on the evening news decades ago—created the modern take on the storied war correspondent. Images from the battlefield, field hospital or ruins made war real, and perhaps routine, to the audience back home. Given the media consuming habits of the Viet Nam War generation (tune in at 6 for the evening news, with a trusted anchor) the war could be presented, positioned and edited for public consumption.

Someone, somewhere, was exercising final approval on what made it to the network. Brutal images (still available all over the internet) from Viet Nam played no small part in sickening public opinion and helped turn its tide.

In due course the public lost their appetite for the war and the confrontation ended, after too many years, with a whimper and not a bang. Perhaps the audience had seen too much?

The image on the newspaper yesterday was not edited. It was real, raw and as unscripted as life itself. The growing bank of images—of mind-numbing devastation coupled with the awareness that Haiti is a place of poverty, struggle, dictatorship, crime, violence and a complete lack of hope—are reaching a new audience.

The audience today has countless options for information. Social media updates about the earthquake in Haiti will continue to proliferate as NGOs, news organizations (legitimate and illegitimate), charities, support groups, interested bystanders, family members and the  public reach out online for information, images, context and, most importantly, understanding of the events in Haiti as they unfold. Moment by moment.

I believe that this change is a good one. Unhindered by an editorial bias, citizen journalists are at their best when presented with a story that begs to be shared with others. Sharing the images, stories, experiences and developments in Haiti using social media tools empowers us. It is impossible to ignore the suffering of strangers when our knowledge of that suffering comes from a stranger.

The late Walter Cronkite was often called “the most trusted man in America.” I trust the citizen journalists, social media users and others “broadcasting” from Haiti just as much.

We have watched the destruction and its aftermath. Social media tools and citizen journalists will enable us to watch the response and reconstruction. We will know what happened to the people affected by the earthquake; watch hospitals, schools, police stations and presidential palaces reopen and—thanks to strangers on the ground—remain involved.