Get Something By Doing Nothing

The Slurpee consumer is young and cynical. They often prefer to hang with friends, watch movies and play video games. So, we decided to create a promotion for 7-11’s new Gatorade Slurpee launch that rewards this target group for doing what they love to do best: nothing. Consumers were asked to stand there, sit there, and ultimately freeze there to get involved in our Slurpee FREEZE THE MOMENT contest.

Launching the Slurpee Freeze the Moment contest was a challenge due to an extremely limited media budget considering our vast audience (English speaking Canada)—we also launched the first-ever website for Slurpee Canada, www.slurpee.ca, at the outset of the campaign with no inherent traffic or awareness for this website.

Now Available In Social Berry

Freeze the Moment 4-Week Campaign Results:

-186.8+ Million Facebook Ad Impressions
-120,000+ YouTube Views
-200+ User-generated Contest Videos
-47,000+ Unique Website Visitors
-151,000+ Unique Pageviews

Electronic Arts Inc. is a leading global entertainment company that develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices, and the Internet. EA approached us to develop their first-ever online B2B platform in an effort to cement their relationship with retail sales associates as the leading video game retailer. After all, the video game industry is a highly competitive market, and both offline and online channels are saturated with video game advertising.

Creating an Interactive Community

Our objective was to educate and engage retail salespeople so that they’re more likely to recommend EA games to customers. A solution was developed using a proprietary interactive retail-training platform: Cheddar Labs (www.cheddarlabs.com). The basic concept of the program is as follows: salespeople engage in comprehensive training for each product, including a variety of marketing assets (tutorials, walkthroughs, videos, PDFs, image galleries, feature sheets, etc.), and then they take quizzes to demonstrate their knowledge retention. Upon completing quizzes, salespeople can earn incentives, such as: product discount codes; contest entries; points; and achievement badges. Cheddar Labs also has the ability to issue brand-specific training certification.

Part and parcel to the program is a customized online dashboard that provides a wealth of information for measuring program success. This information has been invaluable for finding innovative ways to increase program participation and further engage sales associates.

Cheddar Labs now trains employees in retailers across North America, including: Best Buy; Game Stop;  Apple Store; Target; Walmart; and more. Program participation is entirely voluntary, and substantial growth has been achieved through word-of-mouth, colleague referrals, and communications shared during in-store PK (product knowledge) meetings with brand reps.

We Got Game

-10,500+ registered sales associates
-220,000+ quizzes
-100+ retailers
-8,000+ retail store fronts
-ROI of 3,071%

Big White Ski Resort is British Columbia’s second largest resort, and Canada’s premier family friendly mountain resort. In anticipation of the 2016 ski season, we spent the summer working with Big White to design and program a new website (www.bigwhite.com). One of the driving factors behind this design was a mobile-first approach that brings a truly eloquent user experience to people on smart phones and tablets. With roughly half of all the resort’s traffic now coming from mobile devices, it was clear that a fluid mobile design was necessary to create a world-class web browsing experience for all visitors.

Key Features

-Mobile Responsive Design
-Geo IP Services Integration
-DoubleClick Integration
-RDP Booking System Integration
-Google Analytics
-Olark Live Chat

Nuu Chah Nulth Seafood approached us to create a new premium aboriginal themed seafood brand, assess target markets, and identify profitable products. The brand needed to be true to it’s roots, the Nuu Chah Nulth culture, whilst differentiating itself from other brands on the shelf that use aboriginal graphics.

After performing in depth market research, and meeting with key stakeholders, we developed a brand story which resonated with the culture of West Coast Aboriginals. This influenced the naming exercise, resulting in Gratitude Seafood. The logo takes its inspiration from the welcoming monument in Port Alberni, where the brand is based, the out turned hands signifying gratitude and emphasizing a whale tail.

Colours predominantly found in Nuu Chah Nulth art were used to accent black backgrounds and white text to create a premium feel. From the art researched, graphical elements presented themselves to bring the designs back to it's West Coast Aboriginal roots, namely the frame which lists the fish variety within it.

The brand now has a solid base to expand from, with a brand story steeped in cultural tradition to lead communications.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that by preventing infections through more efficient coordination among healthcare facilities and public health departments, as much as 80 percent of infections could be prevented in the next five years. It is projected that a coordinated outbreak prevention strategy can help save tens of thousands of lives annually.

At a time when infectious diseases like Zika, Ebola and Avian Influenza threaten our health, and even our lives on a daily basis, Health Alerts is a valuable tool in notifying users about potential threats to help them avoid outbreaks before they happen.

The AmericanEHR Health Alerts app is the first tool that provides real-time push notifications and updates regarding outbreaks and incidents on public health emergency topics, such as: contagious infections, diseases, natural disasters, drug recalls, travel medicine, etc.

Health Alerts pulls information directly from live feeds provided by the world’s most trusted sources for public health information, including:

-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
-World Health Organization (WHO)
-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
-US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
-Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)
-HealthLinkBC
-New York Times
-British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
-Cable News Network (CNN)
-ational Post

In addition to designing and programming the app, we also created an award-winning promotional campaign that primarily targets clinicians, healthcare administrators and patients. The campaign consists of four TV spots, two radio ads, and three different visuals for posters, print advertising and display ads that are in use on social media and healthcare related web-sites.

The campaign creative focusses on every day, high touch-point, objects/areas/actions and make them appear incredibly dangerous. Using juxtapositions we were able to show objects we take for granted as frightening, for example: a grenade as a door knob, or the sound of an explosion when someone sneezes in an elevator, etc. We were able to clearly exaggerate how dangerous a simple action can be, and plant the seeds to encourage viewers to change their behaviour, and subscribe to Health Alerts to be safer.

New creative which was launched in the fall of 2017 includes some innovative new use of media in the form of 3 x 0:06 TV and pre-roll ads (6 second ads?) and a 0:10 second radio spot. With the growing importance of social media as a mainstream media channel, pre-roll video ads on sites like Facebook and YouTube are a great way to make an impression (literally). The 6 second ad format is extremely quick, so our concepts used visuals, audio and a super (headline) to convey our message quickly, and concisely.

This app gets a serious tail wagging.

Leveraging mobile, we are able to curate local offerings for dogs all in a single easy-to-use interface. Need a nearby groomer? Veterinarian? Pet Store? Or do you just want to go check out a dog park? This information is at everyone’s fingertips with the click of a button. Inside the interface, users can filter to their needs, and we take advantage of mobile location services to find and suggest establishments nearby.

It’s a dog-meet-dog world. No typo here.

Through Pooch’s search functionality, when a user selects a park or a business they can then find the details of the establishment, like hours, pictures, phone numbers, address, and even mobile guided directions. Featured businesses can also offer direct booking requests and offer promotions right in the app. If they love the place, they can leave a review and rating so other locals can check it out as well. To save a business, a user can add them on their favorites list for easy-access. Matching people with their needs, and engaging dog-friendly businesses has never been easier.

Pooch makes walking your dog, well, a walk in the park.

Users can explore nearby parks using the search function. If they want to have some fun with their dog at the park, or meet nearby dog-owners, they have the ability to check-in and share their activity. From there, the Pooch community can see who has recently visited the park, who is currently at the park, and at their discretion, they can add or join Play Dates with other dog owners.

Mark new territories.

Pooch is the place for dog owners to meet other likeminded people nearby and be discovered in their community. We are a growing network of dog-owners and dog-lovers which can lead to lasting friendships that come from a common interest – a love of dogs!

Just arrived in a new city? The Pooch app connects travellers and their best friend with locals allowing them to find dog-friendly things to do while exploring new communities.

#TinderSchminder

After meeting others within the community, Pooch users can organize Play Dates! This is the secret sauce of the platform which encourages meet-up’s between dog-owners.

Dog owners are in complete control as they can schedule a Play Date, or filter through Play Dates at other people’s request. If they happen to drop into a local park they can join a Play Date that’s already happening! A great ice breaker connecting strangers and their pets while maintaining a sense of privacy by containing all contact strictly within the Pooch app messaging service.

After a Play Date is done all parties are encouraged to rate their Play Date, leaving the community feedback about the other owner(s) and their pets.

In recent years, the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) has seen their union members lose jobs at an alarming rate. As economic times become tougher, many corporations refuse to sacrifice profits; instead, they sacrifice workers by sending jobs offshore. These companies generate their profits in Canada, and the TWU believes that they should continue to support the communities where those profits are made. With this, TWU approached us to create a public awareness campaign to inform people about the number of Canadian jobs being sent offshore.

Counting Jobs, Not Seconds

Instead of simply engaging in a traditional approach where the union would advertise a negative message using print, radio, and television ads, we focused on developing an integrated campaign that leveraged a combination of PR, non-traditional media, street teams, collateral materials, and online and social media.

In order to increase the likelihood that the union’s key message would resonate and engage all Canadians, we recommended a broader, more topical, and highly correlated message—addressing the drastic unemployment situation in Canada. From this insight came the birth of the National Unemployment Clock—the focal point of the campaign—which displayed, in real-time, the amount of unemployed people in Canada.

The clock was mounted to a truck that started at Parliament Hill in Ottawa and drove across Canada to Vancouver, making stops along the way in big cities, small towns—and everywhere in between. Within each city the truck was supported by street teams that engaged the public to sign a petition. This was designed to influence the Canadian Federal Government to implement legislation around keeping jobs in Canada. We supported the campaign with a strong public relations strategy, ensuring that local and national media were engaged at every stop.

To promote the campaign online the website contained innovative features, such as the real-time National Unemployment Clock (synched with the truck), an online petition form, and a GPS locator so people could follow the truck across Canada. Being a national campaign, all content was available in both English & French. The website was also designed to be search engine friendly, and contained a custom implementation of Google Analytics to facilitate campaign measurement.

Numb3rs Tell The Story

-Over $1M of free media coverage, including 42 TV news segments, 22 radio features, and 48 newspaper articles
-Over 6.2 million impressions during the month-long road trip
-Over 11,000 petition signatures
-15.5% conversion rate for signing the petition (out of all site visitors)
-28% funnel abandonment rate (which is extremely low)
-First search result place (including multiple placements on the first page) on Google for campaign-related keywords
-A campaign ROI of 323%

Each day, inconsiderate and incorrect behaviour contributes to unsafe roadway situations across the City of Vancouver. To improve safety for all road users, the City sought to develop a Road User Safety Awareness Program to tackle the rising number of related injuries and deaths.

The program needed to be executed citywide, geographically focusing on the top collision locations to demonstrate consequences of breaking roadway rules. It was important to target locations with high pedestrian traffic, since these areas reach the largest portion of the public.

Educating “Fragile” Pedestrians

We implemented the “People are Fragile” road safety program in 2012. The purpose of the six-week program was to raise awareness about risky, illegal and inconsiderate behaviours. The campaign identifies the most common behaviours that result in serious injury or fatality by pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. These behaviours include: pedestrians jaywalking, cyclists running stop signs and motorists failing to yield at intersections.

The program launched with a media event that included spokespeople from City Council, the Vancouver Police Department and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. The campaign included advertisements on transit shelters, transit stations, on buses, and on outdoor TV screens, as well as an accompanying website.

The campaign also incorporated innovative guerilla marketing elements such as street writing to spread its message at 10 of Vancouver’s busiest locations that have high incidence of jaywalking. The street writing followed the path of an imaginary jaywalker crossing the street while they were thinking to themselves in a distracted manner. For example: “Is that a new coffee shop? I’ll just run over and grab a skinny   l—-a—-t—-t—e.” (The last words were scrawled across the pavement as if they were struck by a car.)

The primary message of the campaign was to remind everyone that “People are fragile, so don’t put yourself or others at risk.”

Traction Worldwide

This innovative campaign and messaging generated a great deal of interest from the media, including: Global TV, Globe and Mail,  Vancouver SUN, Metro News, Georgia Straight, and 24 Hours. The campaign also took the blogosphere and social media sites by storm, gaining interest from across North America, Europe and Asia.

No Two Snowflakes Are Alike

And no two days at Silver Star need be either! This campaign was designed to promote Silver Star’s new “all-in-one” mountain pass, which provided unlimited access to so much more than just skiing, including ice skating, tubing, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, and more. The main campaign visuals were made up of different items that represented the many different activities that one could do at the resort, and all of the items were arranged to comprise a series of unique snowflake illustrations using 3D modelling and photoshop.

As the campaign launched, we also undertook the development of the world’s largest snowball in the village centre. The snowball had many items sticking out of it, including fake legs with skis and snowboards, ice skates, fake arms with gloves,  and more as it rolled down the hill. It represented all of the amazing things you could do using Silver Star’s new pass, rolled up into one. The accompanying tagline for all material was “One pass. Endless fun.” The snowball became an instant hit in the village, with selfies galore being posted to social media accounts alongside the hashtag: #endlessfun

Messaging was also carried out through a radio campaign, online marketing buys on Google and Facebook, social media, and on the Silver Star website.

On July 15, 2012, Fairmont Hot Springs Resort, featuring Canada’s largest natural mineral hot spring, experienced a severe debris flow that came from high above the resort in local mountains. News spread quickly about this “natural disaster” and Fairmont’s marketing team was busy doing damage control as the media sought to dramatize the event, and the extent of the damage to the resort.

Construction work quickly commenced to clean up the resort and the hot springs, but regionally, people had already begun diverting their vacation plans to elsewhere. We were then tasked with launching a reopening campaign to invite guests back to the best family vacation spot in the Columbia Valley, and let them know that work was complete. To add to the challenge, we had just three weeks from briefing time to conceive, produce and launch the entire campaign which required photography for print ads and online media, TV production, and radio scripts.

American Beauty is a series of large scale architectural, military grade photographs of what was once known as the “Paris of the Midwest”. Since 2010 photographer Philip Jarmain has been documenting the increasingly rapid destruction of Detroitʼs early twentieth-century buildings. His emphasis in this work is on the architecture itself of these vanishing edifices: The form and the detail.

The Opulent Pre-Depression Architecture of Detroit

The city of Detroit had an unprecedented impact on the modern world. The architecture of Detroit in the early 1900s rivalled that of New York, Chicago, or Paris. Then came the Great Depression of the 1930s. Though Detroit would rise again, the era of opulence was over. In 2009 a recession hit like a second Great Depression, compounding the decline and ruin. Now the majority of these majestic pre-Depression buildings they lie victim to scrappers, arson, and demolition.

Jarmain approached us to concept the branding, print collateral and website for this photo series, titled American Beauty, and subsequent exhibition. The logotype pays homage to the Detroit Tigers logo, originally created in the early 1900’s, still in use in a more refined way today. This was paired with robust/modern style of typeface to reflect the industry of the region.

We produced a coffee table book to support the exhibition as it moved from city to city throughout North America. The textured cover and blind emboss of the title was inspired by the plaques found on listed buildings, providing a tactile experience. The pages make use of generous amounts of white space, creating tension drawing the viewer to the clean lines of content.

The American Beauty exhibition has gone on to receive critical acclaim from numerous publications and news sources, including Wired, San Francisco Chronicle, CBC, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Michigan Radio, Vancouver SUN, and Business Insider Australia. The book design itself won gold at the 2015 Lotus Awards.

Unique Design

The focal point of this project were the images themselves. The use of negative space on the posters and the book really drew the viewer in to take a closer look at the details.

The Meridian Gallery in San Francisco is well known in art and design circles. The response for American Beauty was greater than they expected, they explained part of the reason for this were the striking poster designs. For the first time in 25 years the gallery received more footfall from passersby due to the posters outside the building. More people were drawn in to the gallery to ask for more information and take a postcard as a reminder.

This creative stemmed out of a big idea that my creative partner and I really believed in. The only challenge was we had no budget and they weren't even our client. As a result the first ad (NAIGIEM) was shot on spec in my office and then presented to the International Dyslexia Association. Luckily, they were very receptive to the idea and hired us to do their campaign pro-bono. Shortly thereafter that first PSA went into national rotation in Canada and then went on to be featured in Ad Age, Applied Arts, Cannes Lions, London International, The Bessies and the Marketing Awards. It also gained some notoriety when it was selected for inclusion in the Stanford University MBA Program’s presentation on excellence in advertising by Pontiac/Buick/GMC’s then GM, C.J Fraleigh. 

The account grew into an AOR for my agency, Hot Tomali, and I was even invited to join the International Dyslexia Association's board of directors and I sat as their President of the British Columbia Chapter for 3 years.

With SpeakOut launched 7-Eleven’s first ever e-commerce website, marking a significant milestone for the 84-year-old company. The e-commerce site now provides over 100,000 customers with the necessary tools to manage their prepaid phones entirely online. Customers can now top up their accounts to instantly gain airtime for their phones, and/or activate a variety of value plans & add-ons, without ever visiting a physical 7-Eleven store location.

Connection Failed is a 42-minute documentary that explores the local and national impacts of offshoring, and also uncovers the negative impact that offshoring is having on third world countries.

Directed by: Thomas Stringham & Ken Frith
Produced by: Hot Tomali Communications and Goldstar Productions

Pupper Palace offers everything you need to keep your furry family member happy. From grooming to toys, they’re a one-stop dog shop. We were given the task of creating their brand from the ground up. They were looking for something royal but playful.

After a thorough market review, we created a mood board to show Pupper Palace how they could stand out in a competitive and crowded pet market in Vancouver. The logo was inspired by combining a royal shield, a silhouette of a dog and letters from Pupper Palace’s name. The colours were picked to give them a royal feel and a herringbone bone pattern was added to enhance texture. While the logo and colour scheme are serious, the copy was written to give them a playful and relatable side.