Marketing - Business in Vancouver

September 2012

Personal goalsTracy Dallas, co-founder, Total Staffing Solutions, allows staff to access their own social media to look for candidates

Switching channelsAn emergency shutdown of their offices had Omicron’s Bev Attfield and Bill Tucker testing different lines of communication

Together foreverSpring Advertising’s Rob Schlyecher sees an end to the separation of new and traditional services in ad agencies

marketingMix and match

Integration of traditional and new

strategies net Fasken Martineau and

marketing director Blair Lill an industry

award

printing partner sponsor

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Contents4 Keeping score

Setting marketing goals, along with focused strategizing, needs to be a part of any marketing mix

6 First position Integrated campaigns can help keep companies high on Google rankings

10 Alternative solutions Radio spots followed by outside-the-box web interaction and guerilla marketing a perfect fit for Spring Advertising clients

14 Crowd control Omicron leveraged every online and offline solution it could to keep in touch with clients during an emergency

16 It’s in the mix Leveraging the best of traditional and new media yields success for the Counsel Network

20 The art of hospitality Hotels and restaurants follow personal contact with online posts to keep clients

22 Drama studies Whatever medium is used, tapping into heart-felt values is always in vogue

marketing

Business in Vancouver 102 East Fourth Avenue Vancouver, BC V5T 1G2P: 604.688.2398 F: 604.688.1963 E: [email protected]

PuBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO: 40069240. REGISTRATION NO: 8876. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to Circulation Depart-ment: 102 East Fourth Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5T 1G2. E-mail: [email protected]

Perfect blendsTaking risks isn’t something business owners tend to feel comfortable with, but experimenting without knowing specific results is nothing new in the field of marketing. Now, in the era of Facebook, Foursquare, blogs and tweets, on top of print, radio and television, it’s hard to know where to place one’s bets.

In this third of Business in Vancouver’s Business Excellence series for 2012, we look at integrated marketing strategies that leverage the best of traditional and new media. Can direct mail work for a web-design company? What about YouTube for a law firm? The answer would be “yes” and the message is clear: no matter what media you use, keep your goal in mind.

Graphically Speaking, for example, is interested in providing education; DDB is after the emotional reaction; and Spring taps into personal values to stand out from the crowd. But in each case, the integrated campaigns use strategic personal interactions, both face-to-face and online, to gain clients and keep them engaged.

Along with our published Excellence series, BIV presents a breakfast series with panels of experts in each area of business. Join us for our Marketing Breakfast panel with Bev Attfield, marketing director, Omicron; Blair Lill, marketing director, Fasken Martineau; and Rob Schlyecher, creative director, Spring Advertising; September 25, 7-9 a.m., Marriott Vancouver Pinnacle, 1128 West Hastings. Visit www.biv.com/events/biv for tickets and more information.

– Baila Lazarus, features and magazines editor, Business in Vancouver

September 2012

leadership mar 2012sustainability jun 2012

marketing sep 2012philanthropy dec 2012

By Michael Bernard

When the Vancou-ver Canucks were shut out in Game 7 of the 2011 Stan-ley Cup, millions of fans were left de-

flated and depressed; but not Vancouver’s largest law firm.

Win or lose, Fasken Martineau con-sidered its unique partnership campaign with the NHL team was a resounding vic-tory for the firm, its clients and its inter-nal staff.

“It turned out that Game 7 was the most viewed playoff game in history [with more than 50 million watching it on TV],” said Blair Lill, the law firm’s director of marketing and business development. “And our sign was there.”

While it was a high-profile moment, it was really but a blip in a lengthy and in-tense marketing and public relations cam-paign for which the firm used a blend of both traditional and new forms of mar-keting to communicate its message of support for the Canucks.

The integrated campaign won the firm the Legal Marketing Association’s HELM (Honouring Excellence in Legal Market-ing) Award this year.

The campaign has its roots in a partner-ship started five years ago when Fasken Martineau decided it needed to do some-thing to promote its unfamiliar name in town after absorbing the 120-year-old Vancouver firm Russell DuMoulin in one of a spate of law firm consolidations across Canada.

“My thinking at the time was if we could get a relationship with the Canucks, the type of things they stand for – team-work, excellence, community involvement and community service – would be the type of things [that would be identified with the firm],” said Vancouver managing partner Will Westeringh.

“We would also get our name in a venue like Rogers Arena where corporate Vancouver and the business people are.”

Westeringh said getting key partners on board was critical. While they all even-tually agreed, “I think some of them saw it as outside of the box. It was a risk.”

It was also important the campaign didn’t run afoul of the rules and regula-tions governing advertising by the legal profession.

“I would be embarrassed if we as law-yers didn’t check out the legality of what we were proposing to do, so we definite-ly did our due diligence. We never had a

question from the Law Society or anyone else.”

The Canucks’ playoff campaign kept the firm’s five marketing profession-als engaged full time, from January 2011 on. They set a number of external goals, Lill said. Those included using the firm’s existing Canucks sponsorship to increase the profile and brand awareness, gaining greater media exposure, giving clients and lawyers networking forums to further de-velop business relationships and increase firm revenue, and creating a unique client experience in the firm’s guest suite and club seats.

This last goal – which represents the traditional side of law firm marketing – was central to the campaign.

“That was where a lot of the planning and research comes into play,” said Lill. “Will and I looked very closely at key cli-ents, strategic guests that we would like to bring into the fold. And we would basic-ally handpick who would like to go (to the suite and club seats) and then bring along the lawyers for that game, and take it game by game.”

To draw in a select group of new and existing clients, Fasken created “Hockey Talk,” a breakfast event where Canucks senior management spoke to a packed

Major score with Canucks partnership

Law firm leverages hockey team’s

popularity to raise its own profile

4 Business in VAncouVer excellence series

room of clients and the firm’s lawyers, giving them a unique experience and a chance to talk hockey behind closed doors.

“You can’t go and buy a ticket to some-thing like that,” said Westeringh, noting that “nothing went outside the room.”

Added to that were electronic tools such as the firm’s website, email signa-tures, YouTube, Twitter and, most

importantly, customer relationship man-agement (CRM).

These sophisticated software systems have come into their own in the last dec-ade, allowing companies to initiate and monitor thousands of contacts with cli-ents every day with the push of a button.

“Everything we did for the Canucks campaign was done using our CRM: the invitations went out electronically, every-

one RSVPed electronically and we tracked and managed things electronically.

“If we were doing it the old way by printing and mailing invitations and managing RSVPs by taking phone calls or emails it would have been very hard to be as nimble as we were able to be during the playoffs.”

Will Westeringh, Vancouver managing partner (l), with Blair Lill, director of marketing, Fasken Martineau: using values espoused by the Canucks to

connect with their own brand

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Business in VAncouVer excellence series 5

Darrell Hadden, president

of Graphically Speaking:

“we try to be different in

our marketing approaches;

that allows us to stand out”

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By Lorne Mallin

For the head of one of B.C.’s largest website de-velopers, traditional media plays an important role in both marketing his company and the ser-vices he offers his clients.

“We try to be different in our marketing ap-proaches; that allows us to stand out,” said Dar-

rell Hadden, founder, president and CEO of Vancouver’s Graphically Speaking Services Inc.

“That has been very, very different for a web agency to do traditional advertising and it has been very successful.”

However, print work is secondary. Graphically Speaking’s primary focus for its business development and marketing is top positioning in Google.

“We do that through what’s called organic SEO (search en-gine optimization) and that means we don’t pay for it,” Hadden said. “It’s cost-effective, number 1; number 2, the click-through rate is far higher with organic results than on the paid adver-tising.”

He explained he uses keywords such as “web design Vancou-ver,” “SEO services Vancouver” or “e-commerce services Van-couver.”

“We have identified approximately 60 key phrases that are used by our target audiences within Google to find a company like us.”

A quick Google search of “web design Vancouver” brought up three paid-for listings on top, and below them, Graphically Speaking was the third one down.

Speaking of numbers, the company is number 4 on Business in Vancouver’s list of the 25 largest web developers in B.C. with 47 employees.

Hadden said many of his personnel come from traditional media backgrounds.

“It’s absolutely fantastic for them to keep those skills and hone them even further,” he said.

Graphically Speaking designs brochures marketing its servi-ces and inserts them into trade publications.

“We have experimented with Business in Vancouver, the Vancouver Board of Trade and B.C. Business. We’ve had great

Print worksWeb agency Graphically

Speaking aims at top

positioning on Google


success with Business in Vancouver in-serts.”

Hadden said all organizations should be experimenting, changing and fine-tun-ing their approach.

“The most controversial one we’re do-ing right now is we’re testing direct mail. No one in our industry would think about doing direct mail. We’re having some success with that. It’s still a work in progress.”

The company’s third major initiative is sponsorship of local associations to sup-port its target audience of marketing and communications professionals.

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In 2011, Hadden was president of the B.C. chapter of the American Marketing Association, and Graphically Speaking vice-president and web strategist John Al-mond was president of the B.C. chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

The company is redoing its email mar-keting and social media to emphasize education and not selling.

“Our whole focus on those initiatives, which will be rolled out late summer or early fall, is just to provide useful and rel-evant information to our target audience about building websites, how to do social

I think [Graphically Speaking is] right

on the money. To discount any

channels is really not doable in this

day and age because attention is split in

so many ways Sheri Wisnowski,

communications consultant

media, how to market,” he said.There is no mention of traditional

media services on Graphically Speaking’s website. But the company does create bro-chures, reports, trade show displays, logo development and some branding.

“We have purposefully not put that in as it has not been our new client focus,” Hadden said. “We will not do tradition-al media for someone unless they are a client.”

One such client is Vancouver-based forest giant Canfor Corp. Christine Ken-nedy, vice-president of public affairs, said Graphically Speaking was hired last year

Graphically Speaking

used traditional print

flyers inserted into

newspapers to promote

digital products and

services


Consultant Sheri Wisnowski: “when you get too many silos in

marketing and communications you run into all kinds of trouble”

to remake Canfor’s website.“We’re really pleased with the outcome,” she said. “They

work with us on an ongoing basis to keep it current and fresh.”

Kennedy said that because Canfor liked Graphically Speak-ing’s creative approach, the web agency was also used to de-sign the 2011 annual report and sustainability report, keeping them consistent with the website formats.

“They’re a great company with a very creative base … a friendly, competent crew that focused on getting the job done and getting it done exceptionally well, so we would certainly look forward to working with them again in the future.”

Vancouver communications counsel Sheri Wisnowski said Graphically Speaking is effectively using a wide range of mar-keting.

“I think they’re right on the money. To discount any chan-nels is really not doable in this day and age because attention is split in so many ways.”

She said the web developer is “quite brilliant” in expanding its services to focus on integrated communications and cover digital and print with the talent within the company.

Working only digitally can be limiting. “When you get too many silos in marketing and communications you run into all kinds of trouble.”

Wisnowski said she knows first-hand that Graphically Speaking’s direct-mail pieces are reaching their target audi-ence because she receives them regularly.

“I haven’t done a website for myself. They are keen to do it. They have been sending the right material with the right in-formation. So when I’m ready to make that decision, that’s a conversation I would want to have with them.” •

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By any means (or media) possibleSpring Advertising mixes traditional and

new media to make marketing magic

You can’t click on a newspaper to see the video or explore the site or play the game.

That said, you can’t replace a radio spot with a YouTube video while your customer is driving

the kids to school Rob Schlyecher

partner and creative director, Spring Advertising

By James Dolan

Talking to 18 to 25-year-olds isn’t always easy, especially when what you’re talking about is school. Yet that’s exactly what John Casa-blancas Institute Vancou-

ver needed to do if it wanted to grow its business: grab the attention of this notori-ously hard-to-reach demographic, then persuade them to consider a career in fashion, makeup and cosmetology.

Spring Advertising was up for the chal-lenge. As Spring’s partner and creative director Rob Schlyecher explained, since taking on the institute as a client six years ago, the agency has relied on a mixture of both traditional media and new media to create an innovative, award-winning campaign that has produced impressive business results.

“The hinge of the campaign is a slogan called ‘Born to do this,’” Schlyecher said. The slogan came from an insight into the client’s target audience: young women who aren’t exceptional at academics, but share an intense passion for aesthetics and fashion.

“Many of them have always been un-aware that that was a piece of them that


could lead to a career,” Schlyecher said. “So ‘Born to do this’ was turned into kind of a destiny call.”

Traditional media has always been the foundation of the campaign, in the form of an ongoing series of lightheart-ed 30-second radio spots. “We used trad-itional media very carefully so we could place parent and child in the car when the child was going to secondary school, or even a job right out of secondary

school in the morning and getting a ride,” Schlyecher said.

As Schlyecher explained, the spots were strategically written with laughs in mind.

“These two people [are] sitting in the car, at eight in the morning, and Mom is wondering what this kid’s going to do with her life. And the kid’s wonder-ing how she’s going to tell her mom what her report card looks like. And they both have a laugh at an ad for hair, makeup

Rob Schlyecher, partner and creative director, Spring Advertising: “clients are pushing for change. The separation of new and traditional service in

an ad agency is on its way out forever”

Dominic Schaefer


and fashion school. They reach common ground around that particular purchase decision.”

The campaign’s traditional media drove traffic to the new media component: a purpose-build website, the tone of which was 180 degrees from that of the radio campaign.

“[We] immediately switched gears from comedy into professional-grade post-secondary education in the industry,” Schlyecher said. “The interface on the website looks like you’ve arrived in the school.”

The campaign also includes a num-ber of guerilla executions, including a 30-foot-long billboard intended to mimic the front door of a refrigerator covered in a colourful mural of a fashion model cre-ated from alphabet magnets.

On the social side, Spring built a Face-book app entitled “Freak your face,” of-fering users the ability to apply horror-movie makeup to their Facebook profile. As Schlyecher pointed out, the execution

has pass-along value that would be im-possible to replicate with traditional media.

Even six years in, the campaign for the John Casablancas Institute still holds considerable appeal to Jim Falconer, its president.

“The whole Born to do This campaign has been great,” he said. “It’s such a per-fect fit.”

Falconer knows the message is getting through – mostly because his clients tell him so.

“They write essays when they [apply to] the program. I would say at least 50% of them quote they were ‘born to do this’ in the essay at some point.”

To Falconer, the success of the cam-paign comes down to the strategic mix between traditional and new media.

“[We] need the combination,” Falcon-er said. “Our clientele … is living on the Internet, on Facebook and other things, but they still have to find out about us through other methods. We have to give

them a reason to go online to find us.” And the bottom line? Since the cam-

paign began, John Casablancas Institute has grown steadily, despite an intensely challenging business environment.

“It’s very competitive. There are options for these kids,” Falconer noted. Every year, however, there seem to be more cli-ents – a fact Falconer attributes largely to Spring’s campaign. “It’s definitely suc-cessful.”

Looking back, Schlyecher believes the John Casablancas campaign is indica-tive of a shift to merge traditional and non-traditional media. “Clients are push-ing the change,” he said. “The separation of new and traditional service in an ad agency is on its way out forever.”

And to Schlyecher, that is exactly as it should be. “You can’t click on a news-paper to see the video or explore the site or play the game. That said, you can’t re-place a radio spot with a YouTube video while your customer is driving the kids to school – I hope!” •

Jim Falconer, president, John Casablancas Institute Vancouver: even though clients may be spending more time online, advertisers still need

traditional media


By Ingrid de Jong Joffe

Of all the emergencies that may be anticipated by people who work in Van-couver’s office towers, a flood may seem the most unlikely. But one recent

spring morning, staff from Omicron ar-rived at Bentall Three tower to learn their two lower floors had flooded due to a broken water pipe on the 18th floor.

Omicron’s offices suffered the worst damage and were pooled with several inches of water, along with water-ravaged computers and workspaces.

“When I had my first look at our office space, it was like a war zone. I was amazed by the power of water; it’s so destructive,” said Bev Attfield, director of marketing and communications for Omicron.

With more than 120 staff, Omicron is

one of Western Canada’s largest integrated design and construction firms. Communi-cation is number 1 priority to keep projects running.

“We’re unique in the marketplace and effective messaging is critical. [Our re-sponse] had to be timely, as the entire in-dustry is schedule and deadline driven,” said Bill Tucker, CEO of Omicron.

For Attfield, the flood required a multi-channel and immediate communication approach for staff as well as clients whose projects were affected. It reflected the brand’s existing communication strategy.

“We use a combination of traditional and new marketing channels,” said Att-field. “Our emphasis is on sustainability so we are moving away from printed material. Brochures have been replaced with mem-ory sticks loaded with data or QR codes.”

Omicron is also working with Industrial

Brand, an agency that specializes in work-ing with partner-driven professional servi-ces firms, to evaluate its goals and market-ing rebrand strategy.

“Omicron has to look at all opportun-ities of online and offline media and evalu-ate them to decide which platforms to be on. There is no single solution,” said Ben Garfinkel, partner and strategy director of Industrial Brand.

Attfield’s marketing team used new media as well as traditional methods while the office was shut down for a day and a half and in the weeks of the flood’s after-math.

“We used different channels to com-municate with people, from internal staff to our clients. Our employees’ health and safety concerns were our first priority as people came to work and wanted access to the building,” said Attfield.

Messages flood in Omicron embraces new media after

a devastating day at the office

Bev Attfield, director of marketing, and Bill Tucker, CEO, at Omicron. After both floors of Omicron were flooded, the firm’s marketing team used a

variety of traditional and new media channels to communicate timely updates to staff and clients

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The first line of communica-tion was the most traditional: word-of-mouth. The company’s phone system operated through its servers, which were flood-ed, so calls and voicemails were not an option. Key members of staff met people in the lobby and were told to return home to await further instructions.

Next, Attfield’s team pre-pared a response for staff and used an iPhone app to send a blanket text message to 150 cell phones of the staff. Then they sent an email blast to 3,500 cli-ents using MailChimp, a cloud-based email marketing sys-tem. For clients whose projects would be affected by the delays, Omicron needed to diminish the damage with remote work-ing options.

“There was a fantastic re-sponse from people to the flood. It really speaks to our indus-try. Our competition actually stepped up and offered their ex-tra desks and workspace to help us out and keep us working,” said Tucker.

Meanwhile, the market-ing team put together a blog in WordPress to provide real-time updates. The blog was launched the first day of the flood and its link was sent in a text to staff.

“The staff was very grateful we were able to provide a robust source of information so quick-ly. It provided a sense of calm and order,” said Attfield.

After the second day of the flood, people were able to return to the office but it took weeks to

repair the damage and replace highly specialized equipment. Ceiling tiles, carpeting and baseboards had to be replaced as well as about 100 damaged computers and high-end draw-ing software.

Today, Omicron is fully func-tional and the flood is a mem-ory, until someone opens a sel-dom-used file drawer to find water. It serves as a reminder that communicating a message to the right audience using the right channel is crucial.

“In traditional advertis-ing, you know who to talk to and how to reach them,” said Garfinkel. “The ways people interact with digital content has changed with smaller devices like smartphones, iPads and laptops. Businesses can’t rely on one medium. You need to create layers to build messaging and your brand.”

“There is no single way to communicate with clients any-more,” said Tucker. “Bev and her team have always dem-onstrated an interest in social media and quickly found innov-ative ways to deliver the mes-sage.”

Said Attfield: “It’s very im-portant to have consistent mes-saging and and be very nim-ble and agile. It was a good ex-perience to go through and test systems and review things we would now do differently. In the future we will use Twit-ter, a more robust and immedi-ate solution than blog, which is more static,” said Attfield. •

We’re unique in the marketplace and effective messaging is critical. [Our response] had to be timely, as the entire industry is schedule and

deadline driven Bill Tucker

CEO, Omicron

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Recruitment firms create a unique marketing media mix

Key to successful marketing still lies in

networking, both online and in-person

By Jen O’Rourke

There’s no question that the rise of new media in the past few years has altered how businesses approach and execute their market-ing strategies. The ques-

tion is, how different is the ball game in a business-to-business marketing setting?

Media strategist Paula White of White-way Media Solutions believes it still boils down to the same basic marketing prin-ciples of knowing your target market, building lasting relationships and creat-ing brand authenticity.

She suggests, as a first step, finding out exactly where potential clients are hang-ing out both in the digital world and the brick and mortar world.

“Essentially, you’re still going to have to get out there and network … find out where these companies are socializing and then be there,” said White.

Conveniently, creating a social media account with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can help businesses learn more about what their markets are doing and where they are hanging out.

For Warren Smith, managing partner

at the Counsel Network, a legal recruit-ment firm, it’s been about recognizing the different advantages that both traditional and new media present to his particular industry.

“With Twitter, for example, there are two sides to it for us,” said Smith. “We definitely use Twitter to keep tabs on what’s going on in the market. We use it to see what our clients are doing, we use it to see what’s going on in terms of market movement and trends and issues.”

For the purposes of a recruitment firm, he’s found that online media offers a time-effectiveness never before seen in print media and quite advantageous to a business that relies on timeliness and ef-ficiency.

“There’s a speed with which recruit-ment has moved to over time,” he said. “There’s an expectation that you have to be able to know your market, find your candidates and present in a fairly effective manner.”

That’s not to say, however, that there still isn’t power in traditional methods, such as print media, for these businesses, Smith said. The key is in knowing the dif-ferent strengths each medium offers.

“What we use print media for … where it’s a more powerful tool for us, is to re-inforce who we are, what we do and our story and what our brand is in the market. So we will run a much more branding-centric campaign there.

The firm then relies on new media, such as its Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages to get the most current postings out, which results in a quicker response time in filling client’s positions.

Along a similar line, Tracy Dallas, Total Staffing Solutions co-founder and vice-president, operations, has seen that al-lowing her staff to tap into their person-al social media accounts creates a greater opportunity for finding the perfect candi-date for her client.

[In our business], we’re searching can-didates, we’re looking at people’s resumés. All these young people in the office they have hundreds and thousands of people as friends on Facebook. … They’ll reach out to their friends … and maybe find some-one with that perfect skill set,” she said.

As for using traditional media, when Total Staffing Solutions was first creat-ed in Vancouver in 2006, Dallas used the most traditional method available in


marketing – hitting the pavement. “Getting myself out there was the first

step,” said Dallas. That’s basically been our marketing strategy – getting out there, meeting clients, … our business has excelled because of our referrals, compan-ies referring us to other companies,” said Dallas.

Her advice on using print media? Make sure it’s consistent.

“We know there’s no point in advertis-ing one month here, one month there, ” she said. “You need to be consistent … if you’re going to do print, you need to do

Warren Smith, managing partner, the Counsel Network: new media allows businesses to reach out to their clients on a more personal level

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There’s a speed with which recruitment has moved to over time. There’s an

expectation that you have to be able to know your market, find your candidates and present in a fairly effective manner

Warren Smith managing partner, the Counsel Network


Media strategist Paula White of Whiteway Media emphasizes the

importance of networking in business-to-business marketing using

both traditional and new methods

it on a monthly or weekly basis and see where it takes you from there.”

When it comes to determining the right combination of traditional and new media, White points out there is no blan-ket solution. Businesses must know their marketing budget and decide what’s most relevant and effective for their particular industry and spend their money accord-ingly.

For example, for a recruitment firm like Total Staffing Solutions, Dallas feels it’s vital to allocate funds to building a presence on an online job-board site

such as Monster.comThough membership does come at a

cost, Dallas explains that it has a multi-tude of benefits for a recruitment firm. Among the biggest perks offered is the ability to advertise to a large pool of can-didates.

“[We do] advertising in terms of post-ing our positions, getting our name out on the big job boards, like Monster, so people see those,” said Dallas. “Maybe it’s not a role they’re interested in at the mo-ment but they see the company name and the logo all the way down. The more roles

that we’re able to post on there, because we have an account with Monster, the bet-ter it is.”

Going beyond the usual suspects in so-cial media, White suggests joining web-sites and groups that are relevant to your industry and revolve around networking, such as meetup.com and Rapid Time Net-works (rapidtimenetworks.com) to make new connections.

“You may not meet the person that you’re immediately networking with as your client, but you never know what their rolodex is.” •

For a unique twist on using social media, Tracy Dallas, Total Staffing

Solutions vice-president, operations, encourages employees to use

their personal sites to reach a broader audience for job postings

You need to be consistent … if you’re going to do print, you need to do it on a monthly or weekly basis and see where it takes you from there

Tracy Dallas co-founder and vice-president, operations,

Total Staffing Solutions


Fasken Martineau’s logo, well-placed below the Canucks’ bench, was seen by 50 million viewers during the 2011 Stanley Cup final

[Fasken Martineau]is really embracing

a very new trend of partnering with

clients in a marketing campaign

Gary Mitchell principal, OnTrac Coach

towels and the expected paraphernalia of hockey watching. And while it wasn’t part of the plan, the younger lawyers in the firm were active on Twitter with about 300 tweets back and forth keeping clients and colleagues up to date on the promotion and amplifying the campaign’s impact.

An industry observer who teaches law-yers and firms how to market to clients says the Fasken Martineau campaign is unique.

“It is really embracing a very new trend of partnering with clients in a marketing campaign,” said Gary Mitchell, princi-pal of OnTrac Coach of Vancouver. “They have totally engaged the Canucks, the players, the management, all of their own staff and their lawyers and integrated the two organizations in this marketing cam-paign.

“That is very cutting edge in the legal profession.” •

Nimble is not a word you would nor-mally associate with law firms but the na-ture of the playoffs demanded the firm be able to turn on a dime or, in fact, on sever-al thousand dollars in half-page ads.

Advertisements headlined “Keep Go-ing!” to be run following a Canucks win or “Thanks for the Memories” after a Can-ucks’ loss had to be designed in advance for publication in the Vancouver Sun.

With the playoff games ending right around the daily newspaper’s deadlines, Lill worked on a minute-by-minute basis monitoring the game outcome to make sure the right ad was published.

For YouTube, the firm produced a video summarizing its activities to ensure that its 300 employees were fully engaged in the campaign that included jersey days,

major Score Continued from page 5


Everything old is new again

Vancouver’s hospitality industry relies

on face-to-face interactions combined

with online follow-up for best results

By James Dolan

The phrase “cutting edge” isn’t often associated with the hospitality industry.

While new hotels and restaurants open all the time, the fundamentals of

the business don’t change much over the years; except perhaps when it comes to marketing.

In a bid to attract an affluent, techno-logically savvy community of business customers, Vancouver restaurants and hotels are combining traditional and new media in innovative ways.

When it comes to marketing, Chuck McIntosh, a partner at Pourhouse Res-taurant in Gastown, has taken a “back to the future” approach. Instead of using newspapers, magazines or banner ads to promote his business, he prefers to do his marketing the old-fashioned way: by

spending time talking to customers. “Advertising – we don’t do a whole lot

of that,” McIntosh admitted. “A lot of the [marketing] we’ve done has been grass-roots – from people coming in and hav-ing an unbelievable experience. It kind of spreads.”

McIntosh believes this is a far more ef-fective strategy for building repeat busi-ness with existing customers (and new business with their friends and col-leagues) than any traditional advertising campaign.

“You can’t put a price on getting out there and talking to people,” he said.

McIntosh then uses new media to lever-age this personal contact.

By posting on his website, his blog, or via social media (mostly Twitter and Foursquare) what customers, bloggers, re-viewers and food critics are saying about his business, McIntosh can take word-of-

mouth marketing to a whole new level. “It’s kind of word-of-mouth on ster-

oids,” he said. “Everything that comes through, I monitor it online; I have alerts. Whenever that comes up, I check it out. If it’s bad I try to fix it. If it’s good, I pro-mote it.”

When it comes to marketing her ho-tel’s Tableau Bar Bistro, Lilliana De Co-tiis, director of marketing and principal at Loden Hotel, agrees with McIntosh: per-sonal methods are usually better than ad-vertising.

“It’s very much a word-of-mouth indus-try. Everybody knows that,” she said.

For her hotel, however, De Cotiis uses a mixture of traditional and new media.

“It’s a balance between the two of them,” she said. While the portion of her marketing budget spent in new media has risen steadily, De Cotiis believes trad-itional media still have a big role to play.

Chuck McIntosh, partner, Pourhouse Restaurant: “a lot of the [marketing] we’ve done has been grassroots, from people coming in and having an

unbelievable experience – it kind of spreads”

Dominic Schaefer


Lilliana De Cotiis, director of marketing and principal, Loden Hotel: “some of the [traditional]

publications are foundations, and they still exist and people still go to them”

“Would I take one over the other? Ab-solutely not. I still think some of the [traditional] publications are founda-tions. They still exist and people still go to them.”

De Cotiis’ strategy is to first build awareness within her target market (executives, senior directors and owner-principals) with traditional ads placed in the business press or online with Google AdWords. She then uses social media to promote packages and deals that appeal to this clientele. The hotel also hosts spe-cial events and luncheons for executive assistants, in an effort to influence those who schedule business travel for their bosses.

De Cotiis has been very successful with a number of non-traditional strategies in-cluding partnerships with other business-es and charity co-sponsorships.

The hotel is also featured prominently on reality television, with appearances on Real Housewives of Vancouver, The Bach-elor Canada, and The Proposal. Such ex-posure is then posted online via the ho-tel’s website and social media to create marketing buzz for the property.

Rodney Payne, founder of Think! So-cial Media applauds such efforts to merge traditional and new media tools. Even so, he believes that rather than bolting on a new media element to a traditional cam-paign, hospitality businesses may be bet-ter served by rethinking their marketing from the ground up.

“Trying to tack [new media] onto old media efforts is usually very difficult,” Payne said.

Part of that rethinking process should be to drop the traditional-versus-new-media debate.

“The biggest mistake people make is fo-cusing on the tools first,” Payne said, add-ing that whether you should go to market with a print campaign or an activation or a Facebook page is irrelevant if you can’t provide a first-rate customer experience.

“The point isn’t so much to get your message right. The point is to get your product right.”

For those using new media for the first time, Payne suggests a three-step approach.

some relationships and perhaps a small community of advocates, you can start do-ing things to engage those people, or ask-ing them for input on your business.” •

“The biggest opportunity is to listen first … to what people are saying about you,” he said. “Then to build some relationships through conversation. Once you build

Everything that comes through, I monitor it online; I have alerts. Whenever that comes up, I check it out. If it’s bad I try to fix it. If it’s good, I

promote it Chuck McIntosh

partner, Pourhouse Restaurant


Courting corporate hearts

Why drama trumps data in

business-to-business marketing

By Peter DeVries

Marty Yaskowich, man-aging director of digital marketing at DDB Canada, doesn’t care much for boring marketing strategies.

The stereotype of chart flipping, number crunching boardroom meetings doesn’t sit well with his belief in the power of ap-pealing to the humanity of his customers.

Neither does it maximize the use of modern digital media tools, now ubiqui-tous in almost every forum of business. He believes businesses need to ask them-selves what they’re doing to stay engaged with not only their current customers, but also with those of the future.

The effort doesn’t boil down to a one-time shot, he said, and whereas build-

ing and nurturing an ongoing relation-ship with the client used to take form in personal, face-to-face interactions, it now takes place through a variety of media in a host of different forums.

Using social media and other digit-al tools such as blogs, discussion boards and newsletters, will help keep the rela-tionship alive, and creating this kind of ongoing relationship carries over once a

client has made a purchase. “We strongly believe that there has to

be a great engaging social hook in what we’re doing,” he said. “Whatever we’re creating, we want people to be able to en-gage with it, interact with it, pass it along and participate in it in some way.”

Business to business customers are now more savvy in this respect than ever be-fore. There exists in the market an un-

Having traditional media behind [a campaign] has always made it more successful

Marty Yaskowichmanaging director of digital marketing, DDB Canada

Though their content

permeates a variety of digital

spaces, colourful brochures

have not been abandoned


precedented level of detail in a client’s ability to track and assess a campaign’s effectiveness. It’s made their standards more exacting.

“Customers have grown ever more de-manding when it comes to realizing re-turn on investment,” said Yaskowich. “In the past we would put a campaign together, and put media materials out in the market, and then six months later we would find out if the campaign was a suc-cess.”

Now, results can be tracked virtually instantaneously – clients have the ability to see how well a given marketing cam-paign is working in real time.

It’s led marketing firms like DDB to change the way they develop marketing products for businesses looking to maxi-mize the effectiveness of a marketing cam-paign intended to improve the market per-formance of a client’s product.

One technique, explained Yaskowich, involves what he called casting a wide net. This involves sending out large numbers of a variety of slightly differing messages. Mar-keters then track their individual effective-ness via tools like Facebook likes, clickbacks and a host of tracking mechanisms.

Those messages that receive the best re-sults are further developed, and then re-launched. The process is repeated until the message is honed to its most effective version.

Doing this, said Yaskowich, also gener-ates the best information to identify leads for follow-up marketing.

That’s not to say that more classical media formats have been abandoned.

“Trade publications are still a really im-portant part of the process. [People] still read these magazines, so being there, hav-ing a presence there, is still really import-ant.”

For this reason, he said, marketing can never abandon the conventional products that invariably lie behind the substantial

technological buzz involved in a market-ing campaign.

For their work with Telus in creating a campaign for the Mike phone, a durable construction-industry-grade device, DDB pushed the image of a tough guy by asso-ciating the phone with work rules about welding and wearing steel-toed boots.

In developing a campaign for the Van-couver Convention Centre, they worked from the idea that the facility embodied and showcased the surrounding area’s natural beauty, and that this set it apart from other venues around the world.

“Having traditional media behind it has always made it more successful, more

viral,” said Yaskowich, emphasizing his belief that compelling images, beautiful graphics and inspiring design must sit at the foundation of the marketing product they create.

He said that’s because social media tools are ultimately a conduit through which clients are linked to businesses. And even though the digital relationship with customers has become increasing-ly about content and digital ubiquity, the idea that the quality of the content must remain high, that it must inspire, persists.

“The message has always been the key,” he said. “We’ve just found new ways to de-liver it.” •

Marty Yaskowich, managing director of digital marketing at DDB Canada: modern

advances in digital marketing have changed the game – but not at the cost of

traditional means

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