Spark! The Branding Shop ask me to write about their clients perspective of the Spark Brand.  After a meeting with Spark, researching project and design examples, and digging deeper into the experience of a Spark client – I came up with this:

Clients perception of the Spark Brand

Companies who use Spark for the design and production of their promotional products know what it’s like to work with a team of imaginations.  Spark’s customers have met these visual artists who are passionate about crafting creative designs that can take something as simple as your logo, and transform it into a promotional product that gives your company an edge.  A very creatively designed, personalized to your brand, something you’ll love, kind of edge!

Imagine having corporate wear the people actually want to wear outside of work!  Spark takes your brand and personality and marries it with noticeable creativity to make products your employees and customers will want to hang onto.  Stuff that will make their friends and family will say “Hey, cool.  Where’d you get that?”  Your promotional products can achieve the ‘corporate cool’, the designed likability that will keep them out of the to-give-away pile (or worse, the turn-to-rags pile) and live on to display your brand for years to come.

What do customers get when choosing Spark?  Graphic design: if you want to create a new logo, a promotional design, unique corporate wear, or a piece of artwork.   Maybe you don’t know where to start?  Great!  The team at Spark are anxious to take your blank canvas and start sketching out ideas to create something you might not have thought of.  Once possibilities are realized, you’re thoroughly impressed, and designs are completed and you’ve got your hands on effective, promotional products you’ll love.

They also care about the quality of the products they’re giving you.  So they have their own print shop, honed in on quality control, using Canadian made products, and providing high quality screen printing for clothing.  Plus they have other corporate cool promotional products (with your specially crafted design) like buttons, mugs, banners, signs, or other wacky products you might need in the name of marketing and promotion.  Even if you don’t know what kind of products would market you the best, Spark can help with that too.

It helps that Spark is a unionized production and print shop, making their products more accessible to unions.  Their union wear goes beyond slapping logos on extra large T-shirts.  They will create artwork specific to your union and give your union members a product that will make them feel proud to be in your union and that strengthens spirit.  Most importantly, your promotional products will be worn well and worn often and will get noticed.

That’s why you bother to have promotional products and corporate wear produced.  They won’t do that if they don’t like what you’ve given them.  When Spark sees your brand out in the world, on something they have created for you, it makes them very happy.  Your success is their success and they want to tell everyone the story.  They tell their friends, they hold it up for their families to see…hey, they couldn’t wait to tell me, and now I’m telling you.

The 3rd Annual Ucluelet Salmon Ladder Derby

Did somebody say you could win a quarter of a million dollars this year?!

The Ucluelet Salmon Ladder Derby has created quite the buzz within the sport fishing communities on Vancouver Island.  With opportunities to win thousands in cash prizes monthly and to get a piece of a $60,000 pie in total cash and prizes at summer’s end, this season-long derby has definitely put a new spin on sport fishing in BC.

“We started out in 2010 and didn’t know what to expect!” said Lisa Brisco, Derby Coordinator and member of the Ucluelet Salmon Enhancement Society.  “We didn’t think there was a way to make fishing in Ucluelet more fun…but there was!”

The Ucluelet Salmon Enhancement Society (USES) was created to organize, run, and promote the Ucluelet Salmon Ladder Derby in an effort to raise funds and awareness towards local salmon enhancement projects like the Thornton Creek Hatchery.  So far the USES has been able to donate over $7000 to the hatchery, contributing to projects that release over 500,000 Chinook and 100,000 coho salmon into local waterways each year.   With awareness continuing to increase, the Thornton Creek Hatchery has seen more visitors and more donations come through each year thanks to Ucluelet Salmon Ladder Derby!

“The derby is running May 1^st to September 3^rd this year,” said Brisco.  “The top 15 fish caught each month along with the top 50 of the season will fish off September 7^th and 8^th for some serious prizes including the new $250,000 Hidden Weight Grand Prize.”

In 2010 and 2011 cash and prizes totalled over $60,000 each year, not to mention the $5000-7000 that was rewarded monthly.  Participating anglers purchase their tickets at local Ucluelet vendors for the day or the season and this allows them to register their catch of the day at the Official Ucluelet Salmon Ladder Derby Weigh In Station located within Ucluelet’s Inner Boat Basin.

“Our staff are available to be at that dock all summer long from before dawn to half an hour after sun set!” shared Lisa.  “If you’ve got a winning fish we are ready to weighed, document it, and get it on our ladder!”

The official ladder is located on the derby’s website at www.uclueletsalmonladderderby.com.  Here anglers can follow their rankings as the summer progresses, get details and reports from derby staff, and keep up to date with a regularly published blog.

New to 2012: two available $250,000 Hidden Weight Grand Prize.  Each day of the final Fish Off, September 7^th and 8^th, participating anglers will enter their names into the draw.  A name will be randomly drawn each day.  If your name is chosen you have to choose one weight out of the 2 salmon you’ve caught that day.  After the weigh-in stations close, on each day of the Fish Off, we will call out a hidden weight provided by the Grand Prize Promotions (GPP).  On Sunday, September 9^th we will be announcing all of our derby winners, including the quarter million dollar winner(s)…should there be one, or even two!  Exciting or what?!

Also new this year is the chance to WIN your way into the Fish Off through the Fish Off Draw, even if you didn’t catch a fish over the summer that ranked in the top 15 for that month.  You are eligible for this draw if your fish is in position 16 to 50 on the ladder at each month’s cut off time: midnight May 31st, June 30th or July 31st. Five Fish Off positions (invitation only) will be announced at a draw made at noon, Sunday, August 19th 2012. To enter into the draw participants have until the 15th of the following month to forward their name, ticket number, fish size and date caught.

“What is most important to make this event successful are the fishers, the community, and of course our corporate sponsorships.  The more money we can raise through sponsorships, the more money we can donate to salmon enhancement,” shared Brisco.

The Ucluelet Salmon Enhancement Society has a fundraising goal of $10,000 to the Thornton Creek Hatchery and $1000 to the Pacific Salmon Foundation.  Both of these organizations are responsible for the protection, conservation, and enhancement of British Columbia’s most precious resource: our salmon.

Now entering its third year, and only growing in participation and community involvement, the Ucluelet Salmon Ladder Derby will continue to enhance sport fishing in Ucluelet and Vancouver Island and it endeavors to reach its fundraising goals for the Ucluelet Salmon Enhancement Society.

For information on sponsorship, donating, or to purchase your derby tickets online visit www.uclueletsalmonladderderby.com or email Lisa Brisco at ladderderby@gmail.com.

We hope to see you on the water this year!

Kind Regards,

Amy Hancock

Writing for the West Coast

One of my favourite places in the world is Ucluelet, British Columbia on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  I have been privileged to work with several organizations from this area promoting it as a tourist destination.  Below is a sample of one of the “Discovery Pages” articles that I write on behalf of Tourism Ucluelet.  Once a month I contribute an ‘advertorial’ on the west coast in this pull-out in the Victoria Times Columnist.

The west coast of Vancouver Island is a paradise for outdoor adventurers, wildlife viewers, and all-round nature lovers.  Situated on a peninsula, completely surrounded by water, Ucluelet is a hub for water based activities like sailing, whale watching, fishing, surfing, kayaking, and cruising.  It’s rugged and rocky coast is backed by an ancient, old-growth rainforest.  The people here have created a community that embraces it’s magnificent surroundings, developing a healthy, vibrant and active coastal culture.

I will be giving a workshop at the Alberta Camping Association’s Annual Conference on March 17th at YMCA’s Camp Chief Hector in beautiful Kananaskis Country! For more information on the ACA visit www.albertacamping.com.

The focus will be to educate camp directors and administrators on how social media and other online communications like a properly designed and written website, E-newsletter, and online blog can benefit the promotion of their organization. I would also like to encourage the membership of the ACA to connect with the online community, which includes other camps and related organizations, they’ve established and to grow together as an interactive network.

Although this workshop is built specifically for camps in Alberta and related organizations, it can be fine tuned and restructured for any business or organization.  Online communications and Social Media is about people and personal interactions with your customers, prospects, staff and your community.  If you are interested in providing a workshop for your employees or organization please contact me via email:  amymariehancock@gmail.com.

All the best,

Amy

More about the ACA Conference Workshop:

Social Media and Online Communications for Camps: 

Connect with campers, staff, alumni, and promote your camp through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.   Some of the Alberta Camping Association’s members are active members of this online community.  Many are not!   

Not sure where to start?

The session will go over page set up, using applications, incorporating other online communications like newsletters and blog articles, tips for daily postings and practices, and how you can use the Alberta Camping Association’s social media sites as a spring board for your own growing online network.

We will brainstorm topics of discussion that you can post, tweet, or blog about on your social media sites.  I will also give you literal step-by-step instructions on how to post multi-media, how to reply and ‘retweet’ to interactions on Twitter (it’s a strange world out there on Twitter!), how to use a YouTube Channel to interact with other camps and organizations, and how maximize interaction and ‘impressions’ on your Facebook page.   I will also have hand-outs with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube instructions.

This workshop will equip you with the basics for using one of the most interactive, cost effective, and fastest growing marketing tools of our time!

It is also my goal to connect as many members of the Alberta Camping Association with the ACA’s social media community and with each other.  Together we can maximize the promotional potential, create an interactive hub for sharing with and supporting each other, and have a lot of fun doing it too!

I would like to introduce a new client:  HR Streamline.  I will be assisting them with their web marketing, specifically with a monthly newsletter.

HR Streamline are a creative, innovative, and effective recruiting service that offers staffing solutions to employers at a reasonable rate.  They offer all the usual services of a recruiter:  job postings, resume and phone screening, reference checking, etc…but are unique in that you can mix and match the specific jobs you would like them to do for you.  Choose what you pay for, choose what you would like to do yourself, and find the reliable, long term employees your company needs!

Check out their website:  www.hrstreamline.com and make sure you join their social media pages too:

As a revolutionary new service in the employment industry, HR Streamline offers more personalized service than a regular recruitment agency. HR Streamline is dedicated to developing and providing customizable, innovative hiring solutions tailored to meet the diverse and changing needs of today’s employers.

Unlike other recruitment agencies, HR Streamline has broken down the hiring process into individual services. These services can be mixed and matched to create a customized hiring plan. Caroline Georgieff, President of HR Streamline says, “Our personal touch is very important to our clients. Our team works in partnership with employers to maximize exposure in the current candidate marketplace while minimizing the cost and time of recruitment efforts. Many of our clients are surprised to find that most of the hiring process can be completed by our team at a reasonable price.”

A service plan can be designed to include any of the following:

• Job Postings
• Telephone Interviews
• Job Design and Consulting
• Reference Checking
• Basic Resume Screening
• Salary Research
• Specific Resume Short Listing

If you are interested in learning more about how the HR Streamline team can assist your HR team or Hiring Manager, call 780-709-2442.

DesLaurier Builders is a general contracting company in Edmonton that offers a ‘top quality build’ to their customers and is the Premier Contractor and sponsor of Remodel It!, an information based renovation show coming to CTV Edmonton this spring.

I scripted and directed this Business Profile video on behalf of Remodel It! Productions.  Working with the very talented camera operator James Cadden, this promotional video was created for DesLaurier Builders to use for their own marketing purposes.

The question isn’t whether or not your business should use Social Media in it’s marketing strategies….it’s is HOW WELL your business will use it.

Remodel IT! is a reality-based television program that follows a hard-working Calgary-based renovation company.  The show draws reno-savvy, reno-dreamers, and reno-doers as they watch the Remodelers work their way through projects from design to completion.  The show is hosted by local, Bruce Hopkins, an inspiring entrepreneur who started the Remodelers and Remodel It! Productions.  Currently the show airs on CTV Calgary, Sunday mornings at 10:00.

Remodel It! is coming to Edmonton!  I’m proud to promote this show as it is locally written and produced and packed with Albertan goodness.  I am also proud to be the Edmonton Script Writer and Social Media Coordinator, working with the Premier Contractor and Corporate Partners of Remodel It! Edmonton as the show as it makes it’s way into the Edmonton community.

The show is sponsored by a vibrant, young general contractor company called DesLaurier Builders.  Find them on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  This unique general contractor is a full-service company that has it’s own interior design team (DesLaurier Interior Design) and it’s own professional trades sub-divisions.  That means the project is managed by DesLaurier Builders from start to finish, all the trades have an invested interested in each renovation project, and high end renovations are completed more efficiently and with better pricing.  Learn more about DesLaurier Builders and Interior Design.

Remodel It! will be airing on CTV Edmonton in April 2012.  Stay tuned for further details.  Show your support for locally produced television by joining their social scene!

Visit www.remodelit.ca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=STSSKpfUxTY