Top 9 favourite undiscovered posts of 2009

Our blog launched in December 2008 and over the course of the year, we’ve seen our traffic grow from a couple dozen to a few hundred views per day. Our bloggers have looked back to the early days and dug up some old posts with great content, which they felt deserved to be in front of our broader audience.

Enjoy some great insight from the following hidden gems:

Experimenting with chemicals

Tech versus talk

What is a browser? The importance of using simple language

Learn CRM from Grandma

Warning! Magazines Photoshop their pictures!!

Unable to focus? You might be suffering from Urbanoverdosis

Why Twitter is not, like, totally awesome

What’s your opinion?

I don’t care what your favorite movie is

Thanks to you all for your readership, comments, and time. Happy holidays, and see you in 2010!

A high that’s better than a half dozen sugar cookies dunked in hot coco

Just like most of you, our agency loves the holiday season for the copious amounts of chocolate that appears at our reception and the wine that flows freely at Christmas parties and functions. But we all know that Christmas is not just about receiving, it’s about giving back too.

One of our favorite pro-bono client’s is an expert in the practice of giving, and they do it every day of the year. Every time we meet with the team from Power To Be we hear about a new initiative or another generous company or individual who has come onboard to help them provide outdoor recreation programs to enrich the lives of disadvantaged children, young adults, and the families and communities they live in. 

Working with people like Tim Cormode, the founder of Power To Be, you can’t help but want to adopt his spirit of giving. Last week we helped Tim build a Christmas Card so Power To Be could thank the hundreds of sponsors and volunteers that make their programs possible. Seeing how stoked Tim and his team were that they’d have something ready to send out for the holidays gave us a better high than the sugar cookies.

If you are looking for a way to get into the giving game, we have just the New Year’s resolution for you (once you finish off all the turkey and stuffing): Start training for the Power To Play corporate challenge & fundraiser. We’re onboard again this year to help Tim and his team pull off this amazing event and can tell you first hand that this will be the most fun you’ve had at a charity race (think mud, obstacles and challenges a la Amazing Race).

We know there are many more of you who give back at this time of year, whether it be donating to a food bank or giving to a charity on behalf of your customers. At our Christmas party this evening we will raise our glasses to people like you and Tim who know that the gift of giving is truly what this season is all about.

We finally killed the dog.

It’s official. After 8 years, the Copeland dog in our logo is kaput. So too the logo and the word “Communications”.

We’ve just gone through an extensive re-brand, following on from our own internal brand audit held a few months ago.

(Understatement alert) A lot has changed in the past 8 years and we needed a brand ID that reflected our growth and our new direction as a company. And here it is:

Although we still consider ourselves loyal and tenacious, the attributes that the dog was created to express, we are also about good energy…and making things easy. We like the way our new logo says that.

Taking the word “Communications” out was an easy call. It wasn’t adding anything: Telus is a communications company too.

You may have been one of the decent individuals who vetted the earlier iteration of our new logo, where the “c” and “o” in Copeland resembled an infinity symbol. If you wondered whether we were changing our name to Infinity Peland, this will be your assurance that we have not.

A new decade dawns, and a new look for a 30-year old agency.

That dog has had its day.

Are AOR days numbered?

When Island Savings told us recently that they would be terminating our contract and outsourcing their work to a variety of smaller outfits – it signaled the end of an era. Island Savings was our last true Agency of Record account.

Over the past few years, the trend away from AOR relationships has significantly changed how agencies do business. Clients look increasingly for value and split their work to leverage more competitive pricing and greater degrees of specialization.

It’s not at all unusual for a client to have their media buying with one agency, their above-the-line strategy and creative with another, their social media and web work somewhere else. Throw in a PR company and a graphic design shop or two to handle labour-intensive jobs like catalogues and special events, and its a bit like squeezing people into a Volkswagen.

And therein lies the problem. Whereas previously an AOR would be the brand watchdog, guiding it through its various strategic thrusts and media forays, in the new model the client is often left holding the bag and trying to keep all the marketing partners on brand. It can be quite a juggling act.

True enough, many smaller agencies are moving towards increased specialization, because they simply can’t compete as generalist agencies with the big boys. But as they do so, they are forming strategic alliances of their own to bring new skill sets to their offering, and to position themselves to once again be the champions of the brand.

My guess is that AOR relationships will make a comeback as clients realize that the alliance-based, one-stop shops forming today give them the very things they walked off in search of.

Then the whole will again become greater than the sum of the parts.

You CAN handle the truth!

I was checking out the Westjet.ca site today, and I was met with this letter from the president and CEO.

You can click on it to read it, but the short version of it is:

“We’re sorry we aren’t moving as fast as we said we would, so this is what we are doing to fix it.  Thank you.”

Here is a company that is open and honest with their customers.  They are being transparent, and want to keep their customers in the loop.  These folks didn’t have to put out a letter to say what they were doing; the problem still would have been fixed with the extra resources from Travelocity.  Instead, they have opted to include us in the conversation, acknowledging our frustrations and discussing the solution.  This is what living your brand is all about.

Unless the reason itself is interesting (like, maybe it’s been discovered that you have 13+ mistresses) does it really matter what the problem is with Company X’s widget factory?  Or would you rather just have the important information.  We know it’s broken – and this is what we’re doing to fix it up.  There’s no need to say what you’re going to give to people that feel they are entitled to some kind of reparation.  Just treat your customers like they are real people, and they will do the same back to you.

This  is just good policy.  When your company screws up – and I guarantee that there will be some snafu in your future – do your customers want to know why it’s broken, or do they want to know what you’re doing to fix it, and how long they can expect it to be broken? 

Apparently honesty really is the best policy!

Westjet gets it.

- jason