Congratulations Nahanni National Park Reserve

The Nahanni National Park Reserve proudly announced on June 18th this year that the Canadian Government agreed to increase the park borders to multiply the size of the park nearly six times!

Nahanni now covers an impressive 30,000 square kilometers in the beautiful Northwest Territories. Parks Canada had been trying since 1984 to increase the size of Nahanni National Park Reserve to better represent the Mackenzie Mountains Natural Region in the National Parks System and to enhance the ecological integrity of the Park Reserve.

The Bytown Group has been working with CPAWS (Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) since 2005 to assist in providing collateral to help increase awareness of this cause. Between 2005 and 2007, Bytown designed miscellaneous pieces including posters, print ads, promotional pieces for both national & individual chapters across the country, a 4-pg tabloid, event tickets, web banners & collateral for their partner Mountain Equipment Co-op.

We are extraordinarily proud to have been a part of such a deserving cause!

Congratulations to all involved and we wish you the best of luck in further expansion projects.

For more information, please see the following sites: CPAWS, Parks Can, Bytown

Geographic Marketing Gone Awry

Very clever this idea to target a particular demographic based on their home territory.

People are territorial, patriotic to not only their country, but also their city or region.

Regions of Canada have been notorious for this for as long as anyone can recall. As united as we are together as a country, our battles within our borders continue – the east coast, the west coast, the prairies, Quebec, Ottawa and Toronto. Every area has a superiority complex. And with good reason – each area is so unique in their environment, culture, language, each has an abundance to be proud of. But with such pride comes the epithets and jokes towards other regions of the country.

Marketers are smart to play up to regional unique qualities. However, does that include jumping on the territorial band-wagon and making fun of other towns or regions in doing so? If in advertising Bell can say they are better that Rogers, then can St. John’s openly claim they are better then Toronto?

Case in point – Coors Light. Coors Light (Molson) is nearing the end of a 16-week campaign in Brish Columbia and finding itself required to remove a series of outdoor signage just 2 weeks before the end of the campaign. The billboards read: “Colder Than Most People From Toronto.”

Apparently reaction was mixed for this campaign, as you can well imagine. But then again, let’s contemplate the negative outcome of this… none. I don’t live in British Columbia or Toronto, yet I stumbled upon 2 articles about this in Ottawa. Not to mention, the billboards were posted for 14 of the 16 weeks. Who knows, maybe 14 weeks was longer then they anticipated for them to last. Perhaps they were counting on us all to be writing articles and blogging away about this campaign. Suddenly a small geographically targeted outdoor campaign gets national, even international coverage. Bravo.

That being said, there is still the matter that this was an insulting slur against residents of Toronto. Going back to the comparison of Rogers vs. Bell, those are brands that are attacking one another. Offending a brand is one thing, offending a culture is another. Let’s leave that to Geiko offending the caveman population.

Did Molson go to far? Should they have offended Torontonians to appeal to the west coast? Or was it all just a ploy to get me to write this article?

Read more about this in Marketing Magazine.

Web Marketing - Getting Started

Ever find yourself asking – “So, I have this great website designed, but I haven’t had any hits yet? Where are these billions of people who are surfing the web every day?”

Once your website is live consider it a an oasis in the desert – no one knows it’s there unless they have a treasure map or they happen to stumble upon it out of pure luck!

So, let’s build us a big, flashing, neon treasure map and post it out in the desert, shall we?

Here are the very basics to web marketing.

First step – register with Google. With the amount of information in Google it can take months for the web crawlers to even recognize your site.

Next step – optimize the site. Load every possible key word combination into the backend maintenance section on your site.

Next step – link your site. The only important links are the links form other sites.

Optional – pay a search engine optimization company gobs of money to give you a number one ranking - just kidding! (Although, it is recommended if you should happen to have gobs of money lying around!)

Finally – market your site. Include your URL everywhere you can. Business cards, letterheads, any communication tools you use, etc., etc., etc. Let your market know where you are through print advertising.

These, of course, are the basics. There are innumerable numbers of ways you can enhance your site through interactive and viral additions. This blog, however, is Web Marketing for Beginners. We’ll post more on Advanced Web Marketing later!