The Calgary Stampede

Hey team, haven't really posted anything new of late. Thats not to say that not much has been happening, quite the contrary actually, business at redlime is really picking up which is great especially for this time of year. Anyways, the Calgary Stampede is just a few days away and a lot of effort will be going into getting things done during that busy week for clients (and us) followed by the summer doldrums.

Speaking of the Calgary Stampede, Karo recently did some fantastic outdoor pieces for the Calgary Stampede that I'd urge you to check out on their website, here's two of them

The other reason for my recent lack of blog posts is a splint on one of my fingers following a pretty epic bike crash I got myself into a couple weeks ago. I'll be sure to post again soon and Yeeeeehaaaaaawww!!!!!

Some Unnecessary Proactive Marketing

Recently some of you may have noticed ads on billboards around Calgary from a French company called Total. The M.O. of their marketing around Calgary is to take a proactive approach towards establishing a postitive sentiment towards their inolvement in the Alberta Oilsands. In my humble opinion, and of the opinion of one of my counterparts at redlime, this endeavor is wholely unnecessary and if anything hinders more than helps.

The ad itself shows a relatively pristine forest on a clear day on the shore of a lake. But in the reflection of the lake is not the trees, but distillation towers from a refinery or upgrader. Visually everything is clean and clear and you'd probably guess that Total operates the most squeaky clean refineries in the world, but its still an refinery.

Given public sentiment towards the oilsands right now, and the fact that many people outside of the oil and gas industry in North America have probably never even heard of Total (though it is very well known in other parts of the world with recognition similar to Shell or ExxonMobil), its just a poorly timed and probably unnecessary ad bringing attention to their stake in the developments.

If Total really wanted to be proactive, and their advertising people had been more discerning, they would have used a mix of PR and print ads in broad reach local publications (The Herald, Alberta Oil, maybe Avenue but probably not) to educate Albertans on what differentiates Total from all the other oil companies.

Often times a lack of awareness of the proactive steps by businesses to be environmentally or socially aware allows smart marketers to advertise postives for their clients that would otherwise go unnoticed. For instance, instead of showing the reflection of a forest in a lake as a refinery, they could have ran an ad in the Herald about the work they've done in France on carbon capture and sequestration, or their plans for the remediation of SAGD sites in Northern Alberta once their production tapers.

Just a few thoughts.

New blog, new website

Hey world,

So this is my new blog, I had an old one where I tried to be funny but after about two posts I think I wasted my comedic talent.

Anyways, this blog will be focusing pretty much on the world of marketing and advertising and the wonderful city of Calgary. What makes me an authority capable of talking about marketing in Calgary? Well I live in Calgary (born and raised) and am a partner at a new emerging marketing company called redlime. You can check out our website at redlime.ca , its not as mind blowing and snazzy as some other marketing company's out there, but its because we're always too busy doing stuff for our clients to make it as wicked as some of our other work. Also, with web design for clients we sometimes contract work out to make it truly mind blowing, whereas for our site we just do the work ourselves.

Wow, how is that for getting off topic. So other reasons I can provide insight to marketing in Calgary? This is going to sound pretty crazy but basically because I'm passionate about it. Marketing means expressing and creating a message that you want to communicate to a certain audience, and to resonate with that audience your message has to speak louder and more eloquently than every other message that person sees or hears that day. Marketing is the competitive art of communication, and to me, thats pretty cool.

Look forward to my next post and be sure to check out redlime.ca.

Cheers,
Raf