Phoenix Fashionistas

Congratulations to SFW creators Candyce Fiessel, Chelsea O’Connell and Chris Pritchard for delivering an event that was truly a showcase of passion, talent, and vision. Your team of hundreds of volunteers, designers and artists left us wanting more. Well done.

The costumes were great, the atmosphere was awesome and the theme couldn’t have been better. It was a Mad Men themed party Don Draper would be jealous of, and he even made an appearance, sort of. But that wasn’t even the best part. What really stands out about this years Ace Awards was the opportunity for us to share so many big wins with so many of our clients. There were 33 Ace Awards handed out this year, and our client’s won 11 of them. It was a big night, and it really goes to show that hard work pays off. We couldn’t be more proud of our team, or more grateful for our great clients.

SGI’s ‘The Decision Campaign’ took home three awards, and their ‘Gainer Zoro’ spot won one; The Roughriders ‘Rider Oath Campaign’ won two awards; Sask Gaming’s Fun Outdoor won one; STC’s ‘Passenger Campaign’ won one; Access Communication’s website won one; Enterprise Saskatchewan’s Television spot won and so did Conexus Credit Union.

We couldn’t have been happier to share the evening with some of the best clients around. A big thanks goes out to you all!

Phoenix Group is looking for a dynamic, detail-oriented, super-organized Media Coordinator to join us for a full-time, one-year term position.

This job is to provide assistance to the Media Department on a variety of projects and tasks. From television and print, to radio, outdoor, digital and online – you will handle every medium we work with. Responsibilities include: data input, filing, reconciliation, and various other administrative duties. Your smiling face will represent the agency by establishing and maintaining goodwill and working relationships among the media community. Industry experience or an education in business/marketing would be an asset. Accuracy and attention to detail is a must.

Phoenix Group boasts great benefits and non-stop fun … not to mention, some pretty amazing co-workers.

If we’re describing you, and you’re looking for a full-time, one-year term position to get your feet wet in the advertising ‘biz’, send your resume to Rachel at rgiatras@thephoenixgroup.ca

We think you’re all pretty great, but only those chosen for an interview will be contacted.

Application deadline is April 30, 2012.

SGI’s blockbuster campaign “The Decision” just keeps on rolling with two more prestigious awards. This week, we were thrilled to hear word that the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) has honoured this Saskatchewan campaign with not one, but two Gold Quill Awards of Excellence! Awards will be handed out June 25th in Chicago at a ceremony featuring the biggest and brightest minds in the communications industry. Congratulations SGI, and thank you to Gyro Productions, Twisted Pair Sound and everyone involved who helped to make this ground-breaking campaign a reality.

The 101st Grey Cup Championship will be held in Regina, Saskatchewan in 2013. This short video explains how Mosaic Stadium will receive a temporary facelift and thousands of added seats in order to host the ultimate CFL celebration in Rider Nation!

The message is clear and the execution is gorgeous. It’s truly a project we are proud to say we’ve been a part of. Tourism Saskatchewan launched their ‘Embrace a New Place’ campaign today, and we’ve been working hard with them to develop all the elements along the way.

The campaign will include radio, online and print components that showcase the beauty of Saskatchewan. But the heart of this campaign, and our work on it, lies in the TV commercial released today.

The images are a mixture of excitement and beauty. Some may surprise even those who have lived in Saskatchewan their whole lives. There is so much to see, and this TV spot encourages people to explore this province.

To accompany the campaign, and truly get people thinking about where they would like to explore, we are helping Tourism Saskatchewan launch an accompanying contest. We want to get people to discover what they haven’t yet. Then we want them to share their experiences.

Contests are a great way to get people excited about what you are doing, and in this case, Tourism Saskatchewan is offering a $5,000 vacation.

For the second year in a row, Enterprise Saskatchewan (E.S.) is offering the SYPE Volta award, and earlier this week, we helped them launch the competition. It’s been a pretty exciting process, because although we incorporated both online and radio components to promote participation, most of the contest will be running through Facebook and that is where we hope to engage with users the most.

The fundamentals for the competition have stayed the same. We are asking young entrepreneurs to pitch their business in the best way they can, and we are asking competitors to submit video and photos with their applications. Who doesn’t like video online? And this is a great way for competitors to get creative.

The challenge this year, which is also the part we find most exciting, was Facebook’s pending switch from the ‘wall’ to the ‘timeline’. There are a lot of new features, and changes that, if used properly, have the potential to really reach people in a meaningful way. For SYPE Volta, the way Timeline highlights the finalists from last year really showcases those people in an exciting and really professional way. When something is presented in that way, people want to get involved. It’s that simple.

The Facebook Timeline also allows us to highlight important events in the competition’s history, personalizing the page. If people can see the history, they are more connected. They can see what entering the competition brings, and we believe this will encourage participation.

The fundamentals are the same. It’s just the packaging that’s different, and we are really looking forward to all the potential the new timeline can offer users.

To visit the SYPE Volta Award on Facebook Click Here

You may remember it, the Rider Oath. It was a campaign we did for the Riders’ last year, and when it was finished, we were ecstatic with the success. Not only did we reach our goal of growing the Riders’ Facebook fan base to 100,000, we actually blew that number out of the water by a few thousand. But that’s last year’s news. What is exciting now are the results of a case study of the Rider Oath campaign released by Casale Media, an internationally successful Canadian media technology company.

“The integrated campaign produced outstanding results, with the number of Facebook fans increasing by more than 24, 500. In addition, ticket sales virtually sold out for the year and over 67% of all CFL merchandise sales were Riders products,” reads the case study.

But it’s not those results that are necessarily the most encouraging part. According to Casale’s research, the campaign generated thousands of video views, engaging the public at a rate 15 times the industry average for standard display. That means that people were clicking through the page 15 times more often than they normally would. Results we like to see!

We’ve always been advocates for social media, and have recommended to a number of our clients they become more involved. We’ve seen the success that comes with a strong online presence, and the results of this case study just reinforce our commitment to promoting the power of social media.

It’s been a great year working with Enterprise Saskatchewan on their ‘ThinkSask’ campaign, and now it’s time for phase two. The client’s goal on this round is to continue attracting business and investment to the province, while placing a special emphasis on recruiting skilled labour.

We decided there is no better way to reach people than through people. The strength of hearing someone tell his or her success story is amazing, and we wanted to harness that power. We did so by incorporating the stories of people who are not from Saskatchewan, talking about their experiences. We took this whole concept and developed it into an online and national television campaign.

There will be two TV spots running nationwide. One will focus on recruitment, the other on promoting investment in the province. For both, we used the ‘people telling people approach’. We spoke to investors from outside the province, recent immigrants and those who have moved to Saskatchewan for work about the opportunities they have found in Saskatchewan. Really, there’s no greater flattery than a third-party testimonial – in this case, non-Saskatchewan or newly-Saskatchewan people raving about Saskatchewan.

To expand on the themes and messages from the TV commercials, we also developed 15 video vignettes. These are short video interviews with both investors from outside Saskatchewan, and recent immigrants to our province. We posted these to the ThinkSask site as part of the online campaign and to reinforce the message in an easy-to-access way.

To drive people to the ThinkSask site, we are also running a combination of animated banners and video box-style ads online. The site is where people can find information about what’s going on in Saskatchewan’s exciting new economy and all the links users need to find job opportunities, investment options or further information about doing business and living in Saskatchewan. Driving them there is important.

To expand on the online campaign, there is a new powerful tool we helped the client develop, a blog-style news feed. The news feed will provide breaking economic and business stories to national and international audiences. It is a great tool for the client because it has reach. Anybody can access the news feed from anywhere in the world. And because Saskatchewan has attracted international media attention in the past few years, developing this type of news feed will build on this awareness.

Overall the campaign will showcase Saskatchewan as a tremendous place to invest, to do business, to work and to live by telling the stories of people who do those things here.

It’s been quite the journey, and we’ve been proud to watch the Riders grow into one of the most well respected franchises in Canada. They are now on par with teams like the Maple Leafs and the Canadians in terms of merchandise sales and that’s just incredible. We would like to give a sincere thank-you and a tip of our hat to Jim, Steve, Ryan, Craig, Mark, Bill and the entire business operations team. You guys do not get the credit you deserve for the phenomenal growth of the Rider’s franchise.

It’s a true honour to be officially working with the Riders once again and build on the momentum we’ve created. It just goes to show how great client and agency relationships can create a strong brand that truly becomes a part of peoples’ lives. We look forward to the years to come.