2009 June | Alberta Business Marketing

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Archive for June, 2009

Jun

2009

Alberta’s 50 Most Influential: The List

Author: Alberta Venture

The list in alphabetical order is as follows:

Baird-Brenneman
Cave-Edgar
Elford-Hudema
Hughes-Levant
Liepert-March
McNaughton-Prentice
Rice-Tertzekian
Thomas-Wilson

MEDIA
Craig and Layla Baird
Eco Bloggers
Ecologically speaking, Craig and Layla Baird know little things make the difference – especially after spending a year performing one environmentally conscious deed a day. As part of the commitment, the Stony Plain-area writers told of coffee-ground body scrubs and clothes washed with shower water in their blog Our Green Year, garnering a global readership. The year may be over, but the project isn’t. On Day 365, the Bairds vowed to turn the experiment into a lifestyle.

ASSOCIATION
Jane Baker
Labour Lobbyist
As president of the Alberta Association of Midwives, Jane Baker has been the voice of the movement to bring midwifery into the mainstream of health services. Spurred by years of lobbying, the Alberta government put $4.7 million toward covering home births on April 1. Good news for crowded hospitals, parents and practitioners, but the funding will likely leave Baker with a new challenge: meeting a surge in demand.

BUSINESS
Leo de Bever
Provincial Wealth Steward
This Dutch-born economist was hired out of Australia last August to become the first chief executive of the newly created Alberta Investment Management Corporation, which manages some $70 billion in provincial employee pension funds and endowments. It wasn’t just the Edmonton weather that was shocking come the fall. But de Bever, a big-picture guy if there ever was one, does not seem rattled. Indeed, as AIMCo’s controversial $380-million loan and investment package to Precision Drilling Trust indicated, he intends to be a buyer in today’s depressed environment.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
Lindsay Blackett
Rights Interpreter
Alberta Minister of Culture and Community Spirit Lindsay Blackett recently attempted to pick up where the Supreme Court of Canada left off in 1998, when it forced the Alberta government to read sexual orientation into laws protecting human rights. The time had come for the amendment to be stated explicitly, Blackett felt. The result was the well-intentioned Bill 44 – the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Amendment Act – designed to bring legislation “in line with current and future realities,” he said during the April 28 first reading. But when the bill was revealed to permit the yanking of kids from classes discussing touchy subjects like religion and sexuality and even to make teachers vulnerable to prosecution, Blackett’s efforts inspired some to think the minister’s “realities” stranger than fiction, and his “future” a throwback to, say, Nineteen Eighty-Four. However you view it, Blackett stands out as a rising power in a mostly tired and faceless Tory cabinet.

COMMUNITY ACTIVISM
Luc Bouchard
Oilsands Unbeliever
Like oil and water, politics and religion don’t mix. Apparently the oilsands industry doesn’t mix well with religion either, something Roman Catholic Bishop Luc Bouchard of the Diocese of St. Paul learned the hard way in early 2009. On Jan. 25, 2009, Bouchard, whose district covers nearly 156,000 square kilometres and serves 55,000 people, posted a letter online, discussing industry’s effect on the environment. The letter was also sent to Premier Ed Stelmach and MLAs in the area, and quickly spread across the province. Interspersed with Bible passages, Bouchard’s missive presented an argument against the development of the oilsands and asked for a slowdown. The points he makes “are not directed to the working people of Fort McMurray,” he wrote, “but to oil company executives in Calgary and Houston, to government leaders in Edmonton and Ottawa, and to the general public whose excessive consumerist lifestyle drives the demand for oil” – so nearly everyone. Bouchard argued that expansion of oilsands activity “cannot be morally justified,” and wrote the letter as a way of encouraging public debate on the matter. With religion thrown into the battle for the oilsands, executives and environmental groups jumped into a new debate: does a religious viewpoint have any place in this argument? Other leaders of the religious community joined the fray, notably Anglican Bishop John Clarke of Athabasca, who argued for fairness and balance in how the industry and Fort McMurray are represented. Bouchard set out to incite debate. Mission accomplished. – Stephanie Sparks

BUSINESS
Ron Brenneman
Partner in Mega-merger
Because it takes two to tango. Nine years after their first attempt at merging broke down, Brenneman’s Petro-Canada and Suncor Energy Inc. finally tied the knot this spring, creating Canada’s largest company (by revenues) and doing more than Petro-Canada’s federal godfathers ever could to ensure Canadian energy assets do not fall wholesale into foreign hands. Brenneman will serve as executive vice-chairman of the new Suncor.

Tags: Alberta's 50 Most Influential, Human Resources
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Jun

2009

Are You Galvanized or Paralyzed?

Author: Jim Estill

These are uncertain times. Many people and companies are facing hardship. This is a world of great economic turbulence. This turbulence has two effects on people - it can paralyze them so they do nothing and simply retreat into their shell and "complain" how harsh the world is to them. In others, it galvanizes them to take action.

The current conditions just are. Accept them. Use the harshness to create energy and action.

Not all actions are the right actions but taking some action is much healthier than not. This is a good time to "Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Cheap". Try new things. Some will work, others might not. To fail is not to be a failure, to not try is to be a failure.

The current economy (which I beleive is actually getting better) is the same condition everyone and every company has to deal with. Many of your competitors will be paralyzed. This can work in your favour.

My brother, Glen's company, Skygeneration, owns a number of wind turbines. He is an environmentalist who is saving the world. He is constantly harrassed by NIMBY's (Not In My BackYard). This causes these 2 reactions. It wears him down first but then he uses that to energize himself to act. He chooses to be Galvanized to action. In his case he literally uses the adversity to create energy and power.

So next time you are hit with some adversity, choose to be galvanized. Think about harnessing the energy positively.

Be Galvanized not Paralyzed.

Tags: This and That
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Jun

2009

How to Conduct an Interview with Katie Couric

Author: Todd Lucier

Is this the year you focus on getting quality video interviews for your Web presence?

Katie Couric gives advice on how to be a good interviewer. The five minute video is a springboard to Google’s new Reporters Centre channel http://www.youtube.com/reporterscenter which aims to help make citizen journalism more mainstream.

The gist of Katie’s advice on How to Conduct an Interview:

Put people at ease.
Calibrate your tone.
Know your interview subject.
Go with the flow. Be prepared to shift direction.
Listen well and respond authentically to responses from your subject.
Serve your audience and don’t get in the way of your subject sharing their story.

Got any other advice to getting great video interviews?

Links:

Have a gander at The Uptake’s video instruction on how to organize a citizen journalism project that uses video.

[Post to Twitter] Tweet This

Tags: how to, interview, katie kouric, Video
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Jun

2009

The Evolution of Public Relations

Author: Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association

In a world of rapidly increasing costs and diminishing return for what seems like everything marketing, there is one word that should always be top of mind for senior b-to-b executives: Leverage. The notion of spending once and deriving value multiple times not only stretches limited budget dollars, but begins to link what were previously disparate efforts into a cohesive, impactful strategy that drives results. Exhibit A of the all-too-common lack of leverage within b-to-b marketing is public relations. Despite both its importance and potential power, this function’s lack of integration into other marketing – and sales – activities significantly reduces its leverage, and thus its impact.

There is a wide chasm between those that apply a PR strategy purely as a general communications vehicle, and those that begin to weave it into the rest of the sales and marketing mix. The key variables that work together to form this chasm include:

Functional Alignment. While the role of acting as the liaison for senior management will not go away, impacting the revenue generating support capabilities of marketing will require PR to branch out beyond its historical comfort zone.

Functional Approach. Best-practice PR functions cultivate a sense of back-and-forth community with their audiences, enabling them to not only drive awareness and support demand creation programs on a regular basis, but to also become a more credible source of information in the face of negative concerns that can quickly manifest into reputation-damaging events.

Deployment. True PR leverage is gained by driving systematic awareness and reinforcement of positions throughout the buying cycle, rather than one-and-done message campaigns that do little to engage customers or prospects.

Metrics. A large number of PR functions continue to rely only on legacy metrics that include total impressions, brand awareness, clip counts and positioning versus the competition; the measurement of newer social media tactics tend to revolve around quantifiable Web activity metrics and analytics.

Technology and Services. The ability to measure the integration and impact of PR on other marketing and sales functions means a reliance on more than traditional media technologies and service providers.

When PR is merely the mouthpiece for an organization, its ability to demonstrate value is limited. While broadcasting press releases was once the key component of driving awareness, it now only serves to point out just how out of touch an organization can be. Leveraging the social media world by simply using it as another channel to push your message out is not the way to evolve the PR function; instead, fitting PR efforts into a highly integrated strategy that leverages its activities into the overall focus of sales and marketing is the surest path to success.

Posted in B2B | | Comments Off

Jun

2009

An arts conversation with Canadian Taxpayer Federations’ Scott Hennig

Author: DJ Kelly

On Tuesday afternoon a Calgary City Council committee approved a bylaw amendment to help offset the costs of city services to festivals. Obviously Scott Hennig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation didn’t agree with this kind of precedent and he made a comment about it on Twitter.

As an arts advocate who believes the small subsidy (compared to other industries) Canadians provide arts organizations is far outweighed by the return on investment and quality of life we get back, I took it upon myself to have a conversation with Mr. Hennig on Twitter about this topic.

Here is the full conversation to the best of my Twitter searching capabilities:

CalgaryCowbell: We want our cake and to eat it too. Low taxes = no money for city to provide services for festivals #yyc

ScottHennig: @CalgaryCowbell low taxes = citizens have the ability to fund festivals, arts, and other things themselves.

djkelly: @scotthennig Canadian arts would disappear w/o granting support. And with it the differences between Canada and US, followed by the border.

djkelly: @scotthennig It is in the city/prov/country’s interest to support the arts to attract and retain talent.

ScottHennig: @djkelly I don’t think it is in the “city/prov/country’s interest,” it is in citizen’s interest to support the arts, willingly and freely.

djkelly: @scotthennig Does that argument extend to garbage collection? Public transit? Road maintenance? And other things in the public interest?

ScottHennig: @djkelly there R some things that R difficult to fund directly & freely (ie. police) + there R things that R easy to do so (ie. arts).

djkelly: @scotthennig What makes the arts easy for individuals exclusively to fund? No country has been able to do it successfully. (Most don’t try.)

ScottHennig: @djkelly Most theaters have ticket offices, most buskers have hats, & most painters will sell their work. Plus most arts groups R charities.

djkelly: @scotthennig NP arts revenue model: 1/3 ticket sales, 1/3 donations, 1/3 grants. No arts group can survive on ticket sales alone.

djkelly: @scotthennig Eliminate grants and prices would triple and no-one would come. Same thing if we made every street a toll road.

ScottHennig: @nenshi @djkelly 99.7% of the Metropolitan Opera expenses covered by non-gov’t sources. But not the point.

ScottHennig: @djkelly vry doubtful. Lwr tax = more charitable giving. Plus, arts that nobody wld support wld disappear. Just like car companies…whoops!

djkelly: @scotthennig The increase of charitable giving created by lower taxes would not come close to offsetting the lost of grants.

ScottHennig: @djkelly True. But only to those who get a disproportionate amount of tax $. Other artists or charitable sectors would get more.

djkelly: @scotthennig Sorry, who currently gets a disproportionate amount?

djkelly: @scotthennig RE the Met: you cite an example from a city with 12M ppl. Your point doesn’t translate to Canada as it would mean no opera 4 us

ScottHennig: @djkelly Those arts who get more tax $ than the public would give them freely if given back their money back currently get a disproport. Amt

ScottHennig: @djkelly RE: Met, the point is that citizens will support the arts, and yes on a smaller scale so could any group of citizens in Canada.

djkelly: @scotthennig Sounds like that would take more $ in red tape & admin than it would save.

ScottHennig: @djkelly Not much red tape involved in cutting taxes.

djkelly: @scotthennig Can’t do the vast majority of operas on a smaller scale. A symphony and cast can’t be replaced by less ppl.

djkelly: @scotthennig Looks like we are having a 140 character problem as I apparently didn’t understand your proposal. Or you wanted a sound bite

ScottHennig: @djkelly Yes, and the Calgary Flames don’t play games in 500 seat arenas, but other hockey teams do.

ScottHennig: D djkelly Good convo. Gotta run.

djkelly: @scotthennig As a fiscal conservative I appreciate the CTF. Obviously we disagree on this issue though.

djkelly: @scotthennig Can’t DM back bc your not following me. Thanks 4 debating the issue. 2 often ppl lob insults at the arts & won’t back them up.

Unfortunately we were just getting warmed up when the end of the work day came and we both had to leave our computers. It is a worth while discussion and I hope to have the ability to continue the debate with Mr. Hennig in the future. Perhaps in person next time.

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