Alberta Business Marketing

both as a bar graph and a pie chart

Tags: Calgary, Edmonton, revenue, V100, Venture 100
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Saturday, July 24 is the only date on the CFL regular season schedule this year that typical normal everyday Calgarians turned into green monsters from Saskatchewan.   The Saskatchewan Roughriders played the Calgary Stampeders at McMahon and lost 40-20 to Henry Burris and the Stamps.  To put this game into perspective for my readers south of the border or outside Canada…Henry Burris says this game is as big as Florida vs. Florida St in College Football.

Back to the fans…it is true…Saskatchewan fans lurk amongst every day Calgarians and once or twice a year they come out of the closet to support their “GO RIDERS”.  Look over your shoulder and you will see Roughrider fans mixed into everyday Calgarians.

Have you heard of Saskatchewan? It is the only province in Canada that is easy to draw but extremely difficult to spell for the non-Canadian, in our schools we learn how to spell Saskatchewan…sometimes over and over and over.  OK, I am poking fun at the thousands of Saskatchewan transplants now living in Calgary and according to the Edmonton Eskimos President, the same thing goes up in the only CFL team not to have a win so far during this season’s campaign.

I am talking about Football and our game, the CFL.

Rider Pride…for those who support it is a beautiful thing and those who don’t well they may not be the biggest fans of the cutout watermelons and the strange get ups that come out of the closets to those who support the green.

RIDER PRIDE IS A MARKETING SUCCESS STORY!

Why is Rider Pride important?  Like many CFL teams, they had their struggles when it is uncool to like Canadian Football. Their has been a tremendous amount of change in the CFL since those days across the entire league.  Maybe we owe Saskatchewan some credit.  CFL football is once again cool, fun and extremely exciting to watch.  3 downs, 110 yard field and 12 guys banging it out on our turf.

Here is an interesting fact about Saskatchewan though.

Did you know that the Saskatchewan Roughriders (aka RIDERS) sell more merchandise than all the other CFL teams combined!  Why is that?  What is happening in those small towns and in their big cities throughout our central prairie province?  What did the Riders do to attract raving fans?  And what can we learn in our own businesses to do the same thing?

As a Calgary consultant who focuses on marketing the Riders just maybe a great study.  One thing I can assume very easily is that the Rider brass doesn’t care about logo infringement with their fans who paint the Rider “S” on almost anything that can hold a coat of paint.  Cars, houses, chests, Pilsner boxes…you name it, if it can hold an “S” it gets painted on.

I see so many companies and recently had a discussion with a colleague of mine who works for a MLM.  The directors of the Multi Level Marketing firm have dictated to their loyal supporters that they are not allowed to use logos, verbage or product descriptions on any outside marketing material.  Here they have an army of sometimes brainwashed raving fans who can’t share their story online or make their own marketing materials.

This I simply don’t understand and never will.  It is mind-boggling when you look at what happens in Saskatchewan and how the fans are raving about their team and organizations like Harley Davidson who never frown upon people painting their bodies with Harley tattoos.

It is obvious Raving Fans are the best thing for your business.  Never, ever stop them from promoting you in their own way.  Let them rock and roll and make things happen.

Tags: British Columbia Lions, Business Success, Calgary, Calgary Consultant, canada, Edmonton, Edmonton Eskimos President, football, Harley Davidson, paint, President, Pride, Rider, Roy Shivers, Saskatchewan, Sports
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'World's biggest factory' seeks Alberta's investment in its future

Tags: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, barley, bitumen, BizBeat - Editor's Blog, Calgary, canada, Canola, China, consul, Consulate General, DFZ, duty-free zones, Edmonton, energy, gas, lumber, oilsands, People's Republic of China, petro chemicals, potash, Saskatchewan, steel, sulphur, Western Canada, wheat, wood pulp
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Three leaders and amazing Alberta IT support firms were recently recognized worldwide on the MSP Mentor Top 100 Managed Service Providers worldwide.  Since retiring from an Active IT service career I still follow what is happening in the industry here in Calgary and Alberta.  Joe and Amy do a fantastic job covering the IT industry.

My buddy Joe from MSP Mentor announces the Top 100 MSPs

First, you maybe asking…what the heck is an MSP?  Well, it is an overused term in the IT support business for those firms which simply have exceptional support services built on a completely outsourced and managed offering.  I think I am speaking out of turn, but the good service providers like the three mentioned here probably don’t refer to themselves as MSPs.  They simply take care of the needs of their clients and obviously doing a great job at it.

Did I mention that I absolutely detest that term “Managed Service Provider”.   But it is what it is.

Congrats to the three Alberta firms

SSI Solutions headquartered in Edmonton and recently expanded into Calgary with the merger of Twin Solutions ranked 49/100 (Top 50 Jason and Alex, gotta love that) plus my good buddies over at Longview Systems ranked 2/100 (Congrats Andrew, Don and Kent).  These are awesome examples of two great IT firms who definitely make a big difference in the Canadian market.

Calgary and Edmonton firm Compuvision also showed up at the 34th spot.  I believe that makes all the Canadian firms ranked headquartered in Alberta.  Congrats to Ryan Vestby and team for a great showing.

Who said the “Alberta Advantage” is dead?

Also a big thanks to Joe and Amy at Nine Lives Media for all they do in the technology industry.

Tags: 2nd millennium, Alex, Amy, Business IT, Calgary, COMPUVISION, Congrats Andrew, Don, Edmonton, Geography of Texas, Jason, Joe, Kent, Longview Systems, Longview Texas, Longview Texas metropolitan area, SSI Solutions, technology industry, Technology/Internet, Texas, Twin Solutions
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I stumbled on Google’s spam filtering services and was pleasantly surprised The other day I was helping one of our clients with some email challenges they were having with spam with their hosted Microsoft Exchange services.  Ever since changing from their former email provider from an Edmonton based POP3 service to Microsoft Hosted Exchange solution we [...]

Tags: 403.775.2205, Anti-spam techniques, bank account, blackberry, business computer solution, Business IT, business solution, Business/Finance, Calgary, computer solution, Computing, E-mail, E-mail archiving, E-mail spam, Edmonton, Google Inc., Spam, spam filtering, spam filtering services, spam solution, Spamming, technology, Technology/Internet, USD, Windows Small Business Server, World Wide Web
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