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Vol 2, #18, May 4, 2010 |
First iPad app by Canadian Media launched The BRANCHEZ-VOUS! news portal is the first Canadian media outlet to make available an application specifically designed for Apple's iPad tablet. BRANCHEZ-VOUS! is also the fourth French-language media worldwide - after Le Monde daily newspaper, Paris Match magazine and France 24 news channel, all from France - to publish an iPad app. The "BRANCHEZ-VOUS! pour iPad" app is now available in the iTunes App Store, in the News category. Its users can access the 100 most recent articles published on BRANCHEZ-VOUS! in News, Tech, Business, Culture and Sports. This content is updated every time the app is activated and can be read on the device later, even without a connection - while riding on public transportation for example. The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada has launched a new Interactive Advertising Educational Certification Program to work in concert with its industry-leading line-up of Intensive One-Day Courses In Interactive Marketing + Advertising. The Certification Program is designed to help the industry identify both novice and seasoned marketing professionals who have invested in intensive educational instruction in order to assist them in developing and maintaining expertise in various digital marketing channels. The Certification includes the following designations: - Digital Learning Certificate: Earned by those who have received 8 hours of intensive instruction at any individual IAB Canada One-Day Course. - Interactive Leadership Certificate: Earned by those who have received 24 hours of intensive instruction at three IAB Canada One-Day Courses. - Interactive Master Certificate: Earned by those who have received 40 hours of intensive instruction at five IAB Canada One-Day Courses. (2 NEW! IAB Canada Intensive One-Day Courses will be launched in 2010 to help individuals qualify for this distinction). IAB Canada began providing formal education in Interactive Marketing + Advertising to the Canadian marketing community in 2004, with a 16-week Course created for the Atkinson Faculty Of Liberal + Professional Studies at York University. Over the two years that it was run, the Course graduated a total of 80 professionals. Not satisfied with the pace of uptake by the industry, and with a deep understanding of the time-stressed nature of the individuals within it, IAB Canada re-developed the material into Canada's first-ever, Intensive One-Day Course In Interactive Marketing + Online Advertising in 2006. In the four years since its inception, IAB Canada's Intensive One-Day Course In Interactive Marketing + Online Advertising has been taught to almost 2,000 professionals across Canada! Following the tremendous success of IAB Canada's Intensive One-Day Course In Interactive Marketing + Online Advertising, IAB Canada has worked with its market-leading Member-companies to develop Intensive One-Day Courses In Social Media Marketing, Paid Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimization - and soon to come - Mobile Marketing. IAB Canada's expertise in Interactive advertising instruction was recognized by the global IAB network, when IAB Canada was asked to present Best Practices In Industry Education in association with the esteemed Interact Conference in Belgium in 2009. "IAB Canada is a worldwide leader in digital marketing education for four main reasons," says Paula Gignac, President, IAB Canada. "First and foremost, we lead because we're 'first in' with respect to both the format (One-Day, Intensive), and the types of Courses (Interactive Mktg., Social, SEO, etc.) that we teach; second, because the people who teach our Courses live and breathe their area of expertise each and every day; third, because the tactics and techniques that are taught in the Courses are supported by the most recent and respected industry research and metrics wherever possible; and finally, because the material we teach is updated anywhere from two to four times per year with information we glean from hundreds of off- and Online resources." "IAB Canada's Courses are important to take regardless of whether you have two or twenty-two years of marketing or advertising experience," says Renata Hovorka, Group Manager, UM Canada. "These aren't 101 Courses, these are intensive, learning experiences designed to keep even the most senior of Agency managers and CMOs up to speed with digital marketing trends that are changing even as we speak." Christopher Morden , Digital Marketing Manager, Volkswagen Canada agrees. "I've attended several of the Courses now, as have others from our company, and I encourage both Advertisers and Agencies to take advantage of the opportunities for continued learning that IAB Canada Courses offer. Volkswagen Canada is dedicated to building Interactive expertise throughout our organization, and we're proud to be IAB Canada's first auto manufacturer Member as well." Upcoming dates and locations for IAB Canada's current round of Courses include: 1) Intensive One-Day Course In Interactive Marketing + Online Advertising
2) Intensive One-Day Course In Paid Search Marketing
3) NEW! Intensive One-Day Course In Search Engine Optimization
To register for any of IAB Canada's Intensive One-Day Courses, please see www.iabcanada.com or www.iabcanadaevents.com. Top of Page New initiative from FlightNetwork.com FlightNetwork.com, one of Canada's highest volume online travel sales sites (second only to Expedia in Canada), today announced the launch of their Travel Affiliate Program which will enable online publishers, website owners, bloggers and social media publishers to generate significant revenue with a host of travel inventory including flights, hotels, car rentals, vacation packages, tours, travel insurance and more. The FlightNetwork.com affiliate program is an innovative program for website owners and bloggers that partners can join free of charge. When selling flight tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals and travel insurance, affiliate partners can achieve tens of thousands in profits each month. "We are always on the lookout for viable partners to share in the strong growth story of online travel," said Naman Budhdeo, Founder, President and CEO of FlightNetwork.com. "Offering our 'lowest fares from the top airlines' through affiliate partners will draw new consumers to affiliate websites and position them for the large sale profits that we anticipate from this channel." FlightNetwork.com also provides private and white label travel program solutions offering members access to a complete booking engine powered by TravelAffiliateworld.com. Website owners can generate lucrative revenue by promoting the largest selection of global travel products and services on their website using their own brand identity. Flightnetwork.com is a BBB certified online travel agency, has been in operation since 1998 and enables consumers to book their products online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. FlightNetwork.com offers deep discount airfares, hotels and car rentals with departures from many gateways. Through its extensive partnerships and contracts with airlines, hotel chains, car rental companies and a wide breadth of inventory, FlightNetwork.com is able to offer some of the best benefits to its customers. Today, FlightNetwork.com is well regarded as one of the most respected online agencies in North America. Top of Page Hear "voice of the customer" from iPerceptions iPerceptions Inc. a leading provider of web-focused Voice of Customer (VoC) analytics, today announced the availability of 4Q’s VoC feedback within Google Analytics (GA) reports. This integration is the only free solution that allows GA users to integrate web analytics clickstream data and matching VoC feedback for each individual visit. This provides online marketers with a more comprehensive understanding of the intent behind each visit and the ability to identify their site’s strengths and weaknesses by different visitor groups. “iPerceptions is pleased to announce the first free solution that seamlessly matches clickstream and Voice of Customer data within Google Analytics,” said Claude Guay, President and CEO of iPerceptions. “We are bringing new value to Google Analytics users by delivering insight traditionally available only to enterprise brands.” GA users can now flexibly combine web analytics clickstream data with 4Q data points including: Purpose of Visit (why visitors came to a site), Task Completion (whether they were able to complete their tasks) and Overall Satisfaction. Site managers can then easily slice and dice the integrated data set to better measure their site’s performance against their online business objectives. Using customizable GA reports, site managers can flexibly mold the data to gain actionable intelligence on how to fix issues and optimize their sites. Highlights of reporting capabilities include: · Tracking satisfaction rates for specific visitor groups to better evaluate landing pages, exit pages, search keywords, traffic sources and campaigns. · Measuring conversion rates against task completion rates to gain a better understanding of the conversion cycle. · Comparing satisfaction rates by time on site, pages visited, sections visited and geographic region. · Examining time on site by task completion to distinguish between visitors struggling to find information and those positively engaged on the site. GA users can integrate all or a subset of the 4Q metrics: Purpose of Visit, Task Completion and Overall Satisfaction. 4Q is available at www.4Qsurvey.com iPerceptions is also placing greater flexibility in the hands of 4Q users by introducing the ability to fully customize their purpose of visit choices in their 4Q survey. Users can now choose from existing choices or immediately add their own selections and translations. The new functionalities are available today to a selected set of customers with general availability scheduled for May 14. Top of PageToronto firm wins big with social media Integrated Canadian Public Relations company, elevator communications inc., recently took home Gold for Best Digital Communications Campaign of the Year at the 2010 ACE (Achieving Communications Excellence) Awards, an annual industry gala hosted by the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) Toronto. It was the first year for Digital Communications (social media, social networking) to be recognized as a PR discipline, indicative of the exciting direction that the public relations industry is heading. Jennifer Thompson , Director at elevator communications, ran ESSENSITY and the City, the 12-week August through October 2009 social media campaign for Schwarzkopf Professional's Essensity brand, a professional line of colour, care and styling products. The challenge? Create a digitally led brand-building campaign with a focus on driving awareness and engaging the brand's demographic through trial in a meaningful way. The campaign involved a series of interactive Pop-Up Salons in Toronto. From a strategic perspective, elevator communications targeted the digital world to get the word out, driving traffic to a microsite where women made appointments for themselves and a girlfriend to enjoy a complimentary ESSENSITY and the City hair care experience at one of the participating salons. "Within 72 hours of going live, we were fully booked and had started a waiting list," says Thompson. "Digital media is playing an increasingly important role in how people get the news they're looking for, so it was important to go to those sources - and they're changing every day. We firmly believed the "instant" nature of social media would be the key to the campaign's success." "ESSENSITY and the City was an exciting way for us to bring the brand to life," says Marianne Medeiros, Marketing and Education Director for Schwarzkopf Professional. We would have never understood how social media could be executed by PR professionals if we hadn't taken a chance and gone with elevator's strategy." Winning this award means a great deal to elevator communications on many levels. "Most importantly," says Melanie Rego, President of http://elevatorinc.com, "it's about being recognized in an innovative PR discipline at the leading edge of communications. At the same time, it gives our industry credibility and reinforces what many of us have known for some time: Digital communications has a home in PR." "We're constantly faced with questions like 'Who owns social media?' says Rego. "But, according to elevator communications, it's not about who owns it. It's about what you do with it. "Social media now exists alongside all of our best traditional PR practices. It is engrained in how we plan and execute our strategies. We must embrace the digital world, as this is quite obviously the future of communications," says Rego. Without losing sight of what the overall business objective was that inspired elevator's ESSENSITY and the City strategy, Schwarzkopf's Medeiros says, "The bottom line is our sales remained strong throughout the recession. Did social media have anything to do with it? I believe it did." Top of Page Nokia, Food Network launch mobile recipe appDon't know what to make for dinner tonight? Consult recipes from Food Network Canada's celebrity chefs at the simple touch of a button. Nokia Canada and Food Network Canada today announced the launch of The Food Network Canada Mobile Recipe App, the first Canada-exclusive branded app available on Ovi Store. The application includes more than ten thousand meal ideas, how-to videos with cooking tips and techniques, and daily updates all available while on the go. The free application is available for Canadians to download onto their Nokia device at store.ovi.com. "We are delighted to announce The Food Network Canada Mobile Recipe App as the first locally developed Canadian application for the Ovi Store," said Richard White, general manager, Nokia Canada. "People want relevant and easy-to-use content in their mobile devices and this application gives busy Canadians access to thousands of interesting and innovative recipes to help them better plan meals." Users of the Mobile Recipe Application can search and download recipes from within Food Network Canada's extensive library, save those recipes directly to the application and receive a new and appetizing recipe every day of the week from the "recipe of the day" feature. Users with video capabilities on their mobile devices can also enjoy how-to videos of tips, techniques and recipes from some of their favourite Food Network chefs. Just in time for spring and summer gatherings and get-togethers, the Recipe App will be available for free download from Ovi Store (http://store.ove.com/content/30826) for Nokia smartphones like the Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia 5230, Nokia N97, Nokia 5800 Xpress Music, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 6730 Classic, Nokia E52 and Nokia E55. "With the launch of Food Network Canada's first mobile application for smartphones receiving such positive feedback from Canadians, we are pleased to develop a mobile recipe application with another popular mobile provider," said Paul Burns, VP Digital Media, Canwest Broadcasting. "Our collaboration with Nokia Canada will present more users with the easy access to food related content that we know they are hungry for." The Recipe App was developed by Wigilabs, a Toronto-based mobile application developer. Ovi Store is Nokia's online mobile content store where consumers currently can purchase and also find free applications, games and other mobile services for their phones, with other users' ratings and recommendations. Additional Canadian and paid content will be available from the Ovi Store in the near future. To learn more about the Ovi Store visit store.ovi.com. Top of Page Grocery training in Canada goes high-tech The Canadian Grocery HR Council (CGHRC), with funding support from the Government of Canada's Sector Council Program (SCP), announced the release of its Frontline(TM) Online Learning system, an affordable e-learning technology platform that will enable grocery owners and franchisees to deliver essential training to potentially more than 500,000 workers across Canada. Frontline Online Learning is a robust web-based learning platform that combines interactive content, video, audio and more, to deliver a captivating learner experience specific to the grocery industry at a fraction of the cost of conventional training methods. "With this technology, we are able to deliver a consistent and efficient medium for skills development that can be accessed anywhere an internet connection is available," says Cheryl Paradowski, Executive Director of the CGHRC. "This will enable employers to reduce training costs and increase the ranks of employees that receive training, thereby raising the bar on productivity and customer service and making all employers more competitive." Frontline Online Learning provides programs for managers and frontline staff, and is self-directed and interactive, with a built-in assessment system to test for transfer of knowledge. It also provides administrative, registration and reporting capabilities that enable managers to monitor learner progress, administer testing, maintain records and usage history, and provide support to learners. The CGHRC has just released the first Frontline Online Learning program on Safe Work Practices, and the Council will launch its second program on Safe Food Handling on October 25, 2010 at Grocery Innovations Canada in Toronto, Ontario. Established in 2003, the Canadian Grocery HR Council (CGHRC) is a nationally recognized, non-profit organization funded by the Government of Canada's Sector Council Program (SCP) that brings together representatives from business, labour, education, industry associations, government and other professional groups to support a collective response to the grocery industry's human resource challenges. Top of Page "Saving Penny" pays off for Sympatico.ca Launched in June 2009, Sympatico.ca’s original web-series ‘Saving Penny’ has been nominated for the Banff World Television Awards prestigious Rockie Award in the ‘Original Online Programs’ category. Winners will be announced at the BWTA Gala on June 15th, 2010. Featuring Penny, Doug and friends, ‘Saving Penny’ is a dramatic web-series focused on personal finance, with personal and real conversations Canadians can relate to. Penny McLaughlin and her friends cover everything from moving in with your partner to getting out of credit card debt, RRSPs, and even pet insurance. Penny's starting to pay attention to her financial health for the first time in her life when she realizes her credit cards are maxed out. She decides to look around her to those she trusts for simple ways to understand important concepts. The series delivers relevant information to Canadians in a nutshell, so that even those lacking financial savvy can relate. “Through Saving Penny, we want to communicate important financial information in a captivating way,” says Evan Jones, partner at Stitch Media. “Finances and financial security are not necessarily sexy. Saving Penny is our way to make these topics more attractive, and evidently, it works! I have people tell me they have the exact same conversations we feature on the show with their friends.” Produced by Stitch Media specifically for Sympatico’s yourmoney.ca’s Internet clientele, each webisode includes a mix of HD quality video and animation that demonstrate some of the concepts in the series. “For us, it was important to produce a series that was able to grab people’s attention and create anticipation for the next episode,” says Andrea Kolber, associate director, product management at Sympatico.ca. “The more we researched the topic, the more we found these conversations were happening around us every day. Even during the shoot, the cast and crew would say 'This is a series designed for me!' We're never formally taught some of these crucial life skills and Penny's challenges are the same for all of us and the series offers up some helpful information to consider in a fun, quick format.” Top of Page Internet on-the-go from Tether Tether recently unveiled its business-to-business proposition at the WES 2010 Conference in Orlando, Fla. Building on the tremendous success of its consumer-focused business, Tether has developed a model that will allow corporate customers to increase productivity and lower costs. Tether was launched in March 2009 as a means of allowing people fast, affordable Internet access almost anywhere by letting them work on their laptop via their BlackBerry data plan with no additional hardware. By selling its application to consumers though its website, www.tether.com, the company has attracted more than 100,000 users around the world. Now the company is targeting corporate customers with a B2B offering that will include enhanced features including: data security, customization and data controls. The company is also discussing initiatives with several major wireless telecom carriers. "We're now reaching out to corporate clients to help them cut their costs and improve their employees' productivity," said Tim Burke, Tether's CEO. "We not only want their staff to enjoy the convenience of tethering, we want their finance departments to benefit from our efficient, low-cost technology." Tether has increased its staff as it moves into the enterprise space and is pleased to announce it has named Mike Flynn as its Director of Business Development. Mike was formerly the Director of Business Development for Voice Services at America Online Inc. Tether is a sponsor of WES 2010, the premier annual symposium for BlackBerry and its partners, and will host a booth at the event. Tether's applications can be downloaded at www.tether.com. Top of Page |
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