Sometimes things happen for a reason. When I last visited my parent’s farm, they insisted I remove a stack of glass jars that I’d been warehousing in their garage. Four years earlier, I had purchased 40 cases of 8oz glass jars for packing honey, only to discover they are the wrong size. The eight ounce jar is perfect for olives, pickles, sun dried tomatoes and hot peppers, but not pure Canadian honey. Little did I know when I bought them, this odd size is actually illegal for food producers to use (in Canada) because its not on the list of approved sizes. There are six different sizes for producers to use. This is because consumers get confused and cannot shop for honey in all different size jars with different volumes and prices. So anyone selling honey in Canada has to do so in one of six different sizes, and this… Read more »
Posted in: Charity Event, corporate social responsibility, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Photography, Social innovation
Taged with: 28 dozen jars, Bleecker Wellesley Activity Network, breaking isolation, BWAN, food safety, glass jars, green living blog, Toronto, Vicky
I feel sorry for Tish Harkus, Manager at Canadian Club Whisky for it’s obvious she has a real passion for this beverage, and a powerful gift for communicating the essence of the Canadian Club experience, but sadly, even her professionalism and compelling stage presence couldn’t cut through the lunacy of the Apr 18 tasting event. On April 18th 2013 Praxis PR invited me to join the Canadian Club Chairman and share his Whisky Whisdoms at the inaugural #CanadianClub national meeting in the Great Hall at Hart House. It was a boondoggle. Honestly, I would like to report nice things, and ‘give back’ to the PR community, but it was like this gathering was organized by people who had never thrown a party before. There were so many rookie mistakes. The huge Twitter wall was impressive, and I liked the Prezi style presentation. Congrats @TheDanLevy who won a nice prize for composing… Read more »
Posted in: Friends of Smojoe, Interactive, Personal Blog, Photography, Toronto, Video
Taged with: #CanadianClub, Canadian Club whisky, Chairman, no common sense, Praxis PR, rookie event mistakes, Tish Harkus, Whisky Whisdom
Once again in 2013, Canada’s top professional hair school, AVEDA Institute challenges young people to step up and prove they were born to style on home video. They did this last year too, and it was very well received; I went to the showdown in Toronto. Making a User Generated Media UGM challenge around hair school is a great way to share the creativity and sell the dream of being a professional stylist and this is a smart social media engagement from many different angles. Here’s Winnipeg’s 2012 Winner, Robyn Thompson with a cheque symbolizing her full ride scholarship awarded last year. The Aveda Institute blogger did a good job just recently summarizing her last year in Catching Up With Winnipeg’s #BornToStyle 2012 Winner, Robyn Thompson. Are you Born to Style? Prove it. 2013 Born to Style Hair School Scholarship Contest is now accepting submissions from Canada’s next top hair… Read more »
Posted in: business storytelling, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Clients, Social innovation, Social Media, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: Aveda Canada, best hair styles, Devin, hair stylists, Jen McNeely, judge, She Does The City, training, win your tuition
Lenzr is back. Its up and working well to provide the 2012 Toronto Christmas Market with everything it needs to run a custom photo contest and make a page full of pictures for the purpose of marketing their holiday event and website. This is a digital marketing attraction, and Lenzr is working as a catalyst to spread sponsors’ messages. Advanced SEO link building practices make the marketing win win for sponsors. This is why we created this custom photo contest website in the first place. In the next few days I will be working through my content distribution route and leaving story bytes describing this contest attraction. Winner will receive a $250.00 cash prize, 2nd place will receive a $250.00 Distillery Restaurant gift certificate 3rd place will receive a $150.00 Distillery Restaurant gift certificate. Upload original photos now and until December 25th Voting begins December 15th and ends midnight Dec… Read more »
Posted in: business storytelling, Interactive, Lenzr, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Clients, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: Distillery District, Lenzr, photo contest, Toronto Christmas Market, Toronto.com
The annual Pikto Top Pick photo contest is now officially open and taking submissions. Contest participants must register for membership on Pikto before submitting fifteen pictures to be judged by experts after Nov 2nd 2012 This is a great opportunity to get discovered – there is no entry fee and each participant’s work will be seen by thousands of people visiting the contest photo gallery. There is comfort and honesty in Pikto photo books. Photo books are physical art pieces and still the most tangible way to show off your art work and leave a legacy of your journeys, experiments and masterpiece images. How would you like to have your pictures on display inside the front gallery of the prestigious Pikto photo printing shop? The photography service headquarters in the heart of the Distillery District is home to all manner of art brokers, buyers and business agents, designers and decorators and… Read more »
A hundred years ago, the first filmmakers built their own movie cameras and recorded the world’s first motion picture images. These pioneers correctly predicted that their business would change the world. Making the ‘dancing shadows of light’ on the silver screen would soon be regarded as the highest art form, a powerful new communication tool called cinema. Storytellers from around the world experimented with length, dialogue and genres, and eventually a common narrative form appeared, and an entire new industry emerged to repackage man’s archetypal myths on silver nitrate. Human brains need emotional narratives the same way our human bodies need nutritious food. Today we live in another great age of change – web media is a powerful new tool that’s quickly transforming our lives and changing the way we do business, and the way we tell stories. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. All… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, business storytelling, Future Technology, Interactive, Personal Blog, Photography, Social innovation, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: Battleship Potemkin, constructing meaning on the web, Rudolf Arnheim, Soviet Constructivism, storytelling
One of the best parts of my job as Managing Director of Lenzr Corp is walking to work in the morning through the Distillery Historic District in Toronto. Located at 55 Mill Street, south east of Front and Parliament, this is one of the oldest parts of the city and was originally the busy lakefront up until the 1870s. I used to work as a grip in the film business, and I’d get called to shoot movies here in the 1990s, which was before it was restored to its present glory. Today the compound is still filled with cinematic old buildings and beautiful cobblestone streets, but also accommodates a thriving community of artists and theatre workshops, cafes, galleries, stores and specialty markets. The area has been preserved as much as possible to accommodate museum quality historic artifacts and tell the life story of a large Canadian distillery, Gooderham and Worts… Read more »
Posted in: corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Photography, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: Christmas Market, Distillery District, Electronic Engineering, Gooderham & Worts, historic buildings, Lenzr photo contest, mortgage broker, reed switch, Toronto
Posted in: Canada Blog Friends, Photography, Social Media, Toronto
Taged with: Abode nightclub, Andrew F Stewart, Blogger, Boardwalk Empire, Canadian Club, Casie Stewart, HBO, John Leschinski, Lauren ONizzle, PraxisPR, Whisky
The anything-goes, colorful world of HARTH really came to life at 99 Sudbury St in Toronto on Weds 26 October 2011. Harthfest 2011 was a large colourful event attraction filled with enthusiastic phone app developers fresh from AndroidTO. Raymi the Minx told me about harthfest in a heartfelt mass email. She wrote, Hey idiots this is how you come to harthfest for FREE tomorrow – get your tickets for your flight on harth air, i’ll be checking you in at the door. Forward this to friends of yours you want to bring with. 8PM 99 Sudbury See ya! http://harthfest.com Harthfest was the AndroidTO After Party 2 ROOMS – 2 EXPERIENCES, both of them kinda chilly LIVE PERFORMANCES COLORFUL EXHIBITS were arranged about the room behind a boxing ring, The StickerYou Make-Your-Own-Sticker Photo Booth Roller Derby champions THE ROLLERGETTES in-person The art of Jimmy Chiale The Eightshit social media profile pic… Read more »
Posted in: Canada Blog Friends, Charity Event, Friends of Smojoe, Mobile software, Photography, Toronto
Taged with: AndroidTO, Andy Milonakis, Casie Stewart, Harthfest, Michael Nus, Raymi The Minx, Sean Ward
As an interactive story engineer, I’m always interested in learning new ways to communicate business messages in digital media; I like to see companies doing exceptional things that ‘hook me’ and make me want to know more, and thereby bring attention to their products and services through story. There are many examples of how the magic of a good story has moved consumers, most famously, Ted Williams, the homeless man-with-a-golden-voice in Atlanta Georgia, the Old Spice guy, and Susan Boyle surprising Simon Cowell and everyone in Britain’s Got Talent. Susan didn’t win the competition, but her first moments on stage were so special that her fame will forever eclipse the names of the winners. She went on to sell millions of recordings and is living proof of the power of story. Business management consulting uses visual storytelling to communicate complex ideas. Each Lenzr Photo Contest is a Ready Made Story… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, business storytelling, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource, workshop
Taged with: business storytelling, Click Clip Deals, free coupons, management consulting, printable coupons, social media marketing, Twitter and Facebook, video media
