by peter

Travel With a Human Touch

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For three decades, LaCure has been a market leader in luxury villa rentals, providing an exclusive alternative to high-end vacation resorts. Over the years the market has become more crowded with competition, especially with the easy access to travel research and arrangements provided by the Internet.

LaCure recently relaunched its site. The copy I wrote emphasizes not only the company’s long experience and diverse portfolio but its human touch. While the Internet may boast unlimited  travel choices, it’s often hard to judge the difference between good deals and the bad.

LaCure vets all its properties according to rigorous standards developed over the decades, guaranteeing that there is no gravel among its gems. And its travel experts work with clients to find the property and program that best matches their needs.

Sounds like a good proposition for a target more motivated by quality, service and novelty than price.

by peter

Painting Your Jalopy

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During a four-month contract, working with Ariad Communications, I wrote daily blog posts for the Yellow Pages Group, driving traffic to specific categories of their advertisers. Here’s one from the Automotive section:

As a car owner, a new auto body paint job is one of the most satisfying improvements you can make to your chariot. Here’s how to do the best paint job you can.

Perhaps your car is looking dingy, or it’s just time for a different look. Painting your car can be one of the most satisfying improvements you can undertake—like changing your hair colour. . . . Read the entire post here.

by peter

How Much Debt is too Much Debt?

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Canadians like their stuff. They’re not afraid to go into debt for their new cars, homes, large-screen TVs and other items, big ticket and small.  As a result, many of us owe way too much.

Moody’s, one of the world’s leading credit agencies,  recently gave Canada an AAA rating for its “relatively solid economic performance” and stable banking system. But at the same time it warns that the country’s high household debt levels and soaring house prices pose “a potential risk” to those strengths.

Even though debt isn’t usually a good thing, sometimes it can be justified. Rather than simply buying something we can’t afford, debt can be a shrewd way to get ahead if you’re reasonably sure that you will have the means to pay it off. . . . Read the entire blog post I wrote for Richard Killen & Associates.

by peter

Creating a Campaign With Legs

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Great milestones shouldn’t be allowed to tiptoe by. I worked with Rita Sasges and her team at Sasges Inc., the dynamic Calgary design and branding studio, to create a campaign with legs for 40th anniversary of the Calgary TELUS Convention Centre (CTCC).

The marketing effort leveraged Sasges Inc.’s 2012 Be Part of the Energy rebrand for Calgary as the robust platform to celebrate CTCC’s  four decades as the city’s premier meeting and conference destination. It attracts some 250,000 visitors a year, helping to keep the downtown vital.

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by peter

Art for Government’s Sake

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I’ve completed projects for two Calgary clients that underscore the truth that a thing’s value isn’t found in its price tag.

Or, as Oscar Wilde said famously, “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

The cynic in this case is the government, whose financial support of art, art education and public facilities more and more depends on proving adequate returns on investment.

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by peter

Quality Not Price

 

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Earlier this year I did a small website job for a Newmarket construction company, Reno Industries. In the booming housing market, Reno has no shortage of business, so positions itself for its quality, as opposed to price. The site, designed by Michael Trapani of Incube8, focuses on how the company brings together a group of not just licensed tradesmen but “likeminded craftsmen,” including a master painter and decorator from Italy, who, like Michelangelo, has done some of his most stunning work in churches.

by peter

Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

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For more than 20 years, Bill had run a successful Toronto tree care business, doing tree removals, pruning, planting and much more. His finances fell into the rhythm of the growing season. In the spring, the work would flood in and then taper off into the summer and fall.

In the winter, during his downtime, Bill would use credit cards to finance advertising, equipment purchases, insurance payments and personal expenses. He would depend on the work coming in the following spring to pay things off and get him ahead in the game. . . . Read the full blog post I wrote for Richard Killen & Associates.

by peter

All the Brand News That’s Fit to Click

Image by Llangwitches.

Image by Langwitches.

Journalism is dead. Long live journalists.

OK, the industry isn’t really dead; it’s in transition. Its underbelly, tabloid journalism, already lives online quite nicely, thank you very much, with its slavering focus on sex, sensationalism and celebrities. But fewer readers and greater costs mean that “serious” journalism is in flux – it’s not yet certain whether it will continue to be offered by traditional media companies trying to reinvent themselves or fall completely under the sway of new Net entities.

Even though traditional media numbers are dwindling, there is an increasing demand to tell good stories online, especially on behalf of brands.

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by peter

House of 4-H Cards

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Pigs that fly, steers that sell themselves, a course for horses – all made from cards.

Sometimes good design can act as a trigger that unleashes a flood of creativity. This is what happened when Enbridge Inc. came to Sasges Inc. as the national sponsor of 4-H Canada’s 100th anniversary celebrations last year. They asked us to develop a commemorative gift that would be distributed to all of 4-H members, and to create an online campaign to promote engagement across the country. . . .

Read the blog post I wrote for Calgary’s Sasges Inc., talking about the great multimedia project they undertook for Enbridge Inc., helping to sponsor the 100th-anniversary celebrations of 4-H Canada.

by peter

Universities Mean Business

As the son of a university professor, I was raised with the implicit understanding of the value of higher education. We did not ever sit around the dinner table and argue about whether or not what students learned was worth the investment to society at large.

While spared this debate over Sunday roast, I’m now fully engaged in it with two recent projects. I wrote an annual report for an East Coast university and I am in the process of negotiating to write  a series of alumni profiles for a well-known Western art and design college, which will be used on its website, in publications and in press releases.

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