How do you take the stress out of holiday shopping and put the joy back in?

It’s actually quite simple. On behalf of Bing, the High Road team conducted a survey to see how Canadians were feeling about decision making and the holiday season. The results showed that Canadians  found it difficult to make decisions about gift buying – 40 per cent thought it would be easier if there weren’t so many options.

With Canadians stressed out about a festive time, the Bing team was ready to put the happy back in Happy Holidays!

We brought on personal shopper Afiya Francisco from thestylehouse.ca to share her secrets to gift buying and how she makes confident decisions about her purchases. The answer: Bing Shopping. Afiya did a media tour in Toronto to spread the word that Bing is the tool for holiday shopping.

In her words,  it’s simple, accessible and a personal shopper’s assistant! Afiya spoke about the survey results and the benefits of Bing Shopping, such as Daily Deals, price comparisons and cross border promotions, for doing your research before purchasing.

Watch below to learn how you can enjoy the holiday season, decision making and gift buying!

For patients living with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), meeting dietary requirements can be tough. CKD patients experience a slow loss of kidney function over time, and since the main function of the kidneys is to remove waste and excess water from the body, a healthy, balanced, and highly-personalized diet is very important.

This is why the Kidney Foundation of Canada teamed up with High Road to create a web-based dietary resource to make patients’ lives just a little bit easier – and in November 2011, the organization unveiled The Kidney Community Kitchen: a dietitian-approved resource to help patients manage their eating, as well as help their friends and family who support them every day.

www.kidneycommunitykitchen.ca

To achieve this, HRC worked with the Kidney Foundation to host a focus group with several kidney patients, supporters, and dietitians and plot the course for the creation of a powerful new resource.

CKD patients didn’t just need another cookbook: they wanted a useful, easy-to-use and tailored experience to make their lives easier.

The new website includes:

• The cookbook: Easy-to-use, dietitian-approved recipes with info that is vital to patients such as sodium and phosphorus intake tracking, renal diet exchange information, and ingredient substitution options. Those that visit the website can also comment and rate recipes and website members can save their favourites for later reference.

• The meal planner: Allows users of any experience level to drag-and-drop recipes from the cookbook to build a weekly meal plan that is easily printed and/or shared electronically with friends, family, or their dietitian. Users can also view and print a weekly grocery list for each recipe or for their entire meal plan.

• The food journal: Automatically archives a user’s weekly meal plans, allowing them to review historically, as well as add comments about how they felt that day, how they felt about certain recipes, and track their health information.

• CKD resources: Helping users better understand and manage their health. This is also a great resource for parents, providing things like downloadable “dietary dos and don’ts” which can make sleepovers and other social engagements safer and much more fun.

Congratulations to the Kidney Foundation on this great new project!

Canada is known for its video game development, but if one Canadian city really shines it is Montreal.

On November 1 and 2, the city welcomed the eighth annual Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS), an industry event for professionals to learn, exchange and network with the best of the best from across the globe.

High Road has been a proud partner of MIGS since its very first event, working closely with Alliance Numérique to help promote the event internationally and grow its profile year after year.

High Road’s challenge eight years ago was to build the event’s image from the ground up, attract the attention of the industry and compete with some very high profile, large-scale and well-established events such as the Game Developers Conference. This year’s challenge was to renew our approach to generating interest, help drive more attendance, and fully integrate social media into MIGS’s communications arsenal.

One of our tactics over the years has been to bring the success of the industry to life for Montreal media. For example, the creation of 7,000 jobs in Quebec alone has a way of painting a compelling portrait for the business press! Social media activity on Facebook and Twitter before, during and after the event also got people buzzing about MIGS and helped the team engage with the developer community and grow its overall online following.

MIGS also attracts high profile industry celebrities for conferences and keynotes, and while at other shows reporters have to chase speakers after their presentations, for MIGS High Road coordinated all interview requests to ensure everyone got what they needed. When media and speakers arrived at MIGS, they were handed coordinated interview schedules, with no conflicts and clear information on where to meet up.

Overall, this year MIGS was a huge success, attracting a record number of more than 1,700 participants – up from the steady 1,500 over the past couple of years.

With 85 registered media (also an increase) and impressive coverage, the HRC team is not only celebrating a job well done but looking forward with great anticipation to next year’s edition!