To drive awareness for a new LG mobile phone (which has a full slide out QWERTY keyboard) and reach the target audience of Canadians between 16 and 24, High Road created and implemented a national texting championship. High Road developed an integrated campaign that brought together experiential marketing teams, public relations, advertising, web strategies, and sponsorships in 18 cities across Canada, including Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Regina, Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal and Quebec City.

For each city, High Road worked with regional partners to design a texting championship kiosk in a high traffic consumer area. We managed the signage and sponsorship opportunities for LG partners Bell, Telus and Rogers in the kiosk area for each event. High Road also supervised the hiring and training of street teams who worked the kiosk area to encourage Canadians to register and compete in the texting championships.  The cheerleaders and referee-uniformed team members worked closely with each contestant to register their entry on touch screens, help them choose a phone, and then move them on to the competition station. At the end of each city competition, the kiosk team provided photographs and participant marketing data to High Road and LG.

In addition to the regional competitions, there was also an online element which included YouTube videos, photo posting, and Facebook integration, which enabled Canadians who weren’t located in one of the 18 cities to compete.  All of the competitions culminated in a final National Championship event in Toronto where finalists battled for $25,000. In all, over 20,000 Canadians competed across the country. High Road’s success in extending LG’s brand awareness while adhering to strict budgetary guidelines led LG to choose High Road to mount a second National Texting Championship in 2009.

As a pilot project, High Road developed an internal micro-site focused on the topic of Sustainability – a core corporate commitment by Sun Life to its shareholders, customers and employees.  The micro-site let employees share ideas around sustainability initiatives, large and small, that could be implemented within their home or office environment. Employees were then able to rate and comment on suggestions.

As part of the pilot, High Road developed Sun Life’s policies on participation and engagement using social media tools.  These policies enabled Sun Life to proceed with open and un-moderated posting of content.  Within the first three days of launch, Sun Life received more than 900 posts, 4,500 votes and 1,200 comments.

Building on the success of the pilot project, High Road then moved to transform the corporate communications platform within The Source, Sun Life’s corporate intranet.  All news stories and articles are now published directly on the intranet and grouped by geography and topic.  Employees can rate, comment and tag these articles and regular columns have been introduced, such as “Leaders Talk”, to encourage dialogue with management and to help communicate across the organization.