The RBC Structured Notes Group wanted to redesign their external website to set a ‘best-in-class’ standard amongst their competitors.  High Road Communications worked with the RBC Structured Notes team to create a dynamic and engaging web presence that lets investors view the latest news, events and current Notes offerings at a glance on the home page.

Additionally, High Road made sure to present a cohesive, easy-to-use bilingual web site that lets investors and brokers readily browse, search and filter all Notes offerings. By doing so, the site is able to let investors and brokers view details for each Notes offering, including related documents, allow investors and brokers to query historical data for each Notes offering, with the data automatically updated at the close-of-business each day, and ultimately reinforce the call to action to make the right contact to purchase Notes offerings.

The site was designed to support  initiatives to market RBCCM Structured Notes Group expertise, capabilities and offerings, including presentations and upcoming events, and was tied in the sign-up of email subscribers to RBCCM’s CRM database, and provide related statistics on visits to the Notes web site. Additionally, High Road was able to ensure that the RBCCM Structured Notes staff had  easy-to-use management tools to maintain the site, including making text content updates, uploading new documents and adding new sections.

As a result, the RBC Structured Notes group now has a robust, ‘best-in-class’ online site that offers the most complete, comprehensive and current information available, on-demand, to investors,  and provides effective marketing support to brokers selling RBCCM Structured Notes offerings.

For the three years, High Road supported the Canadian Securities Administrators’ effort to teach youth about the importance of saving and investing through the Financial Fitness Challenge.

The bilingual www.financialfitnesschallenge.ca serves as the contest hub, delivering personalized content to youth, teachers and parents, through interactive Flash-based games, a quiz, and downloadable school and at-home financial resources. The 2009 campaign saw  High Road reaching audiences in new ways – from Facebook networking and advertising to media relations to email marketing campaigns and online editorial outreach to parents and homeschool teachers.

The strategy in 2009 was driven in large part by the success of the 2008 Facebook group, and the desire to further tailor the program’s outreach to appeal to the youth audience, and more importantly, their channels of influence. To accomplish this, the teacher’s resource centre was given more prominence and was altered to engage parents and homeschoolers. We  then launched an extensive outreach campaign, which enabled the CSA and High Road to develop personal relationships with the Canadian mommy and homeschooling blogger community.

The use of Facebook proved to be a very successful tactic again in 2009. Four targeted, paid Facebook Ads, generated click-throughs to the site and the newly developed English and French Facebook fan pages. By adding fan pages, High Road could customize the content to reflect the design and interaction already existing on the website. Each week, the CSA would post new questions for fans relating to money and financing. When the contest closed, the two Facebook pages generated several discussion posts offering advice to others and personalized stories about budgeting, saving and investing.

Beyond Facebook, email campaigns have proven very successful over the past three years. In 2009, High Road reached out to over 50,000 youth via email, resulting in over 9,000 click-throughs to the English and French sites. Once on the site, over 13,700 Canadian youth took the quiz and completed a survey which revealed some of their thoughts on the program and finances.

Communications is an integral component of daily operations at CIBC Collections. To keep employees informed the company uses a variety of mediums including team huddles, newsletters and bulletins. However, with four offices in three cities, communication consistency and timing have always been major hurdles. With the speed of business continuing to evolve, CIBC needed a solution that would help bridge some of the department’s geographic and information gaps.

High Road Communications developed a bilingual communications-based intranet system designed to improve communications and prepare employees for future Web-based services. Our initial research indicated that most of the Collections call centre employees had limited time to access online resources. With this in mind, High Road concluded that the online environment needed to be easy to use with succinct content. The premise was, “Tell me what I need to know right now and I’ll find the rest later.”

Feedback on the new intranet has been overwhelming positive. Employees feel more informed and managers are confident that their team now has access to important
information necessary for their jobs.