There are traditions and then there are traditions. While attending the Blue Jays home opener is one of the many extra-curricular traditions of High Road’s Toronto office, there are inevitably the traditions that come with the game itself. For example:

The Pregame. Some years you go to a pub and other years you just decided to start your own establishment in the office. That’s what happens when you have 50-plus people going to the game. Besides, the High Road food spread beats anything you’d get in a Skybox or whatever they’re called these days. And no line-up for the beer or the bathroom means more time for the former.

The Lost Tickets. Inevitably someone misplaces their tickets in the hours leading up to the game. This year it happened at 4: 28 p.m. and although those tickets are still missing, the people who lost them were at the game less than two hours later. How did we do it? It helps to know a guy who knows a guy who can call in a favour.

The Game. It always goes by in a blur. This year’s 13-3 thrashing of the Twins made it easy to make time for some serious team building. For example, it was great to see so many people offer to go to the vodka bar on the 200 level to support the colleague who has a wheat allergy and can’t drink beer.  Such sacrifice.

The Post-Game. As much as we love hanging out in our office, it was time to take over a real pub after finishing off the Twins. The best part of the post-game is everyone who turns up – clients who are out on the town, some favourite journalists, and more High Roaders. This is where all the stories of the evening get shared and compared between friends and the planning for next year’s Jays game begins.

Three words about home opener 2012: Office rooftop patio.

This week was a big one for Gatorade Canada: the launch of the new G Series line of products (check out the cool Facebook app we built for it here). With the G Series, Gatorade is moving into a new space (from purely hydration to overall sports nutrition), the kind of move that for such an established brand is never easy.

 One of the tools we used to help move brand perception was video, taking an existing event (a media tour featuring Maëlle Ricker, Olympic Gold Medallist & all round cool snowboarding dude) and carving out just enough time to shoot some video responses to questions we had asked key bloggers to submit. The Hip & Urban Girl’s Guide even made Maëlle their HUG of the week:

While this wasn’t the primary driver of our program, it was great to see bloggers starting to appreciate these types of videos as quality content for their networks. Definitely an easy-to-implement best practice to add extra value to future programs for our clients… let the videos begin!

At High Road Communications, we like to make the best of the winter and avoid those pesky winter blahs altogether. So last month, High Roaders from the Ottawa and Toronto office took to the slopes for the annual HRC ski day.

The Ottawa team hit up Camp Fortune, in nearby Chelsea, Quebec.  We skied and snowboarded – and one brave newbie even took snowboarding lessons.  After a couple of fantastic falls and a lot of fun later, we topped off the day with poutine, burgers and beer.

Check it out:

Our Toronto team drove up to Collingwood the night before (tip: always be sure to have accurate directions or be prepared to take the long way) and spent some time in the ski village that night. 

The next morning we were up bright and early, coffee and hot chocolate in hand, to take on the hills at Alpine Ski Club. Bundled up, we braved the cold to have some good old fashioned HRC fun! 

We hope you enjoyed your winter as much as we did…but  fear not, spring is on its way!

(Thanks for the video and the Ottawa updates, Chrys Moll and Jessey Bird!)