Hi everyone, Alex Ryan from the San Francisco High Road office here at the X’10 Canada Holiday Preview event being held at one of Toronto’s premiere venues, The Fifth. Having spent years attending gaming events in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, I was certainly looking forward to how the home office and our Canadian counterparts “put on the ritz” with their gaming events and have spent the day checking it out.

First of all, let me say that The Fifth is an amazing venue to hold an event. Located in Toronto’s entertainment district, The Fifth is separated into two different floors, the first floor and the fifth (duh!), with X’10 covering every inch of these floors with gaming goodness. With X’10 beginning at 10am and going all the way to 10pm, media were treated, not only to the delicious  paninis and open bar, but eight screen local multiplayer action with Halo Reach. Rock Band 3 represented big time with their keyboards and Pro Mode in effect making the gaming press step it up a notch to rock, and turntablists mixing it up on DJ Hero 2 (Lady GaGa FTW!). Sega, Activision, EA, Bethesda Software and UbiSoft were all in the house with everything from Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Dead Space 2 (my personal fave!) to the retro awesome that is Sonic 4. On top of that, the Lionhead developer for Fable came here from the UK to get in on the action. And let’s not forget Kinect…

The Fifth’s fifth floor was all about Kinect. In what is usually the venue’s nighttime restaurant area, Kinect stations were aplenty giving not just the core gaming media a turn at the new a peripheral, but local and casual media along with Mommy Bloggers coming through to try their hand at the new controller-less Microsoft innovation. Dance Central anyone? Yes, please! Check out So You Think You Can Dance Canada’s Blake McGrath busting a move.

So needless to say, it was wall to wall to wall games here at X’10 Canada and I can certainly say that my Canadian counterparts have done me proud with the venue, the amount of gaming companies coming together with their holiday lineups, and the multiple types of media brought together in one place. With the all day event across two floors and everyone having time to relax, play and just enjoy gaming as it should be enjoyed, I’ll definitely be here for X’11 Canada!

We’re a lucky agency, in that we get to work with pretty cool clients.

Check out this video we just finished for Gatorade Canada G Series featuring Olympic and world champion kayaker Adam Van Koeverden.

To produce this video, we got up at the crack of dawn with Adam, and hit the waterfront. Recently, as with this video, we’ve been looking at ways to keep moving the needle on production quality, so we made use of DSLRs (the hot Canon 7D) and some specific new toys like the very fun Go Pro HD for those sick water shots.

And keep an eye on http://twitter.com/gcanada on Twitter as well as www.facebook.com/gatoradecanada today–we’ll be posting and updating live from the G Series press event.

LG’s products had been long‐considered the epitome of sophistication and style, so it was only fitting to have the brand extend its association even deeper into the fashion industry with the announcement of LG’s title sponsorship of Toronto Fashion Week in 2009. With the goals of highlighting LG upcoming sponsorship role, the company’s unique fusion of technology and style, and demonstrating the company’s commitment to the fashion community in the year to come, LG hosted the Fashion Fusion Gala at the end of Toronto’s Fashion Week in September 2008.

Located in a reconfigured Fashion Week tent in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, over 1,000 industry icons, designers and consumers alike mixed and matched while experiencing a fête of fashion. High Road worked with agency partners to stage a full fashion show with designers Agent Provocateur, Greta Constantine, Wayne Clark, Shan and a handful of International design students treating the audience to the full runway experience. Additionally, High Road managed the launch of a new fashion phone series, which was integrated into a Carlie Wong fashion show.

Entertainment was provided by Grammy Award‐winning and International musical talent, Maroon 5, who rocked the runway with their soulful sounds. High Road worked with a variety of agencies and different vendors to coordinate all the logistics of the tent, entertainment, fashion show and catering.

To open up access to the public, LG projected the party on a huge screen outside the tent in Nathan Phillips Square. And when LG conducted an open casting call for aspiring models to strut their stuff on the runway and win access into a variety of fashionable events, High Road did public relations as well as online editorial outreach and social media relations to spread the word..

The Fashion Fusion Gala secured coverage from top‐tier publications, news broadcasts and online sites. The program, which continued with LG Fashion week in March 2009, October 2009 and October 2010, continues to drive home the message that LG is a brand focused on high‐tech and fashionable design.

Learn more at: www.lgfashionweek.ca