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!
As always, the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas was a true spectacle of innovation, style and performance, attracting thousands of the sharpest minds and key influencers in the consumer technology industry. High Road has long been well represented at the convention and 2011 was no exception, with a full High Road team helping LG Electronics Canada “geek out” both in real time and online.
Things got under way on Monday, January 3. It was the first full day back from the holiday break and High Road already had a team on the ground in Las Vegas, laying the groundwork for a series of a videos slated to appear on LG Canada’s YouTube channel later in the week. The videos featured Frank Lee from LG Canada, provided consumers worldwide with early looks at LG’s incredible technological offerings for 2011, including its game changing LG Smart TV series, featuring an unprecedented series of viewing options and a full range of new digital appliances, enabled by LG THINQ technology.
If producing a few dozen videos isn’t enough, the High Road team also found the time to book over 20 media with booth tours on the floor at CES, providing CanWest Media, the Discovery Channel and other top outlets with a Canadian perspective on the latest gadgets and gear. Plus, a dozen of Canada’s top mobility bloggers enjoyed an exclusive preview event at the ever popular TAO restaurant and nightclub, showcasing the latest additions to LG’s Optimus series of smartphones.
By the amount of widespread coverage already generated by Canadian media, bloggers and influencers, High Road and LG Canada are out to provide that whatever happens in Vegas, doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas… at least where smart, stylish consumer electronics are concerned.
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!
