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.

Toronto Technology Week (TTW) is in full swing now. The local blogosphere is currently buzzing with updates from the mesh conference, one of the anchor events of TTW. At long last, the city is getting together to collaborate, network and celebrate our local technology successes. It is great to see the excitement in Toronto, and to be a part of it. I had the opportunity of speaking and participating in a panel discussion at the opening session of TTW on Monday.

For my keynote, we produced a short video that features Jay Goldman, Mark Relph and Ken Nickerson talking about their view on tech in Toronto and what we can do to get the word out. A couple people asked about it, so here is the online version of the video (thanks again for participating, Jay, Mark and Ken!).

As I mentioned in my speech, the Toronto tech community needs more events like TTW where we can not only meet and share ideas, but showcase some of the great innovation happening in our own backyard. But we need to think bigger?

Attendance at the opening was okay, but as business leaders and technology innovators we need to get even more involved, embrace these events and talk about great innovations – if we really want to put Toronto on the map. It was great to discuss how we can better market Toronto tech to the world. But next year I would love to see the TTW opening session packed with keynotes by tech gurus from around the world, like mesh has attracted some of the best and brightest from the world of Web business and social media.

Other regions like Waterloo and Ottawa have a much stronger track record in the tech area. They not only have incredible networking ops for all levels, from CEOs to developers/innovators – they also do a much better job of promoting the regions as a tech centre of excellence. Just think of the potential if Toronto had more networking ops downtown and more associations dedicated to enhancing collaboration across our sector. And what if everyone worked together towards a common goal?

I was absolutely amazed at all the innovation and great companies we have in Toronto, as well as the technology breakthroughs happening at our universities and colleges. As the third largest ICT centre in North America, we have a small window of opportunity to really differentiate the Toronto region, market that out to the world and drive more growth of ourselves as the place to build your business.

Toronto is a great place to work, live and build your career! We need to keep evangelizing, and TTW was a great starting point, thanks to ICT Toronto. Now what? Well, let’s keep going!

How would you market the Toronto technology sector to the world?

Mia Wedgbury

How do you get people to say nice things about you? Invite them to a party, make sure they are having a good time and then shove a camera in their faces. Well, it also helps if you’ve worked with them for a while, either because they are your clients or journalists, analysts and bloggers.

In December 2006, High Road Toronto hosted its annual holiday party at Nectar. This time around we also celebrated ten years of being in business. Here is what some of the people we work with had to say about us.

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