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Category: Five Questions

Five Questions for Hooplah Inc. – Canada's Yummiest Mummy Contest

Published October 1, 2007

Yummiest Mummy contest

This past Labour Day saw the launch of Canada’s Yummiest Mummy contest, the search for Canada’s most magnetic, passionate mom. The interactive agency behind the contest, Toronto’s Hooplah Inc. answered One Degree’s Five Questions about user generated contests, building an online video community and how to get in good with the Mummy Mafia.

One Degree: What is the Yummiest Mummy contest and how did it come about?

The Yummiest Mummy is a user generated contest where moms are invited to upload themed videos for a chance to win a trip of a lifetime courtesy of AIRMILES. Other Sponsors giving away great prizes are Roots, McCain, Crockpot, Disney Baby Einstein and Cadbury.

The initial idea was to do a Canadian Idol style tv show. However, broadcasters are so difficult to deal with, we decided that to create this online initiative would allow us more control and make the vibe more grassroots. The response has been great from our sponsors and the mummies so far.

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Five Questions for Jon Hamilton – Petro-Canada

Published September 24, 2007

Jon Hamilton - Petro-CanadaJon and his team at Petro-Canada recently launched Pump Talk, a blog where they can engage with customers and other key audiences to discuss issues around gas prices and fuel efficiency. One Degree sat down with Jon to discuss what led up to Pump Talk, how success will be measured and the lessons that Jon and his team have learned about corporate blogging.

One Degree: You had some success with posting videos about gas prices on YouTube last year. Why was a blog the next step for Petro-Canada?

I believe much of the original buzz from last years videos came from people being shocked that a big oil and gas company not only knew what YouTube was, but had posted videos on it. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we recieved a lot of feedback – good and bad – on our effort. Aside from a number of “You Suck”‘s and other angry comments, we heard from people engaged in and enthused about Social Media who told us we needed to be interactive and much more relaxed. In other words, we were welcomed to the party, but told to lose the bow-tie and our parents couldn’t stay. Faced with the choice of just doing more videos, or taking it to the next level, we decided to step it up and launch a blog.

Read the rest of the interview after the break …

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Five Questions for Yahoo! Canada and Fleishman-Hillard

Published September 19, 2007

The KickYahoo! Canada recently launched The Kick, a social network for soccer fans in Canada. As part of their launch program, Yahoo! Canada used a Social Media News Release (SMNR) to share details with mainstream journalists and bloggers alike. One Degree recently sat down with Hessie Jones, marketing manager for The Kick, as well as David Jones, Julia Stein and Michelle Book from Fleishman-Hillard Canada, Yahoo! Canada’s PR firm, to discuss the use of the Social Media News Release.

One Degree: How did you decide to use a Social Media release for announcing The Kick?

A few months ago, we did a traditional press release for another Yahoo! Canada property. We received from commentary from bloggers that we could have done a better job. So, in planning the launch of The Kick, we wanted to make sure that the online channel was integrated into a comprehensive PR program. How and where you reach people largely depends on the specifics of your audience. For Canadian soccer fans, they are largely online; sports like soccer have a passionate fan base but is not well represented in the mainstream media.. We wanted to reach them and their advocates where they live – online.

From a content perspective, The Kick is an online community – so why wouldn’t we use a social media news release? Plus, Yahoo! has a number of social media tools – del.icio.us, Flickr – at our disposal and it made sense to take advantage of these tools in pulling together an announcement.

The rest of the interview is after the break …

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