Carman Pirie's Blog

2049.ca and the Green at Heart movement

Visitors to Halifax’s famed, historic farmers market this weekend were surprised to find lifeboats hanging from the old Keith’s brewery and a SCUBA diver wandering about, among other anomalies. 

2049.ca marks the start of Killam Properties’ Green at Heart movement. For complete details on the Green at Heart movement and the change we’re hoping to help make, please take a look at Killam’s new blog. 

The 2049.ca idea is pretty basic admittedly. Halifax is a port city with our downtown core resting on a lovely little peninsula. While projections vary on the timing and severity of a rise in sea levels, one thing appears certain: If we don’t get our environmental act together pretty damn quickly, the water levels will rise to an extent that significantly impacts our ability to carry on living where we currently do. Simply put, in 2049 – just 40 years away – if we do not change how we live we could all be screwed. 

Most of us are far from perfect where the environment is concerned. We all know of things we could be doing to live more sustainably and we simply choose not to. The Green at Heart movement will seek to wake us all up a bit, to remind us to do our part and keep exploring new ways of living in an environmentally friendly way. 

I really love Killam’s approach to it all. They recognize that they too are far from perfect, that they don’t have all the answers and have a lot to learn. But they’re definitely working at getting better – dedicating more and more resources towards finding and implementing environmentally sustainable approaches and experimenting to find out what works and what doesn’t. Of course, apartment living itself is a rather environmentally friendly choice with certain environmental economies of scale, etc. 

It’ll be interesting to see where this leads us. I’d love to hear what you think about it all.

Social media training for agencies

(One of my favorite Hugh cartoons. You should read his blog and, while your at it, buy his book - it's fantastic.)

I spent the day this past Friday in Edmonton conducting a full-day “Social Media for Agencies” training (that’ll need a better title, but you get the picture) for the good people of Calder Bateman. 

Calder Bateman is an integrated ad / PR agency serving clients most often based in western Canada. And, well, they’re a seriously talented bunch. Good creative / PR / GR chops all around. You might want to check them out on twitter (@KiannM, @Jadelikethegem, @kiriwysynski, @justin_archer) or LinkedIn. Seriously lovely folks. 

To add more background, Colour has been collaborating with Calder Bateman on a project over the past 6-months – we’ve been providing the social media counsel and digital work, Calder Bateman the 'traditional' ad and PR stuff. It’s worked out well, and we’ve gotten on nicely. 

I’ve told a few friends about the seminar and they seem to find it sort of interesting. The idea being that doing a seminar for Calder Bateman amounts to training my own competition, so to speak. Canada’s a relatively small market, after all. 

But ya know, it’s been a lot of fun and rather challenging. It’s one thing to be sort of in the middle of it all as you’re building social media into an agency over time (as I’ve been doing at Colour for the past 3+ years), and quite another to endeavour to compress some of that learning into a day long seminar on building social media in while outlining the business model, etc. The feedback has been extremely positive thus far, and it’s certainly been a great experience for me. 

As I think of it, we didn’t really ever talk about the tools much. Calder Bateman is well beyond that, first off, plus the actual social media tools really do not matter all that much do they? (it’s the human interaction that matters, isn’t it?) The day started with a brief keynote – a sort of outlining of how I view things, just so people understand the built-in biases up front. We then moved through a social media planning framework that integrates across PR, customer service and marketing. Work in a host of case studies, some Q&A, breakout sessions, etc. and before you know it, it’s beer o’clock. 

So I don’t know, maybe there’s something to this. Working with agencies on baking social media into the agency – not just one-off seminars, but perhaps an ongoing arrangement, etc. Something to think about. What say you?

Blow on the dice

I’m just loving this video, the latest in Landlord Lou’s “BOOK NOW OR LIVE IN A DUMP” campaign.

Check it out!

 

(More Landlord Lou stuff here, etc.)

Killam's new site

We just launched a new site for the good people of Killam Properties, a collaborative effort with Brightwhite Design and Shoreline Consulting. We’re pretty happy with it – particularly the focus on a simple to use, Google Maps integrated, apartment search tool. 

Go ahead and take a look. I hope you like it.

Choosing your guru

A few weeks back, while vacationing in Ottawa over Canada Day, I offered a reply to a tweet from Heather pertaining to yet another do’s and don’t article from a blogger – they’re all too common these days, it seems. You know the sort of post I’m referring to; complete with 10 questions you should ask your supposed social media guru before signing on the dotted line or some such thing. My reply – offered after a few too many Canada Day libations admittedly (hey, it’s the nation’s birthday, okay?) – was short on nuance and long on failed punctuation, providing a brief glimpse into the perils of communicating in 140 character snippets. 

Nevertheless, I think the point remains: Most of the prescriptive posts offered up to supposedly ‘help’ people choose their social media counsel are little more than thinly veiled self promotion. They’re meant to articulate the author’s experience, why it is critical to a successful social media effort, and call bullshit on anyone else’s experience that doesn’t measure up to the supposed standard. 

Wouldn’t we all be better off it we just recognized that it’s a rapidly evolving space, that we all have a lot to learn, and it’s still early days?