The Challenge:
With the start of each winter season Whistler Blackcomb faces the challenge of maintaining its leadership position, promoting opening day, raising awareness for (usually awesome) early season conditions, stimulate visitation and generating general stoke and buzz among snow-lovers. For the start of the winter 2011.12 season, Origin was challenged to create a campaign that would

• Increase brand awareness and brand engagement for Whistler Blackcomb
• Entertain, inform and inspire with a story that would incite trial and increase loyalty
• Showcase Whistler Blackcomb’s unique assets and communicate early snow and opening day messaging
• Create and distribute quality, compelling video, text and photo content
• Drive traffic to whistlerblackcomb.com and the Whistler Blackcomb social channels
• Engage both the mainstream skier and the core skier and snowboarder, without alienating either

Within the changing marketing landscape, it was clear that a fresh approach to this challenge was required and the traditional print, tv and radio campaigns wouldn’t make the grade.

The Approach:
Building upon the central insight that while storytelling is enduring as a marketing tool, today’s stories need to be a conversation rather than a lecture. They require a “hole” in the story into which customers can insert themselves and connect with the brand. With this in mind, Origin proposed a “blogger-in-residence” strategy that would provide a unique platform on which Whistler Blackcomb could communicate its key messages in an engaging, genuine and transparent way, without alienating the core ski and snowboard audience who see straight through and dismiss and traditional ’sales’ efforts. The result was “Embedded – Inside the Story”, a collaboration with pro skier and award-winning filmmaker Mike Douglas (and his company Switchback Entertainment) aimed at kicking the season off with a bang. A new media concept with PR and social applications, the campaign embedded Mike at the peak of Whistler Mountain in a Patrol Shack for 6 days and nights with nothing but a sleeping bag and his camera, to create behind the scenes video reports of a mountain preparing for Opening Day.

The Outcomes:
A campaign teaser was concepted by Origin and Switchback Entertainment, with a call to action to sign up for the notification when Mike’s adventure would begin. A campaign web page (whistlerblackcomb.com/embedded), designed by Origin and developed by the Whistler Blackcomb team operated as a central hub where Mike’s posts, a Flickr gallery featuring still photo documentation by ski photographer extraordinaire Paul Morrison, and a live Twitter feed provided even more content from life at the top of the mountain. An online advertising campaign in vertical media drove traffic to the site. And of course the main event —six beautiful, inspiring and entertaining webisodes were created by Switchback Entertainment and loaded nightly to recap the prior day’s events.

While the campaign is still in circulation, the result is a project that truly captured the hearts and minds of mountain lovers and was shared widely through social channels. The campaign has netted over 200,000 video views since the campaign began just days before opening day. Spikes have also been tracked in web traffic, social media engagement, sharing and interaction.

http://embedded.whistlerblackcomb.com/

Here’s a gallery featuring some of the top hits, including the weather shock of Mike’s feet leaving Hawaii to crunch across the snow in ski boots, the patrol shack’s resident rodents, the pure stoke of everyone running from the gondola into Opening Day, and the final starry time-lapse.

But, as amazing a job that Mike Douglas and the team at Switchback Entertainment (supported by quite a few superstars behind the scenes at Whistler Blackcomb) did, we venture to say the real star of the show was La Niña. After all, that pounding snow storm that nearly shook the shack down sure delivered paydirt for the opening day, and kicked off this season with pure stoke. The fact that La Niña seems to have embedded herself at Whistler is the best part of all.

One long-time local later told Mike Douglas: “THAT is why I moved to Whistler.” Which tells you that this marketing campaign was no snow-job.

For insight into the campaign, and whether you can expect Embedded II: With a Vengeance, to come soon to a theatre near you, check out this interview with our Creative Director, live on Slopefillers today.

*Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while climbing it* – Andy Rooney.

The social-sphere is abuzz today with the launch of #WBEmbedded, a campaign we developed for Whistler Blackcomb to douse winter stoke with jet fuel and light things up! Creative savant Mike Douglas (always willing to take one for the team) has moved out of his cozy little Whistler pad, still sporting a tan from his recent family vacation in Maui, and taken up residence on the top of Whistler Mountain, in the ski patrol shack, to document the onset of winter, where’s he’s logging the experience for us.

Episode 1 is live today. Check it out, and enjoy the buzz. Opening day is Friday and the forecast is for half a metre of snow this week!

EMBEDDED Day 1 – Patience from Whistler Blackcomb on Vimeo.

“The Peak to Peak Experience at YVR” is shortlisted under the category of Ambient/Place-Based Media (large scale) and is a great example of thinking outside the Gondola. (if we do say so ourselves!)

Q: How do you communicate the experience of soaring between the peaks of Whistler and Blackcomb to tourists as they arrive at the YVR International terminal?

A: You take the vehicle and the views to them.

And we’re in good company! Complete shortlist available here

So in a fit of nostalgia, we found ourselves re-visiting the Whistler Insider blog, to remember some of the highlights – rounds of disc golf, floats down the River of Golden Dreams, lazy days browsing the Farmers Market with dog in tow, sampling cocktails and soaking up sunshine on the patios, hitting the bike park, or a few balls with the kids at the mini-putt zone.

We were also curious to re-read the 32 posts that were compiled by a host of Whistler Insiders, including Mike Berard, Michelle Leroux, Alan Kristmanson, Lisa Lefroy and Mary Zinck, to see which were the most popular.

So here are the top 5 posts from the Whistler Insider, Summer 2011 – think of it as the Best Of the best of Whistler in the summertime…

1. Best Places to Spot a Bear: Most of us have been sleeping with bears forever, so it’s a thrill to see one in the wild. But 500 pounds of muscle and claw doesn’t make for a good bedmate, playmate, or photo-shoot model, if you’re too close. The Insider revealed the worst and the best places to spot a black bear, or three, in Whistler – including from your bike-saddle, from the chairlift and around the golfcourse.

2. Top 10 Cheap Eats: Michelle Leroux, the managing editor of Whistler is Awesome and ultimate Whistler Insider, rounded up a mouth-watering tour of Whistler’s cheap eats proving that frugal and foodie do go together. The post was so popular it was run in the Globe and Mail at the end of July.

3. Playground Round-ups: Proving that Whistler is really just one big playground for kids of all ages, the Playground Round Up gave parents a Tour of slippery slide Duty with tips on the best places to let the monkeys run wild while getting your caffeine fix.

4. LUNA fliks: Mary-Ann Graebling dished on one of Whistler’s best kept after-dark secrets, the outdoor movie nights presented by LUNA.

Standing trail-side on Wednesday nights in Whistler along the pathways to Lost Lake is a little like watching a nation of hipster refugees migrating to their next camp, all a little confused about the weather they’re headed into – most are wearing some combination of flip-flops, shorts, hoodies and toques. They travel travel by bike and by foot. Most carry blankets, and something to keep them off the grass – ranging from folding camp chairs to inflatable double mattresses to dinghies used earlier that day to float on the lake. All are heading to one place – Lost Lake, to watch movies in the open air, under a starlit sky.

5. River Runs Through It:  Professional freerider and bike coach Lisa Lefroy wrote up the classic A River Runs Through It bike trail, giving the low-down on what people need to session tehir way to mastery on this Whistler classic.  (Bug spray. Leg armour. A buddy. And treats.)

So does that sound like your ultimate summer weekend?

Tourism Whistler will take the blog in-house now, continuing to share insider secrets on Whistler in the fall and the winter, so stay tuned as they keep on dishing.

Tourism Whistler’s Breton Murphy credited the big increase in regional visitors to competitive accommodation and to a social media focus on publicising the resort’s many free or cheap activities. At the end of August, Tourism Whistler’s president and CEO Barrett Fisher told the Sun:

Whistler has had a great summer so far, with tremendous interest in its summer concert series and sporting events like July’s Crankworx mountain bike festival. Even though June was cooler, there was 20-percent growth in room nights over the previous year. In July we’ve seen a five-per-cent growth over last year. This will be in the top three of our busiest summers.

By mid-September, the summer was still pacing to be one of the top 3 for the resort.

The Fresh, Free, Fun campaign that Origin developed for Tourism Whistler to grow summer business was anchored in a blog, the Whistler Insider, detailing a host of incredible and little-publicised pocket-book friendly activities in Whistler, and was supported by a marketing campaign in the targeted regional markets in print, web and OOH to create a thoroughly integrated summer campaign.

The positive impact of the campaign owes a lot to the solid insights that informed it.

+     People are motivated to “share” in online communities and via word of mouth because of the “reputation economy”, gaining self-esteem and standing by giving away their time and opinion.

+     The caliber of experience Whistler visitors enjoy consistently ranks off-the-charts, but the perception that Whistler is not good value is an initial stumbling block.

+     Experiences, not products, provide happiness. Today’s smart spender is defined by “values” as much as, if not more than, price. There is a connection between “value” and personal priorities/ “values” eg bonding with loved ones, e-toxing, getting back to nature, the fundamentally valuable things that money can’t buy.

Rolling out a campaign that was so robust in content – with regular print ads serving as a kind of fresh sheet, highlighting upcoming events and experiences, and the Insider blog providing regular insights about little known and mostly free Whistler experiences, enabled us to address all those insights, and in turn, proved a huge success. So here’s to the summer of fresh, free fun.

Click here to view our portfolio

We took a leaf from the old–school urban designers or ‘placemakers’ when we were charged to develop a brand and website for Newport, Vermont.

Placemaking originated in the 1960s, when architects and planners offered groundbreaking ideas about designing cities that catered to people, not just cars and shopping center developers. Their work identified the importance of lively neighborhoods and inviting public spaces.

This multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration and potential. Put simply, it involves looking at, listening to, and asking questions of the people who live, work and play in a particular space, to discover their needs and aspirations, to create a common vision for that place. The vision informs an implementation strategy, beginning with small-scale, do-able improvements that bring immediate benefits to public spaces and the people who use them.

The city of Newport is on the cusp of dramatic change. The primary objective of the Renaissance Corporation was to develop a strong brand as a key economic and community development tool.

We knew that to be enduring and impactful, bringing the brand to life involved more than just designing a pretty new logo. The “place–making” process for the revitalised brand involved:

• A brand envisioning session with the community with participants ranging from elderly long-time Newport residents to business owners to the mayor.
• Defining the Newport brand essence, promise, characteristics and positioning
• Creating the City of Newport’s identity and standards
• The design and development of print creative and a new website

Website development goes hand–in–hand with brand development. The website we developed for the Newport Renaissance Corporation was intended to be more than an information portal. It would be the ‘home’ for the city, and like the city itself, an interactive, living, changing, growing thing.

The technical features and functionality of the site didn’t just sync with the brand characteristics, they also helped meet the client’s key objectives of positioning Newport as a destination, building a database, providing a comprehensive place for information about Newport and promoting area businesses.

The technical features built into the site included a business directory, the ability for businesses to edit their own site content and sponsor various site sections, an events calendar that can be updated by contributors, interactive maps and user–generated content, as well as mobile accessibility to ensure the site can be viewed on any browser or device.

In this era of information overload, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) are increasingly challenged to provide quality information. Insufficient knowledge of desired information preferences and search behaviour has hindered them from effective information management.

With tools like Tripadvisor, WAYN, Google Maps and Facebook, many people, including stakeholders, are questioning the future role and relevance of DMO websites.

To compete, DMO websites should be integrated with other communications and marketing initiatives and be comprehensive enough to give visitors all the tools they need – mash–up maps, live web cams, YouTube video channels and a Flickr image gallery to capture the special elements of the destination. DMO websites also need to act as one-stop-shops for the visitors by providing a wide range of information for the destination’s product mix as well as centralized hotel and event tickets reservation systems. Moreover, DMO websites need real time and social content to establish collaboration with people who have a personal or commercial interest in assisting potential travelers to visit a destination. In that way, the DMO website is not just a virtual place but a virtual showcase of the community, and a powerful asset in the city’s marketing, tourism and economic development.

Quand on nous a mandatés pour développer une identité de marque pour Newport, au Vermont, ainsi qu’un site web, nous avons puisé notre inspiration auprès des urbanistes designers de la vieille école aussi appelés « placemakers ».

Le concept de « Placemaking » (création de lieux) a vu le jour dans les années 60, quand les architectes et les planificateurs ont commencé à proposer des idées révolutionnaires pour la conception de villes qui répondraient aux besoins des gens, pas seulement aux voitures ou aux promoteurs de centres commerciaux. Leur travail soulignait l’importance de créer des quartiers animés et des espaces publics accueillants.

L’approche multidimensionnnelle de la planification, du design et de la gestion de lieux publics capitalise sur les avantages, les aspirations et le potentiel de la communauté. Pour simplifier, cela signifie regarder, écouter et poser des questions aux gens qui vivent, travaillent et se divertissent dans un endroit donné. Cela signifie connaître leurs besoins et découvrir leurs aspirations, et être capable de créer un vision commune pour cette ville. La vision s’inscrit dans une stratégie d’améliorations, à petite échelle au début, des choses faisables et qui offrent des bénéfices immédiats dans les espaces publics et aux gens qui les fréquentent.

La ville de Newport est à l’aube de changements drastiques. L’objectif premier de Renaissance Corporation était de développer une marque forte comme levier économique et communautaire.

Nous savions que pour créer une marque forte et durable, il fallait plus qu’un beau logo redessiné. Le processus de « place-making » pour renouveler la marque nécessitait :

• Une session de création d’une vision de la marque en collaboration avec la communauté et des participants aussi variés que des aînés de Newport, des propriétaires de commerces et d’entreprises, et même le maire.
• La définition de l’essence de la marque de Newport, sa promesse, des caractéristiques et son positionnement.
• La création de l’identité de la ville de Newport et de ses normes.
• Le design et le développement de création imprimée et d’un nouveau site web.

La création d’un site web va de pair avec le développement de la marque.  Celui qui a été conçu pour le Newport Renaissance Corporation se voulait avant tout un portail de renseignements. Il serait la porte d’entrée de la ville et, comme la ville, il devait être interactif, vivant, en transformation.

Les caractéristiques techniques et les fonctionnalités du site ne devaient pas seulement être synchronisées avec les éléments de la marque : elles devaient également répondre aux besoins précis du client de positionner Newport comme une destination, monter une base de données, offrir de l’espace pour des renseignements sur Newport et faire la promotion d’entreprises de la région.

Parmi les caractéristiques techniques du site, on a créé un répertoire d’entreprises avec la possibilité pour les celles-ci d’insérer leur propre contenu et de commanditer des sections du site, un calendrier d’événements qui peut être mis à jour par des participants, des cartes interactives et du contenu généré par les utilisateurs, ainsi qu’une accessibilité mobile afin d’être sûr que le site puisse être vu depuis n’importe quel navigateur ou appareil.

À notre époque de saturation de l’information, les OMD doivent de plus en plus être en mesure de fournir des renseignements de qualité. Un manque de connaissances des préférences sur les renseignements recherchés et sur les comportements de recherche réduisent leur capacité à gérer l’information de façon efficace.

La présence d’outils comme Tripadvisor, WAYN, Google Maps et Facebook, fait que beaucoup de gens, incluant les parties prenantes, remettent en question le rôle futur et la pertinence des sites des OMD.

Pour être concurrentiels, les sites web des OMD doivent être intégrés avec d’autres initiatives de communications et de marketing. Ils doivent être assez complets pour offrir aux visiteurs les outils dont ils ont besoin : des cartes composites, des webcams live, des canaux de vidéo YouTube et une galerie d’images Flickr pour pouvoir capter les éléments spéciaux de la destination. Les sites web des OMD doivent également être en mesure d’offrir tout ça en une seule session en proposant aux visiteurs virtuels une gamme de renseignements sur le mix produit de la destination ainsi qu’un système centralisé de réservations de chambres d’hôtel et de billets pour des activités. Qui plus est, ces sites doivent pouvoir fournir du contenu en temps réel et du contenu social pour pouvoir établir une collaboration avec des gens qui ont un intérêt personnel ou commercial à aider les voyageurs potentiels à se rendre à cette destination. On voit bien que le site web d’un OMD n’est pas juste un espace virtuel, mais une vitrine virtuelle de la communauté et un agent puissant pour le marketing, le tourisme et le développement économique de la ville.

When you labour over creative campaigns, you can start to lose Big Picture perspective and obsess over the granularity, (fullstops or no? is there enough mud on that shoe? does the blue pop enough?) so it’s fun to pull back up and look at a finished approved ad, like this fall in-store display that our Montreal office designed for Salomon to increase the brand’s presence throughout Forzani’s stores. We’ve been calling out campaigns of our industry colleagues with a ruthless Hit or Miss, so it’s only fair that we square up to the same treatment. Whaddya reckon? Does it make you want to hit the trail?  (Personally, we think “out of the park.”)

With the wind-down of the snow season, the verdicts on Winter 2010-2011 branding campaigns are coming in.

At last week’s National Ski Area Association Awards, Jay Peak Resort won Best Overall Marketing Program for a resort with between 100,000 and 250,000 skier visits for the fourth year in a row.

Origin Design and Communications has been honoured to be working with Jay Peak Resort and their Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Steve Wright, who gives us our most beloved briefs: don’t do something that smacks of marketing.

Just downhill from Jay Peak, another of our clients, the city of Newport, was just awarded the Best Image Campaign, for a branding campaign we developed for them: ‘Newport. Genuine by Nature.’

Finally, the May issue of Ski Area Managment’s SAM magazine features their annual Best/Worst Marketing 2010-2011 round-up, and we’re pleased to say that both the Jay Peak print campaign, and the Whistler Blackcomb campaign, got the thumbs-up.

Okay, now. Back to work.

We are looking for web geeks that like to play outside.

If you are not afraid of calling yourself a geek, you are probably close to being the right person; if you have had stitches from an action sport you’re getting warmer, if other geeks admire your code, you might be our dream candidate.

We are looking for an experienced WEB DEVELOPER with proven programming skills and a passion for action sports and mountain culture, for a 6-month contract position based out of our Whistler or Montreal office.

The ideal candidate is a detail-oriented collaborator, good under pressure, who is motivated to work as part of a design team. He or she has a passion for user-centered design, experience with information architecture and usability testing and cross-browser/platform issues, writes clean, well-structured markup, can hand-code, and has a strong understanding of open source web technologies. Previous experience working for an interactive agency, design studio or advertising agency is an asset.

Skills we are looking for are:

• Standards-compliant HTML, XHTML, DHTML
• CMS (preferably Drupal, ExpressionEngine, and/or WordPress)
• PHP
• Advanced CSS
• Javascript
• Flash and Action Script
• Database (MySQL and phpMyAdmin)
• eCommerce experience
• Ruby on Rails

We know no one is awesome at all of the this, so tell us your strengths, what you can do and what you have done, by sending a resume with links to projects you have worked and a description of your role and contributions to jobs@origindesign.ca.

We would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this position; however only those who are considered for an interview will be contacted. No calls please.