In order to reinvigorate and revitalize downtown Ottawa businesses hit hard by the recession and the bus strike, Thornley Fallis and 76design  conceived, developed and executed the Picture it Downtown campaign for The City of Ottawa, where residents were encouraged to go downtown, snap a photo and share it online.

Point, shoot, share – a simple concept to get Ottawa excited about all it has to offer. The “Picture It Downtown” concept we developed served to visually promote downtown Ottawa as a whole, but also the eight specific areas being promoted:  Byward Market, Downtown Rideau, Sparks Street, Bank Street, The Glebe, Chinatown, Preston Street (Little Italy) and Wellington-West Village.

Residents could participate in the campaign contest to win daily ($50), weekly ($250) and grand ($500 to $1200) prizes by taking pictures of downtown activities and uploading them to the campaign website.

The campaign included a media launch event involving the Mayor, a website with a list of downtown activites, a description, videos and photos of each area, contest rules and regulations, a photo gallery for people to submit and view photos, and YouTube videos, featuring all that’s cool in several neighbourhoods, print, radio, online and transit advertising, weekly news releases and ongoing online outreach using other social media tools including Twitter and Flickr.

Thousands of people participated and competed for prizing provided by local businesses.

The campaign was to remind Ottawans of all the diverse experiences and excitement downtown Ottawa has to offer, and entice them to visit downtown — ultimately spending money while engaging in the various activities highlighted in the eight main areas being promoted.

For the City of Ottawa, running a marketing campaign with a heavy online and interactive component was not only a smart business and communications decision, but its creativity generated a lot of buzz within Ottawa and got people sharing ideas and photos of great things to do and see in the city.

The fall 2009 campaign resulted in over ten thousand unique visits to the campaign website, more than 1300 entries (photos uploaded to the website), significant earned media in targeted outlets, photo and video assets for future use by the City, and a general buzz across the City about the creativity of the campaign, particularly by government.

Picture it downtown would not have been possible without our lead technologist Brett Tackaberry, senior developer Steve Lounsbury, our superb designer Steve St. Pierre, the ad campaign led by Laura Mindorff, the videos by Ryan Knuth, writer and producer LeeEllen Carroll and our SEO expert Shaun Scanlon. Special thanks to our GM Keelan Green, who has a knack for assembling the best teams to deliver outstanding results.

Thank you IABC for the recognition. It’s nice to bask in the spotlight… and great to share successes. As I used to say in my former journalistic career, you’re only as good as your last story. So that means back to work. Right now.

In an attempt to reduce the cost of its annual report, The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) engaged 76design and Thornley Fallis for our unique concept of a paperless report. Highlighting achievements and documenting successes,  World Class Care (TOH’s 2008-2009 Annual Report) contains a special feature allowing readers to create their own versions of the report including only the sections and stories appealing to them.

For some, those stories include the 6808 hospital births, the woman who was paying it forward by donating her kidney to a stranger because her own husband was receiving one from an anonymous donor in Ottawa – who had selflessly stepped forward to transplant hope, or the CF soldier, blown to bits in Afghanistan after coming into contact with a land mine. He died. Twice. The second time he was resuscitated during his evacuation flight. He arrived at TOH doped up on morphine. Months of therapy and compassionate care in the Rehabilitation Centre got him back on his feet- running in fact – he recently took part in The Olympic Torch Relay Race, with a new ‘bionic’ leg.

Allow me to cast the awards spotlight on other members of our talented team, who took those stories and turned them into an attention grabbing report: writer Bradley Moseley-Williams, who’s never met an adjective he can’t love, web developers and code masters- Brett Tackaberry and Steve Lounsbury, Mr. Shaun Search Engine Optimization Scanlon, ‘video is the new media’ Ryan Knuth, Resource and Account Manager Laura Mindorff, video killed the radio star LeeEllen Carroll, and top 40 under 50 SVP and GM Keelan Green.

A very special thanks to TOH’s CEO Jack Kitts and VP Nic Ruszkowski for renewing their investment in TF and 76 by inviting us back to partner on their next online annual report.

Here’s to more success stories for The Ottawa Hospital, Thornley Fallis and 76design, our peers at IABC and everyone in our communications community.

During the post-presentation free-for-all of a recent Third Tuesday Ottawa, I had my mind blown by smart cookie, often shift+control linked and former 76er, John Wiseman. We were talking about A vs B Testing and its slow and steady adoption within the web industry. We talked about the conversion of visitors into buyers via the testing of 2 variations of a site design, the evolution of focus-testing. It was the usual chatter until he drops this nugget on me.

RobotReplay — The Next Generation of Web Analytics

It’s a free web-based application where it tracks and records the mouse gestures of each visitor’s session. Did I mention that it’s FREE? Beyond being pretty damn cool, it allows clients to see for themselves where a visitor clicks first, what doesn’t get any attention at all and everything in between. The service is simple to implement into your site’s code and it records the session in tasty flash video on their servers. This is especially useful for those darn online forms that gets no love. Now you can see why.

Can it replace your current tools for collecting web metrics? No. Think of it as a beauty of a complement to your existing plan (if you have one that is). The dead-sexy kneepads to the thigh-high leg warmers, if you will.

I have yet to test it out on my personal sites/blogs, because evidently you need actual traffic for it to work.

This can help mash out those long battles over the size of buttons, where they’re placed, etc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t address the request by the client to make their logo 75% bigger. You’re still on your own for that one.

You might remember last summer’s viral campaign for Snakes On a Plane that had Samuel L. Jackson calling everybody to invite them to the premiere (while making insightful remarks about their jobs, the cars they drove and how much time they spent on their hair). It was pretty cool — so cool that 1.5 million calls were made in the first week. No wonder they call him the busiest man in Hollywood.

A year later and Criss Angel has stepped it up a notch with a really well executed campaign to promote his show on A&E called Criss Angel Mindfreak.  The campaign uses some really slick video splicing and dicing on a phony Youtube-esque site to totally freak out your friends just like a call from Sam Jackson out of the blue would.  On top of the video stunt, Criss then calls your friend a couple minutes after they watch the video (presumably to give them enough time to unfreak their mind) to confess that the this trick was staged and they should check out the new season of his show.  Which, in my opinion, totally kicks ass.  He has freaked my mind on many occasions.
Same basic concept as Snakes on a Plane but a better execution.  Nice work.

This is something totally cool that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out for myself. It’s called Sketchcasting and you can check it out at Sketchcast.com. The idea was hatched a couple months back by Richard Ziade at Basement.org and some folks decided to take his idea and run with it — so to speak.

What is Sketchcasting? Well it’s kind of a criss-cross of blogging, podcasting and sketching whiteboard-style. Basically, you talk into your microphone while you draw on a whiteboard. Not an earth-shattering concept — whiteboards and sketchpads have long been invaluable tools for communicating ideas and illustrating concepts quickly — but to do it you need to capture on video what you’re sketching and record what you’re saying while you’re talking. That would require a video camera, a microphone and some patience to get it onto your computer, compress and edit as required. Kind of loses the whole “in the moment” essence that makes it work so well in the real world. What Sketchcast.com does is fill in the gaps so that the entire process is now done via a web-based tool — recording AND sketching. You hit record and the site captures your sketches and voice (if you feel like talking) and then lets you save it and share it really easily. You can even embed the finished product on your site much like a YouTube video.

So what’s it look like? Well, they suggest you use a graphic tablet for sketching but here’s something quick and dirty I just threw together.

Ok – a graphic tablet would make that a whole lot easier… but it’s still a really neat idea!

Speaker: Craign Swan from CRASH!MEDIA

In recent years Flash has broadened as an Interactive tool offering more than just a platform for animations, websites, games and RIA’s, but a whole new world of Interactive possibilities. Engaging Installations. Alternative Interfaces. Calm Computing. Physical Prototyping. Interactive Environments. Making things and Exploring the User as the Interface.

Craig has been a regular speaker at FITC over the years. He never fails to impress – this year was the best by far. Craig’s presentation covers a lot of ground, and this post doesn’t do it justice, however, here are some notes I scribbled down:

• Flash has an ambient awareness – microphone and camera capabilities provide flash with an awareness of what is happening in its environment. Although, this control has been around for a little while by now, a new suite of tools has increased possibilities. Sophistication is limitless. Many new ideas and possibilities with new tools such as bitmap toolkit and new video tools.
• Interaction with camera enables new interfaces including gesture capturing and more interactive user-interfacing. Use color tracking and mapping objects to colour. Technically, poll the screen for the presence of a colour and perform various procedures depending on location and intensity (or any variable) of colour.
• Input devices. [unfortunately, my notes get more sparse as his presentation goes on] IPAC device, a simple input controller, allows developers to piece together their own interfaces. You can use any type of sensor to generate the simulation of a keypress and in turn capture that event within Flash. PhidgetRFID is an easy to use and easy to integrate RFID reader. Make board, tilio board, controller board allow the designer/developer to create alternate output. Monome 8″x8″ controller is a input/output device that is a 10×10 grid of LEDs that double as an input device. Craig was using this as a video mixing board. MIDI controller with a number of knobs provides a wide range of real time control. Craig was using this to interact with a live video feed in realtime controlling various aspects of colour and timing. Connect to WII controller through bluetooth (max msp).

For examples of Craig’s work, go to the CRASH!MEDIA site and click on “Labs”.   A lot of it is in there. Enjoy.