Caffeine bubble dreams

Humber PR is moving into the future!

A big thanks to Jenna and Zack for running Humber PR 2C's Future Camp. It really gave us a chance to strengthen our current connections with our peers and develop ways to keep them strong for the future.

Plus, it's another great excuse to hang out with the most awesome people ever!

The focus was on our future in PR. Where we want to work? What our passions are? We also created a digital time capsule (pink boas anyone) and added to the Google Doc shuffle where we could write why our colleagues were so awesome.


I hope we can stay connected over the years. And in the social media world it's easy to do so. We also vow to have bi-monthly activities for face-to-face time, in I'm going to say it HumberPR, I'm going to miss your face.

What would our world be like without tigers?

Survivor's 1982 hit Eye Of The Tiger would have never become the theme to Rocky, nor topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for six straight weeks upon its release. Without tigers, the song would be Eye of the, which is significantly less powerful.

Without tigers, who would grace the box of one of my favourite cereal boxes, Frosted Flakes? Tony the Tiger is what made this cereal Grrr-eat, and without him Frosted Flakes is just another corn flake cereal. Tony the Tiger is a cereal icon.


Tigers have become our lovable sports team mascots. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats wouldn't have the same team spirit without these magnificent cats. Without tigers, they wouldn't even be able to call themselves Tiger-Cats, it would just be Cats, which doesn't have the same edge in football.


And who can forget the bouncy, lovable Tigger from Winnie the Pooh? Children would never hear all the wonderful things about tiggers, er tigers. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, would be just Winnie the Pooh. I'm pretty sure he'd be lonely.


Without tigers, the world would be a different place. So as much as we feel protecting our tigers doesn't involve us, it does, because tigers are a part of us in one way or another.

I don't want future generations to live without tigers. Do you?

In November Roots Canada got involved in the Right to Play campaign, changing the lives of children in disadvantaged regions in the world through the power of sport and play. The official press release outlined this would be a partnership of Roots Canada, Mastercard and Right to Play.

Proceeds from the Canada Collection by Roots would go to Right to Play programs; donations were also accepted. This campaign was made most memorable by the television spots such as the following:

This commercial was very much overtaken by Mastercard, with its classic "priceless" format. Roots' involvement was briefly mentioned, although it has an entire collection dedicated to raise money for this cause. Since commercials did not scream Roots, I decided to look into other social media outlets to discover how Roots promoted its involvement in this campaign.

And then there was Twitter. Looking since Nov. 4, @RootsCanada has posted or retweeted 13 tweets mentioning the Right to Play campaign. That's 13 tweets in nearly five months. Amongst the 13 tweets, there were product suggestions, photos of favourite products, calls for donations, and photographs of Canadian collection-clad celebrities.

Roots Canada has a Facebook page with 12,912 fans; significantly more than the 2,499 followers it has on Twitter. The Facebook page is interactive with pictures, polls, and promotions. The Facebook fan page had 22 mentions by Roots Canada about the Right to Play campaign, and it was more than mentions. The posts included photos of the Canada Collection, celebrities wearing the clothing, links to the commercials, and most importantly information about the Right to Play foundation. Overall, I think Facebook was better utilized in this campaign than Twitter. Especially for the type of campaign it was, Facebook was better because it was visually dynamic. Viewers did not need to click elsewhere to be directed to videos and images.


Threat: Roots and the Right to Play campaign is in competition with every other company raising money for every other charity. It needs to step up communication on every platform to make sure people get the message. Roots is not alone in trying to make a difference in the world, and we need to know more about what makes this campaign special.

Weakness: This campaign is not cohesive over all platforms. The Roots website is the best source of information about Right to Play and the Canada Collection. Facebook is second, followed by Twitter, then by YouTube. In order to get a full picture of this campaign, you'd have to use all these channels equally to maximize viewership. The platforms are skewed in the sense, that one platform gives significantly more information than another.

Having said all this, I think Roots is a wonderful company involved in many positive initiatives including community involvement and environmental sustainability. I feel with the Right to Play campaign, Roots has been overshadowed by Mastercard, which seems to be a bigger sponsor of this campaign. But Roots is supplying the product that donates money to the foundation, therefore, I believe it should be more visible to the public.

For different takes on the Roots' Right to Play campaign, please see my colleagues Jenna's and Ali's blogs.

UPDATE: April 29, 2010
The Roll up the Rim campaign is *rolling* to a close and according to my RimRoller app, my final win/loss ration was 2-7. There were definitely more 'Try Again' cups which I didn't record, so really it's probably closer to 2-15. It was a worthwhile experiment, I think. And by the way, I won two donuts. I'm curious to see whether anyone won any of the big prizes. Please comment!

March marks the return of the Roll up the Rim to Win campaign at Tim Hortons. For me, this marks the opportunity to follow my large triple triple with an opportunity to win.

In conjunction with the iPhone, rolling up the rim becomes an online social interaction with fellow coffee drinkers. I downloaded an application to my iPhone called RimRoller by ReCat Film.


With this app, after I finish my coffee and roll up my rim, I can post whether I won or whether my cup said 'Try again' to Twitter. It's a neat way to track your wins vs losses ratios and also track other people's wins.

What I find interesting with this app is the PR implications and how it can motivate or discourage the masses to participate in Tim Hortons' campaign. Primarily, this app is not sponsored or affiliated with Tim Hortons, but works as exposure of its campaign. It also connects Tim Hortons coffee drinkers on Twitter.

Posting Roll up the Rim results to Twitter can have a positive effect:

If many people are winning, there are higher hopes of me winning.

If many people are losing, there's more prizes out there for me to win.

However, it can also have a negative effect:

If not many people are winning, what chances are there of me winning?

If many people are winning, all the prizes are probably already won.

I personally like this app because it combines online social media with drinking coffee. You can search for other users of this app on Twitter, by searching for #RollUpTheRim.

Do you think the RimRoller application is effective PR for Tim Hortons? What are some pros and cons?

For Social Media class we were asked to search within ourselves, look at ourselves critically and develop an identity that we could put into words.

And so I did.

High energy meets high ambitions; a passionate young writer searching for her place in public relations.

Please view my SlideShare presentation of my brand. And remember, I always appreciate comments and suggestions.

In context: Using Deirdre Breakenridge's article PR 2.0: A Communicator's Manifesto, as well as social media experience in Social Media class, I have put together a (hopefully) comic take on the changing ways of public relations.

Find out how PR Guy saves the day for Businessman. Not once, but twice!

I admit, I have hopped on the bandtractor and taken it straight to Farmville.

"Canada is the sixth biggest country in terms of the number of visitors to FarmVille." - CP 24.

Mindless time wasting aside though, I want to focus on what the creators, Zynga Games, are doing to bring people together. I feel that the underlying message in Farmville is one of community. In the game, you have to rely on friends to help you succeed. You must also help friends in order to unlock certain achievements.

With that in mind, it really touched me when Farmville reached out to help Haiti. A few days after the earthquake, Farmville offered a new crop for planting, White Corn. This was a paid item you could only purchase with FarmCash. The response was phenomenal. Many farmers spoke out in support of Zynga's Haiti Relief Fund.



White Corn costs about $5 in real money. When you donate, the crops will be accessible to you for a week, and would never wilt. As a token of appreciation, Farmville offered everyone who donated a gift of a Haiti flag.



To date, Zynga's Haiti Relief received $900,000 in donations. Farmville promises a special surprise for farmers, if the number goes up to $1 million by the end of today.

If a silly game can bring so many people together to do good, it can't be a complete waste of time. In a social media rich world, this is the best way to mobilize the masses to support for a cause. Good job, Farmville. My straw hat goes off to you.

Can a blast from past, such as LiveJournal, still capture the interest of today's social media savvy partakers? More importantly, can LJ's free version fulfill the needs of a PR professional?


In a nutshell, LiveJournal is an online community that links people through their diaries. You can write a journal, add friends, search for other users’ journals, and join communities based on your interests.

First impression of LiveJournal? Cute. However, therein lies the problem. Blogging is a way to share our personal brand with the world; and we want to be taken seriously. Pink backgrounds and bouncy kitty emoticons will not do.


LiveJournal does connect to more popular social networking outlets, like Facebook, as well as utilizes your cell phone. This is pretty cool seems like a game of catch-up, for an online community that is already 10 years old.

I leave you with three LiveJournal fails:

• In exploring LJ for the purpose of this review, I landed here. Somehow, my journal account directs me to Russian LiveJournal on certain links. I don't know how to change this; I can't read it to find the English button. (LiveJournal is now owned by Russian company, SUP, run by LiveJournal Inc.)


• LJ allows you to create a ScrapBook to store online pictures. Why use ScrapBook? I’m still unsure. I investigated and clicked through journals at random, hoping to find the answer. None of them used ScrapBook; I’m sure no one uses it I didn’t use a good representative sample.


• Finally, the text everywhere on LJ tells me to upgrade to a paid account. Even while signing up I was informed that LiveJournal is better if you pay for it. It's frustrating not to be able to access certain features, like browsing communities by region.

Maybe that’s the main problem. LiveJournal becomes the community you want if you dish out the $19.95/year for a paid membership. So I will never know what treasures lie within.

I suspect with more customization options, LiveJournal can probably become more useful to a PR professional, perhaps for community-building purposes or networking. But generally, LJ is pretty dated; there's too many blogging options available now. LiveJournal started out as a source of entertainment, and I think entertainment it will stay.

I wish LiveJournal a happy 10th birthday and give it 2 out of 5 bouncy kitty heads.




Please see Aasana's blog on a different take of LiveJournal.

The amount of information found on the Internet can be overwhelming. You don't have enough hours in the day to sift through everything, let alone absorb everything. As future PR practitioners, we need to be able to absorb everything. So what if there was a way to bring this information to you?

The answer lies in a tool called Google Reader. With no software to download, and nothing but a Gmail account (or any e-mail account, for that matter) to start; it's very user-friendly.

Google Reader makes it easy to gear the Internet towards you. It brings the information of interest from all the World Wide Web to one convenient location.



Using the link, Add a subscription, you can subscribe to any website that offers an RSS feed, ie. blogs, online newspapers, magazines, etc. You can also look for the orange RSS icons to subscribe to a particular page’s feed while viewing the page. (See my RSS link on the right-hand side of my blog.)

Everytime a page you've subscribed to gets updated, the update is sent directly to Google Reader. You no longer have to visit multiple pages for updates!

Google Reader also allows you to share interesting links with friends, and star information to compile a list of your favourites. Cool!

In Public Relations, we need to have information easily accessible to us. An RSS tool like Google Reader is the key to bringing all the Internet has to offer to a convenient place where we can view it as easily as we do our Email.

We can all be Google Reader Rockstars! "How to" information provided by: “How to: Use Google Reader Like a Rockstar” by Matt Singley. Read it here!

For further reviews of Google Reader please see blogs from: Brian, Catherine, and Ginger.

For more "How to" please see Humber PR students' collaboration of links.