A party at Totem

Eric Schneider, Totem president and CEO; Isabelle Marcoux, Transcontinental vice chair of the board and vice president, corporate development; Phillip Crawley, The Globe and Mail publisher and CEO; Joseph Barbieri, Totem SVP marketing and business development.

Last week’s Totem blow out — I mean, launch party — brought staff, management and clients together for the first time ever in our 11-year history.

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Mar 31 2010 • Dick Snyder • Uncategorized • totem news • No Comments • ShareShare this

A new website, another milestone in our history

TGIF! And not just because every Friday is a good day. Today we launched our new website. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. A two-year-plus process of evolution — rethinking, rebranding, renovating… We’re shedding our old Redwood roots and taking on a new skin. And it feels good!

We’ve been immersed, fully focused on our new persona. And now we can raise our heads and take a look around and (hopefully) tell ourselves: Job well done! (And if nothing else, at least the lobby got a new coat of paint.)

Our new website represents a milestone for us in many ways. We were founded just over 10 years ago on the power of content firmly rooted in a traditional print vehicle: the venerable magazine. For many years, we had no web presence at all.

And in those 10 years, we all know how vastly the media landscape has shifted. The magazine is in trouble, if you listen to the doomsayers. I don’t agree. I think we’ve proven that the essence of content remains sound and pure. It’s irrelevant how or where a story starts. The magazine will always have intrinsic value and be an integral tactic on the content spectrum.

What matters in today’s multi-channel world is how a story is received, consumed and made viral — and that has everything to do with what makes people tick. Or what gets us excited. And then it becomes all about the tools and the technology. Last year it was Twitter, the year before Facebook. Both remain popular and useful, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

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Mar 12 2010 • Eric Schneider • totem news • No Comments • ShareShare this

The importance of collaboration

In the current issue of Advertising Age (March 8, 2010), Totem client Sylvie Bourget sums up quite nicely one of the essential elements necessary for custom media to perform to its maximum potential.

In talking about the success of the integrated print and digital program Totem designed for Aeroplan, Senior VP of Marketing and e-Business Sylvie Bourget talks about the importance of tailoring the content of Aeroplan Arrival (magazine and web) to “the lifestyle and interests of our readers.”

Then she hones right in on how we worked together to get it right.

“We share our member and business objectives with Totem, which develops the content for the magazine and Web,” Bourget says. “Both streams work in parallel, and the relationship is very collaborative.”

Collaborative—such an easy word to throw around in the agency-client dynamic. And yet it rarely describes the whole story. Relationships that seem collaborative — and are even described as such by the participants — aren’t always a blissful union.

This is not the case with Aeroplan and its working arrangement with Totem. As soon as we won the business, we set up a series of planning sessions to develop content strategy, with several meetings at Totem’s offices in Toronto and at Aeroplan’s offices in Montreal. From the very beginning, Aeroplan approached the process in the spirit of a true partnership. This was not only refreshing, but extremely productive.

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Mar 12 2010 • Dick Snyder • press • No Comments • ShareShare this

Sign of the times

Change is taking place fast and furiously this week.

Bye bye Redwood, hello Totem!

No more red carpet, no more red chairs, no more swirly red logos. And today, the ultimate transformation. Our new name went up over the doors on Front Street.

Can’t wait to see the new business cards!

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Mar 4 2010 • Dick Snyder • Uncategorized • No Comments • ShareShare this

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