Know Your Zone - The City of Winnipeg Winter Parking Ban campaign.

General Grader

If you've been following along, you know that back in early September, Picante was chosen by the City of Winnipeg to develop a communication campaign for the Public Works Department regarding the changes to the Winter Parking Bans.  The clients put their trust in us and challenged us to come up with something eyecatching and different.

Lieutenant Loader

The result is Know Your Zone.  We developed two characters, General Grader and Lieutenant Loader, voiced by Winnipeg personalities Laurie Mustard and Jim Ingebrigtsen who did an amazing job creating unique, charismatic characters.

Thanks to Nolan Balzer at daCapo for engineering the audio session and directing the music choice.   Then the fabulous Adam, Simon and Brad at Elemental Motion Media brought the characters to life in the animated commercials,

The multi-talented Lori Dyck from Wildfire Online worked tirelessly with the IT team at Public Works and Corporate Communications, Nasir, Ashley and Nancy to make sure the website www.knowyourzone.winnipeg.ca  was ready for action this morning.  The public is encouraged to sign up for email and Twitter notices relating to the residential parking ban. You can even look up the snow zones on your mobile device, making this truly a cutting edge communication program. 

Vertical Billboard

Bustail

Knowledgable and experienced Kathryne Grisim put together a comprehensive media plan and Charlene looked after design and layout for a host of print applications,  You'll soon see Know Your Zone on vertical billboards, newspaper, bustails and electronic billboards. In a campaign with numerous components, date changes and many approval levels, Kathryne and Char never lost the smile in their voices. 

It's very difficult to put into words, what an amazing team was involved in this project.  ...and I'm supposed to be a writer.   Ken Allen - thank you for your tireless, passionate work on this campaign. You were the Commander in Chief on this operation (at least our end of it) and need to be credited for being an exceptional project manager and enthusiastic cheerleader.  I think it's safe to say we'll be staying in touch - this is a relationship I've come to greatly value...feels more like family than client/agency.   And thanks to Ken Boyd, Stan Siu, Bruce McPhail and Brad Sacher for putting your trust in us.

It was our first opportunity to work with Tammy Melesko at Corporate Communications.  Tammy you were so wonderful to work with.  It was a distinct pleasure getting to know you better and I am sure we'll continue to stay in touch.  We were reunited with the amazing Steve West - how we've missed you Steve - Steve was a big part of the original planning for Just Slow Down for the Winnipeg Police Service and it was so great to have the chance to work together again.

Nasir Noor, again, what a positive, genuine, calm and caring individual you are.  No matter how complicated things became, you were open to discussion and so willing to go the extra mile. 

I'm very proud of Know Your Zone...it will definitely go down as one of the highlights of my career.

I hope everyone takes the time to find out their snow zone and that the Winnipeg Parking Authority can't find anyone to ticket or tow next time we are in combat with Major Snowfall!  (I cannot take credit for that one - that was Ken Allen's idea! )

Some behind the scenes shots: 

The Dream Team - The group responsible for the Know Your Zone campaign.

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Jim Ingebrigtsen and Laurie Mustard lending their golden voices to Lieutenant Loader and General Grader.

Commander In Chief - Ken Allen

Audio Engineer Extraordinaire - Nolan Balzer from daCapo.

Ken Boyd at today's launch.

Ken Allen describing the components of the campaign.

Ken explaining how the website works to help citizens look up their residential street snow zone.

An excellent turn out by the media.

Remember way back when?  In mid-September we held our first"creative" meeting at Cafe Dario.  Ken Allen and Tammy Melesko.

Congratulations Bothwell!

Bothwell Cheese, one of Manitoba's finest companies celebrated 75 years in business on Friday.  The team out at Bothwell planned a fun event to mark the milestone.  We were treated to smokies, poutine and definitely a fine array of Bothwell's finest cheese products.  The event was hosted by David Northcott from Winnipeg Harvest.  The Honourable Vic Toews brought greetings from the federal government.  And a host of other dignitaries were on hand to help celebrate.  We're proud to have developed Bothwell's distinctive 75th Anniversary logo and congratulate Ivan Balenovic and his staff for a wonderful event and for one of Manitoba's most successful businesses. 

Warp Speed!

Hard at work on the new City of Winnipeg Winter Parking Bylaw campaign.  It will definitely be a lot of fun when the campaign launches on November 28th.  Our creative concept was very well received by the folks at the Public Works Department and Corporate Communications as well as by the COO and Mayor Sam Katz.  The elements are really coming together and Ken Allen is just fantastic to work for.  We really appreciate his faith and trust in us.

Meanwhile Grant Park Shopping Centre is getting ready for Christmas after a busy fall full of renovations.

And, once again, we're busy with another RFP for the exciting new City of Winnipeg Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor.

The new massage therapy commercials will launch October 31st and we're nearly done on the new Winnipeg Police ones too.  It's so great to see the fruits of all the labours ripening and getting ready to harvest.

The dream team of Kath, Lori and Char keep rising to every occasion and I just have to say - it's fantastic to work with such talented, dedicated people.

A BIG win for Picante!

We just received word that we were selected from several competing agencies for the City of Winnipeg New Parking Bylaw campaign.  This is a very interesting piece of business and once again we'll be working with the City....I do really enjoy working with them. 

First meeting toute de suite tomorrow morning. 

I do believe I'll celebrate with a wee glass of wine.  Thanks Kath, Lori and Char for your help on this proposal.  

My bad!

Things were such a whirlwind during the shoot for the new Winnipeg Police and Massage Therapy spots and then we headed down to Dominican Republic to deliver shoes to kids through our Fuze thru Shoes program....the blog was...uh.....left unattended shall we say. 

Since I last checked in, renovations are well underway at Grant Park Shopping Centre - many of the stores are changing location and we've been busy developing directional signage and decorative banners and now will kick into high gear for Christmas! 

Bothwell Cheese is in 75th Anniversary mode, launching their national promotion on September 1st.  By the way - Happy Birthday Ivan. 

Post-production is ongoing for the new commercial spots - I should be heading out to Vancouver in a couple of weeks to complete them.  What an exciting time.

In the meantime we responded to a significant RFP for the City of Winnipeg and we're keeping fingers crossed on that one. 

Lori was successful in winning the Polo Park online/social media contract so I'll be supporting her on that one.  It's a nice win for her. 

I will check back in soon. 

Blog was missing...but I think it's back now.

Will update with a project report on shooting the new Massage Therapy and Winnipeg Police commercials in the very near future! 

Production? Yes indeed.

Very proud of the work we developed for the Manitoba Council of Healthcare Unions.  The campaign concept is:- This October,  make Manitoba Healthcare your Issue One.  What made this campaign really exciting for me was the efficiency and turnaround time involved in what could have been a very complicated project.  We won the confidence of the client and the 10 union council stakeholders with a strong and clear creative concept.  We shot the spots on a weekend, edited the next week, focus tested and had them on air - all within 3 weeks.  The television campaign is supported by a complementary bustail program. 

Now we're heavily into preproduction on new television commercials for the Winnipeg Police Service and the Massage Therapy Association of Manitoba.  They'll be shot back to back at the end of July, culminating in what is certainly my most ambitious production task - a huge t-bone crash on Waverley.  I"m very lucky to have such a resource of amazing people who help me make production magic.  Adam Sliwinski is really my fairy godfather. Or maybe my genie in a bottle.


Charlene continues her great work on Bothwell Cheese - a fantastic new red wine cheese label, a 75th Anniversary logo and some exciting promos for the fall.

Will try to keep this updated and add some photos from the 2 production projects.

I love my job.