Volunteer Opportunity – Event Coordination Event: Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards

Date/Time: Monday, April 23rd 10:30am – 6pm (required) Sunday, April 22nd 2pm – 5pm (if available)

Elettra Communications is looking for student volunteers to assist with Vancouver’s premier restaurant industry event. This opportunity will appeal to students who have an interest in public relations, publishing, marketing, or event management.

Now its 23rd year, Vancouver magazine’s Restaurant Awards event is the biggest of its kind in North America. Twenty of the city’s top food critics form the judging panel and vote on the best dining experience in more than 40 categories. The event itself includes a reception and awards show. The annual extravaganza welcomes more than 800 restaurateurs, chefs, sommeliers, suppliers, and food and wine critics.

Elettra Communications is the producer of Vancouver magazine’s Restaurant Awards. Elettra is a public relations firm that specializes in event management, media relations, and marketing consulting. www.elettra.ca

Duties: Volunteers will assist with a range of activities including: • Event set up • Gift bag assembly and distribution • Guest check-in • Awards presenting/backstage coordination • Coat check Benefit to you: • Event coordination experience. • Exposure to the behind-the-scenes workings of a large event. • Opportunity to build contacts in the PR, marketing, and publishing industries. • Lunch will be provided.

Dress code: All black. No jeans; no running shoes/sneakers.

How to apply: If you would like to volunteer for this opportunity, please contact gwen@elettra.ca In your email please provide a brief introduction of yourself, and include a description of your current course of study and your contact information.

It's finally here... Boink Day! Citytv's Breakfast Television spent the morning at the Art Gallery with the gang from Spring Advertising.

If you want to do some good for the Food Bank, stop by the Art Gallery today from 7am-7pm and hop on a pogo stick. Spring will donate ten cents for each time you boink.

Thanks to Citytv's Dawn Chubai for her intrepid boinking. I think you'll agree, she has pretty great form!

UPDATE: Here's a video from this morning's broadcast.

Spring Advertising's Boink Day event is coming... Boink Day is a public pogo challenge that raises funds for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society, while also celebrating the first day of spring (can't WAIT for that to arrive!). For every pogo bounce performed by a member of the public, Spring will donate 10 cents to the Food Bank.

Date: Tuesday, March 20, 7am-7pm

Location: Georgia Street side of the Vancouver Art Gallery

Bring your own pogo stick (does't everyone have one?) or use one supplied by Spring.

Twitter: @springad, #boinkday

Facebook: www.facebook.com/springad

Concord National, a leading Canadian packaged good sales and marketing company, has selected Elettra Communications as the public relations agency for its confection business. Elettra will represent Jelly Belly, Guylian Chocolate, and Anthon Berg. “Our confection brands have solid international reputations, but we were looking for a PR agency to help us build their profiles in Canada,” says Tina Ryan, Senior National Brand Manager, Concord National. “Elettra Communications has the right mix of experience and inventive thinking to help us move Jelly Belly, Guylian, and Anthon Berg forward.”

Elettra was awarded the business based on its previous success helping Concord National launch Tim Tam cookies in Canada. For its confection business, Concord has charged Elettra with raising brand awareness, generating ongoing buzz, and differentiating the brands from competitors.

Concord’s brands are among the world’s most well-known confections. Jelly Belly, the original gourmet jelly bean, is beloved for its wide variety of authentic and true to life flavours. Guylian, the world’s favourite Belgian chocolate, is known for its seashell shapes with handmade praliné centres. Anthon Berg is known for its miniature, dark chocolate bottles filled with fine liqueurs and spirits.

Jennifer HornMedia in Canada January 11, 2012

Apparently, the adage of “less is more” really speaks to the execs at Canadian Direct Insurance.

Therein lies the reason behind the brand jumping on the idea of having the advertising pitch process portrayed in a series of new commercials for its simple, to-the-point tagline of “Say Yes To Savings.”

In three new spots, the ad guys at Noise (a Vancouver-based agency that handled both the media and creative) make fun of themselves and the industry they work in by portraying what turns out to be a disaster pitch. While the two creatives work their hearts out to present a flashy campaign, the insurance exec doesn’t budge, requesting that they “just keep it simple” and to show how the insurance company can help people save money. The ask falls on deaf ears with the ad men churning out ideas of a cyborg and a rollerblading kitten with chiseled abs as its next spokesperson.

The spots are in fact a play on a real-life situation that happened a year ago, when the president of the company jokingly asked a Noise creative and account director what kind of “out-there” idea they were going to pitch next, Trevor Carr, president and CEO, Noise tells MiC.

Read Media in Canada's full story here.

Jonathan PaulStimulant January 11, 2012

Canadian Direct Insurance is keeping it simple with its latest campaign, care of Vancouver-based Noise. It wants consumers to know, simply put, that it saves people money and that’s a message that doesn’t require crazy artwork to convey in commercials…or does it?

Watch the spots and read the full creative credits on Stimulant online.

Eve LazarusJanuary 10, 2012 Marketing Magazine

Michael Milardo, creative director at Noise Digital, was waiting to unveil a presentation to client Canadian Direct Insurance when its chairman walked by and asked why they couldn’t just say the company saved people money instead of wrecking cash with flame throwers, chainsaws and graters (i.e. the concept of the last campaign).

The idea became the basis of three television ads that launched this month in a campaign called “Say yes to savings.”

Read the rest of Marketing magazine's story here.

Meetingmax recently announced that it had signed an agreement with Oklahoma City to manage their online housing needs. Read the full release here.

JOEY Restaurants' Executive Chef Chris Mills was recently on Urban Rush making pumpkin spice doughnuts and the new Triple Threat specialty coffee. You can watch the full clip here.

And if you are interested in making them at home. Here is the recipe:

Wet Ingredients

1 cup Pumpkin puree

½ cup Buttermilk

1/3 cup Sugar

2 each Eggs

¼ cup Brown sugar

¼ cup Butter, melted

Dry Ingredients

1 ½ cups Flour, all purpose

1 tbs. Baking powder

1 tbs Pumpkin spice (4 cin. 4 clove, 2 all, 2 nut meg)

1 tsp. Salt

½ t Baking soda

Method:

Combine wet ingredients in a stainless steel bowl

Sift dry ingredients.

Add wet to the dry ingredients and mixing as little as possible. Until there are no lumps.

Refrigerate for up to 12 hours.

To fry – use a home deep fryer or prepare a stove top pot of oil heated to 350F using a deep-fry or candy thermometer to measure the temperature. Gently drop marble size pieces of the dough into the fryer being careful not to splash hot oil. The doughnuts take about 2½ minutes. You can turn them using a slotted spoon or chopsticks. Once cooked transfer them to a paper towel lined plate or tray to drain. Verify that the center of dough is cooked through and adjust timing accordingly.

Once the doughnuts have a chance to cool – toss them in the cinnamon sugar to coat and serve with a coffee cup of the dulce de leche, Enjoy!

Cinnamon Sugar

1 cup Sugar

1 tbs. Cinnamon, ground

Combine the ingredients and reserve for the doughnuts.

Coffee Dulce de Leche

1½ cups Cream

¾ cup Brown sugar

¼ cup Butter

¼ t Vanilla Extract

4 g Instant coffee, mixed with just enough water to dissolve

Method:

Reduce cream, brown sugar and butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan by 1/3rd.

Allow the sauce to cool then add the vanilla and instant coffee

Reserve until the doughnuts are done.

Today's Vancouver Sun featured a piece on how Jeff Fuller is building the leadership team at JOEY Restaurant Group. Joey Restaurant CEO building the management ranks.

By Denise Deveau

Jeff Fuller has been grooming top management talent since he founded Joey Restaurant Group in 1992. With 25 restaurants in his portfolio and counting, he is a firm believer that a deep management team is essential to growth.

When he started, he spent a lot of time living out of a suitcase and travelling between locations, he says. As the business grew, he soon realized the importance of being ``well stocked'' with management talent.

``When you have big growth, it's hard to catch your breath,'' he says. ``But if you don't get caught up, that's a kiss of death. I believe in the old cliche, don't outgrow your people. I knew we had to get focused on producing a management team ahead of opening new restaurants.''

The management recruitment continues.

``It's an enabler for everything else,'' he says. ``I'm really big on meritocracy and creating an infrastructure that isolates top management potential as employees progress through the system.''

Fuller's approach has won accolades from a number of quarters. The company's entire management team is hired almost exclusively from within its ranks. In fact, every restaurant manager began as a chef or server.

``As they progress they get more responsibility and challenges. And as they get deeper into the process, some move faster than others,'' he explains. Managers that reach a certain level can also take part in the company's share purchase plan.

Fuller's hiring philosophy might be unusual but it works, he says. ``I tell managers to hire someone who can eventually replace you. That will put pressure on you to move up because they're that good.''

While Fuller plans to stick around for awhile, he's also proud to say: ``I can think of three or four executives that are already capable of filling my shoes.''

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Jaeger Mah, the man who's spending 80 days and nights living at YVR, caught up with the YVR School Tour Program last week.

Watch his video here.

This week, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is officially launching its 2011 School Tour Program, The Future Lands Here. Over the next two months, thousands of Grade Five students from Metro Vancouver will visit YVR for a tour full of activities, information, and fun. Elettra Communications' Marcus Tan, Wyanne Wong, and Annalisa Pareja are the YVR School Tour Guides. Our Tour Guides hail from SFU's Communications Co-op Program and we're delighted to have them on board. Read their bios on the YVR Connections blog.

Congratulations to the JOEY Restaurant Group on their recent International Prism Award win. The award recognizes organizations that have profited through their commitment to coaching as a leadership strategy. From the news release: The Canadian-based Joey Restaurant Group began a coaching initiative with the strategic selection of the most senior leaders in their organization, so they could be coached and be trained as internal coaches while running their restaurant regions. In the last 30 months, they experienced more than 30 percent revenue growth, reduced turnover, and made the Top 100 employers list for the first time. JOEY calculates a 682 percent return on investment from their coaching initiative.

Past winners of the ICF International Prism Award include: Genetch, TINE Group, Solaglas Windowcare, ibm.com North America, SYSCO, the BBC, MCI, University of Texas at Dallas, Verizon Business, IBM, and NASA.

Read the full news release from The International Coach Federation here.