SmartCity Blog

Why You Should Take the #myHFXpledge

This weekend, the Greater Halifax Partnership joined the 100in1Day Halifax to bring the #myHFXpledge to the community. 100in1Day Halifax is a citizen driven festival to unite people across the city to make Halifax a better place by creating acts of urban change known as “interventions”. These interventions aim to raise awareness of urban and social issues, inspire ideas, and motivate us to consider new approaches to issues in Halifax.

From collecting food for the food bank, to writing post cards with ideas on how to improve the city, to community clean-ups and guerilla gardening, 100in1Day shows that when the community comes together, great ideas and action happens.

This is exactly what the #myHFXpledge is all about. With nearly 275 community members of all ages and backgrounds having already taken the Pledge, the movement is growing.

There are so many champions for the city already working to share good news and optimism across the city. The #myHFXpledge helps to celebrate and connect these champions to create real, positive change in Halifax.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is the #MyHfxPledge?

#myHFXpledge is a commitment to share your love for Halifax and champion our city near and far. Those who take the pledge join a growing movement of people, businesses and organizations across Halifax who believe in dreaming big, taking risks, and experimenting together to create a more innovative and successful Halifax.

By taking the #myHFXpledge you are joining a movement of people championing Halifax and taking action to improve our city. As part of this movement you will have the opportunity to take part in collaborative cafes and Halifax Innovation Ecosystem groups and projects. Plus, you’ll receive exciting news about Halifax to share with your friends, family, and networks.

Four reasons why should you take the pledge

1. You love Halifax and want to share your positive, win-win attitude.
2. You’re ready for change! You’re ready to create real, lasting change in our community.
3. You want to work with others in Halifax on common social and economic goals to help Halifax grow and thrive.
4. You celebrate success and are ready to be a champion for this city.

How do I make #myHFXpledge?

Take the #myHFXpledge by simply clicking on the button below.

Already Made Your Pledge?

Here are some next steps you can take to live the pledge:

1. Nominate others to take the pledge. Be sure to let your friends, family and other connections know about the pledge and challenge them to make their commitment too. You can share it on social media with a message like:

 I took the #myHFXpledge to help #Halifax succeed. Now I nominate you

(tag people here) http://ht.ly/wSRan

 

         2. Start living the pledge! At home, work and in your community take action on your own and with others to create a more confident, welcoming, and innovative Halifax.

         3. Stay tuned for updates on the Halifax Innovation Ecosystem, a community-driven network of people in Halifax working together on projects to improve our city.

 

Author:

 

Sarah Beatty joined the Partnership in 2014 and is a whole-hearted champion of the city. As communication co-ordinator she works to help share and celebrate the stories of Halifax’s success. 

You can reach Sarah at sbeatty@greaterhalifax.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Halifax’s Brand is Your Business

How do you define Halifax?

Is it opening the doors of your local business only to see friendly, familiar faces waiting outside? Is it skating at the Emera Oval in the winter or jogging by the waterfront in the spring? Is it spending Friday night at the Mooseheads game with thousands of other Halifax-loving fans? Is it taking visiting family and friends to see the beautiful sights of Peggy’s Cove? Maybe it’s the overall feel of the city – a vibrant place rich in history, opportunity, and growth.

For me, Halifax is a city where both business and people can thrive. It’s uniquely built not only for residents, but for a thriving economy as well. Whether it’s hiring a recent university graduate, expanding an existing business or starting a new one, Halifax has much to celebrate in our present and for our future.

As leaders in our community, it’s your business to get involved in rebranding Halifax. The Greater Halifax Partnership is partnering with Halifax Regional Municipality to give our residents, businesses, post-secondary institutions and not-for-profit sector the opportunity to share their thoughts on our regional identity, both on and offline. We are asking you, the business community, to define our remarkable region. We would like to hear your thoughts on what makes Halifax a great place to live, work, invest and do business.

The voice of the business community is a key component to bettering the city that we call home. By engaging with the rebrand project, we are working toward better positioning ourselves as the city we have all been working so hard create. Together we can create a compelling and unique international brand – one of our city’s five economic development goals.

You can participate one-on-one at public engagement sessions, on the street, and at community hubs such as farmers markets. The project is also collecting input online via the website DefineHalifaxRegion.com, and several social media channels, including Twitter, @DefineHFX, Facebook, Instagram and Google+. Your feedback will be the basis of a brand recommendation presented to  Halifax Regional Council in spring 2014.

So, what sets us apart from other communities? If you’re new to Halifax, what brought you here and why do you stay? What’s your favourite part about living and doing business here? Take a moment to remember all that Halifax has to offer.

Give it a try – Tweet @DefineHFX about what living in the Halifax region means to you.

Business Owners, Entrepreneurs, SMEs, Corporations – we want to hear from you! On January 30^th or February 6^th, please join myself, Fred Morley and the Greater Halifax Partnership for a networking event to share your thoughts on defining the Halifax region. For more information and to RSVP, visit http://goo.gl/0Vheqm

Author: 

Paul Kent is the President and CEO of the Greater Halifax Partnership. Paul has over 30 years of experience at executive and senior management levels, in both the public and private sectors. 

 

 

GIS Gives Businesses a Competitive Edge

GIS intelligence about customers, business locations and socioeconomic trends helps companies gain a competitive edge

 

Imagine knowing before launching a marketing campaign in a new neighbourhood that the profile of your customer is already there. Or being able to gain a first mover advantage by selecting a new business location in an up-and-coming neighbourhood based on the socioeconomic trends before your competition moves in driving up real estate values.

As business evolves, getting an edge in the marketplace can be very advantageous. Today, with new technologies popping up and data becoming more readily available, businesses can take advantage of both data and technology to gather valuable intelligence about their customers, business locations and socioeconomic trends.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) marries the art of cartography and strategic decision making by utilizing geo-referenced data (data with location markers attached, e.g. postal code, county, or neighbourhood). This specialized data has been long underutilized in strategic planning and decision making, mostly due to its unavailability. However, this trend is reversing.  Most of today’s demographic and social media data that is being collected is geo referenced. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Microsoft are just a handful of companies that have realized the potential of these specialized data sets.

The days of business leaders using subjective techniques to map key target market characteristics to strategic plans are dwindling.  By utilizing GIS and the most up-to-date quantitative datasets, businesses can take the guess work out of identifying existing and potential customers as well as competitors. In addition, depending on company owned source data, trending, regression and other analysis can be combined with geo referenced public data to provide further insight into your customer base and competition.  

Within the next ten years - because of the ship building contract, the off shore oil and natural gas exploration and the Muskrat Falls project - many businesses will be vying to find their place in Halifax. It is our belief that the businesses which will truly succeed within this expanding marketplace will be the ones that are most familiar with the city and its population. Today in our great city of Halifax the municipal government has been kind enough to open their data sets for anybody who wants them. One of the greatest things about HRM’s data is that much of it is geo referenced. Geo-dem will take full advantage of this data not just in displaying it but also data mining it to explore the true potential of it. 

Analyzing things such as real estate prices, population density, and neighbourhood profiling and general services can be very valuable to businesses at any stage of growth. These are only a few examples in a vast range of options when it comes to business intelligence and Geographic Information Systems.

 

Author: Charles McIlveen

Charles McIlveen is the CEO of GEO-DEM, a Halifax-based consulting company specializing in providing clients with demographic analysis and information needed for effective strategic decision-making. For more information visit www.geo-dem.com.

Augmenting Reality in Halifax

By Samantha Lodge

There’s a reason this video series has SmartCity in the name. Halifax is home to innovative businesses and smart people. Recently, local interactive media company Ad Dispatch sat down with a big US department store and a comic book mogul to negotiate a major marketing deal.

Ad Dispatch takes products and images and connects a virtual experience to that image. It’s all about augmented reality and their augmented way of thinking has landed them the opportunity to create the Avenger marketing campaign. Working with Wal-Mart and Marvel, Ad Dispatch brings the Avenger characters to life. Smart? How about brilliant!

“If there’s an image I can create a virtual experience with it. So all of a sudden they create a whole other opportunity, a whole other product line based on augmented reality,” says Jonathan Burns, VP of Sales at Ad Dispatch.

SmartCity host Craig Layton gets his reality augmented when he meets with Matt Fegan, Director of Operations. Using a tablet computer a standard image of Captain America is transformed into a life size super imposed superhero standing next to Craig.

But that’s not the only way Ad Dispatch expands reality. From games that let you interact with the real world, to bringing a new level of reality to a t-shirt, this Halifax based digital media company keeps ideas fresh and new while bringing a whole new level to marketing and promotion.

President and CEO, Nathan Kroll says it best. “Augmented reality means we add content, value or entertainment to the physical world and physical objects around us. We add value to not just the marketing of the product, but to the product itself.”

Ad Dispatch’s team has a strong tie to Halifax with at least one third of its team graduating from post secondary institutions in the city.

“We’ve assembled a world class team here of 3D artists that have been vetted and approved by Pixar and Disney and Marvel, and they love the stuff that we’re building,” Kroll says about his team.

With local talent and a team that keeps growing the company is keeping up with the opportunities that keep coming its way. Big names like Home Depot and Disney are turning to Ad Dispatch to create a new kind of marketing campaign that focuses on driving customers to the retail level for this unique interactive experience.

Halifax’s digital media industry is growing and attracting international interest. Ad Dispatch is one of the companies getting Halifax’s name on the map and further proving that businesses can set up and stay in Halifax while creating business relationships all over the world. 

 You Might Also Like

• SmartCity Episode 1: Leveraging diversity is smart business
• SmartCity Episode 2: Networking and Collaboration Helps Halifax Grow
• Halifax's ICT, Gaming and Interactive Media sector 

Author: Samantha Lodge

Samantha is the Communications and Marketing Assistant at the Greater Halifax Partnership. She moved from Newfoundland to Halifax to attend university, and ended up rekindling her love of the east coast. She feels that being close to the ocean in a city with so much excitement is the ideal situation – Halifax’s talented music scene is an added bonus!

Powerful Storytelling Builds Brands

By Kim Mosher

At this past Thursday’s Building Our Future event, 250 business people gathered to hear the enigmatic Adman and CBC radio host Terry O’Reilly speak about the power of storytelling. A perfect topic as Terry lives and breathes powerful storytelling, and he’s got the successful advertising career to prove it.

In preparation for the event, it was no secret around the Partnership office that I was (more than) excited to see a favourite author of mine speak, and hearing him in person was fantastic.

Stories Add Value and Meaning to a Brand

Terry spoke about the importance of creating a captivating story to talk about a brand, as “stories add value and meaning. If you're not telling stories, you're missing out on creating enormous value in your marketing".

And, when stories are told well, they are re-told and shared by others, reinforcing the message and reaching a wider audience. In fact, great stories “let you boast about your company without ever boasting about your company,"  said Terry.

Every Business has a Story to Tell

How can storytelling impact your own business? Well, every business has a story, or multiple stories, to tell. Look around and take note: they might be lurking in unlikely places, as “every business has stories hidden in their walls – genuine, real stories,”  said Terry. Often times, businesses are pretty good at telling their story to external audiences, but it’s important to remember your internal audience – employees. They too need to hear the stories and internalize them as their own.

I think that everyone who attended walked away with some salient points that can be applied to their own businesses and enjoyed the enthralling advertising stories that Terry shared. Several brand stories were part of his presentation, including the well-known “I love NY” campaign that was born more than 30 years ago to promote Broadway (something that the wider audience today probably isn’t aware of). It was so powerful that it stuck, and because people could make it their own – think of the iconic image associated with New York – it became legend.

As Terry said, “A powerful story can enthral the mind, nestle into someone's heart and be told over and over again”.

For more information on Terry O’Reilly, please visit his website.

 
Author: Kimberley Mosher

Kimberley Mosher is the Partnership's Internet and Marketing Specialist. Kimberley has a background in marketing strategy and business consulting and specializes in planning, implementing and managing marketing campaigns.