HyperActive News

"Don't Play Games" - Motorcycle Ride for Dad Prostate Awareness TV PSA

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Every once in a while, a client arrives on our doorstep with a unique need: in this case, Motorcycle Ride For Dad needed to increase general awareness of prostate cancer and the need for men to get their prostate checked. While their "ride events" in 25 cities raise a ton of money (over $5m to date) they still feel there is a need for the balance of the year to work on public education. TV spot, radio spot, and some help with deployment and general brand marketing. Fine. No problem. That's what we do.

Then, the client uttered the famous words "I think it would be okay to have a little fun with this..." and, basically, it was game on. The results are fun and funny, designed not only to appeal to men and the significant women in their lives, but to appeal to radio and TV stations as well, for whom PSA's are often dreary and dull. We believe that "standout factor" equals airplay, especially when you're not writing a cheque to the broadcaster or the publication. And so this campaign, from all early signs, is destined to do well because of the fact that it doesn't take itself too seriously, has strong production values, and still has a strong core message - "Get serious... get going... get your prostate checked."

Mike - Nov.20/09

HyperActive on location - Mars!

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

In Canada, we're preoccupied with the weather - and at HyperActive we're fascinated by space. How do these two things fit together? Through NASA's Phoenix Mission, of course!

HyperActive is producing series of ten podcasts that will track the Canadian Space Agency's role in Phoenix as Canada provides two key mission components - a sophisticated weather station that will track Martian wind, temperature, and atmospheric pressure; and a LIDAR probe that will give scientists highly detailed readings of Mars' low-level atmosphere.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will land near Mars's northern polar cap on May 25. The Lander will contain a series of experiments provided by five different nations, including robotic equipment that will allow the Lander to capture, heat, and analyze ice and ore samples from the surface and from up to one metre below the surface.

The podcasts will provide an unprecedented opportunity for viewers to connect with Canada's important role in the Phoenix Mars Mission.

We look forward to sharing some truly "out of this world" footage and commentary from the team of Canadians involved in this historical mission.

CSA - My Body In Space, Video Podcasts 1-4

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

HyperActive is excited to be working once again with the Canadian Space Agency, this time on a series of podcast videos relating to the upcoming STS-118 mission and the participation of Canadian Astronaut Dr. Dave Williams.

Initial shooting took place in Houston, TX, and the podcasts will be deployed in a staged fashion by the Space Agency. The key audience for the series is students in grades 6, 7, 8, and 9, and the four-minute video podcasts feature lively graphics and b-roll as Dr. Williams explains topics related to preparing the human body for space travel and spacewalks.

Follow link below to view samples from CSA's STS-118 Podcasts...

CFIC - Retention Toolkit

Mon, 28 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

HyperActive is proud to announce the recent completion of a suite of communications tools for the Canadian Food Industry Council. This "Retention Toolkit" focuses on the industry's need to renew its human resources and promote the importance and vitality of the food industry, which employs 570,000 Canadians. Destined for distribution Canada-wide, the bilingual Toolkit includes videos for new hires and for leaders and managers, a series of dynamic posters, a brochure, and other ancillary materials.

Words of Wisdom

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Inspiration is a funny thing: something that inspires one person might not necessarily inspire someone else. In marketing, you have to inspire your audience. As everyone at HyperActive is so creative, I have been inspired many times in the past two weeks. Mike, a writer, comes into my 'office' sometimes, to entertain me with his words of wisdom- his sermons. One such sermon especially, struck a chord in my heart. Mike grew up in a world where being book smart was valued more than being creative. He went through all the growing pains and problems that creative people, who are more in tune with their feelings than most people have. "Creative people," he said "feel their emotions more. When we feel happy, we're really happy, but our lows are really low."

Those simple words of wisdom left a mark on me. It was as if he had just explained my whole life! After that little sermon I started to see the world in a whole different perspective. Slowly, I'm coming around to seeing things the way the guys at HyperActive do; they see the emotions that they can put into ideas or objects that will capture and inspire their audience. That is what makes the difference between capturing an audience's attention and being just noise in the background.

I got inspired.

Now, I'm making my own commercial, about Glebe's Co-Op program. I know that in order to do that, I have to capture the true emotions and intensity of Co-Op. So, I've been talking to people, doing my own market research, finding out what they like about Co-Op, their fears, challenges and how they see things. Hopefully this will give me a better perspective; hopefully I will be able to learn from them to be able to translate all that emotion into a short 30-second clip. I want to capture my audience. I want them to be amazed! I want them to feel what I feel and be inspired- just like me.

Some things you can't learn in a classroom

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Some things you can't learn in a classroom. For my grade eleven year, I wanted get away from the cold brick building that is Glebe Collegiate, with its dusty hallways and by-the-book teachers, and go "hands-on". I wanted to take co-op.

For the uninitiated, co-op is short for Cooperative Education, a program that places students in a workplace of their choice for half a day, every day, for 16 weeks, to aid them in choosing their career path. Choosing that workplace can be tough because if you were to ask any 17 year-old like me what they want to do when they grow up, most would have no clue.

I was told to stick to my strengths, writing, media and a love for commercials and ads. My search for a placement was hard, I wanted to be somewhere fun, cool, where people embrace ideas and watch them run. So, I was elated when I came upon HyperActive's listing in the co-op placement database. After some sweet-talking by my teacher and a great interview, I had my placement.

My first day I mostly observed, slightly overwhelmed by what is a whole new world to me. I saw film being digitized, I watched as clips were pared down to make them just right and I met all the guys. Being a bit of a tomboy myself, being in an all guy atmosphere didn't faze me. On my second day, they put me right to work, collecting data from surveys of grocery workers. It was long, somewhat dull work but I thought to myself that someone had to do it! So collect data I did, for the rest of the week I typed out every single potentially meaningful comment on each survey, 111 of them to be exact. After about, 40 or 50 of them, I started to see trends. I started to think about the types of people who would answer these surveys, either managers or employees, depending on the survey. Everyone had their own opinion, how they could've made the videos or posters better- that's when all the notes that I took in marketing class about market research finally came to life.

That's also when I realized that the old cliche is true- life is what you make of it, that I should take every opportunity to learn and be creative, and that's exactly what I plan to do with my fifteen remaining weeks here at HyperActive.

CANJAC Award Presented to Yellow House

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

When Junior Achievement asked us to sponsor 30 of their 180 participants in an international conference of teens with enormous potential as future business leaders, we wondered about it. After all, we're not a corporate monolith... we haven't changed the world... have we?

But when thirty high achieving kids from all parts of the world descended onto our little haven (of course we had to borrow chairs from every one of our business neighbours), it was immediately clear that we were going to learn something, and that we'd have an opportunity to talk about business production process from a particularly "HyperActive" point of view.

They came ready to play: in suits and ties from Ireland, Africa, Eastern Europe, and other parts of the world. And they brought their "A" game - with piercing questions about how we determine margins; how we control quality and standards in a business that is driven by creativity; how we manage balancing client vision with our own vision as a supplier. Impressive.

And so we talked about Human Resources from our point of view - how the wide range of characteristics of our people come together to form this team - and realized that we were talking about the best practice of integrating personnel on a strengths basis.

And we talked about how we listen to our clients and steadfastly use a process model rather than a "big idea" model - and realized that we were describing an inclusive product development best practice.

And we talked about how we have fun, wear shorts to work in the summer (but keep slacks and a jacket on a hook on our office doors JUST IN CASE). About how we have formed a hockey "cartel" of people in our industry, and play bi-weekly, about how we take time for our kids and family events and make up the time by working evenings, weekends, holidays - and found out that we were describing a corporate culture model that thousands of companies strive for and can't create.

So... these 30 great kids, through the Junior Achievement Conference, reminded us that it's good to revisit how you do business by explaining it, formally and informally, and by including your entire team in the process.

By the way, "Yellow House" - our group of 30 Junior Achievers - was the overall winner, presenting the most excellent business case based on the conference theme "Achieving Your Vision". Our Yellow House managed to beat out 5 other teams which had been hosed at Cognos, CIBC, Chipworks, The Royal Canadian Mint and TELUS.

We highly recommend doing this kind of thing - even if you don't have the chairs. These kids were incredible. For more information - Click Here

Sponsors of the event included CIBC, Chipworks, Cognos, HyperActive Productions, The Ottawa Citizen, The Royal Canadian Mint, TELUS, Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, Enbridge, Lone Star Texas Grill, Dave Smith of The Place Next Door & Nate's, Laidlaw Education Services and inmedia Public Relations.

MikeBlog: Meanwhile in Africa...

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The AIDS Summit in Toronto calls out to us as a positive thing for a bunch of reasons. In this business you lose too many gay friends to HIV/AIDS - beautiful, talented friends, and it's not fair. But the conference also reminds us that in October 2004, we had the unique honour of filming a community schools program in rural Zambia on behalf of CARE Canada. We shot for six days, moving between one program west of Lusaka and another in the Mphande Hills.

We learned a lot about the devastation of HIV/AIDS. We saw child-led families, grandparents overburdened with eight, ten children to care for. People in Zambia are dying from simply loving each other like they have for millennia. Dying because they don't have access to basic education and health information, delivered with dignity and without strings attached.

And almost two years later, we feel a profound longing to return, and a huge amount of affection for the beauty of the Zambian people.

Two key lessons. Lesson One - kids just want to have fun.

One day we set up along the side of a road outside Lusaka where people living in the hulks of burned-out trucks pound white quartz into gravel-sized pieces and sell it by the bag for miniscule amounts of money. This scene was a stark reminder of social imbalance and poverty and what can happen when people don't have access to education. However, within seconds of setting up the camera, a group of about twenty kids appeared around the corner of one of the trucks, perhaps fifty feet away. They pointed, they posed, they waved, and within thirty seconds of rolling tape, one kid, perhaps four years old, turned around and mooned the crew. A celebration of the universal spirit of kids... hacking around.

Lesson Two - What you see is not what is there.

Within a half-hour of Lusaka, you are in the Africa that has existed for thousands of years. In October, it is dry, dusty, and seems desolate - no rain since March, and still some time away from the next rainy season. Simple adobe compounds seem heartbreakingly poor... until you began to notice how spic and span everything is. Until you see the patterns in the dirt from the work of matchstick brooms wielded by house-proud people. Until you are given a tour by an elder. If you really look, you can see that the dry, cracked dirt area has a pattern to it, and is actually a maize garden lying dormant in the Zambian version of winter. Everything has a place, a reason, a purpose. Once you learn that, it's beautiful in its simplicity.

We must restore AIDS/HIV to the public consciousness. And we must help Africa. Take a minute. Watch this Care Connects Video on the effect of AIDS in Zambia. Then visit a site like CARE or one of the others. Invest what you'd spend on a moderate dinner out for two people. And plan a trip to Africa - it will change you.

MikeBlog: Keep Your Forks, There's Pie!!!

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Times are tight, money is scarce, and in times like these, the most old-fashioned practical advice has an eerie prescience about it. "Keep your forks, there's pie!" is at once a message of hope... and a cautionary message about being practical and logical.

Most of us can still play back the most memorable television and radio campaigns we've seen or heard over the last decade or more. And some of us wonder why there is a tendency to abandon perfectly good campaigns - especially public service campaigns - in favour of renewed creative.

Me too.

While the introduction of new creative makes sense in the context of evolving branding and changing product lines, good institutional campaigns that reinforce the essence of your brand can and should have a life of five years or more.

That's why we recommend to many of our non-profit clients that resending older material out on the same tapes/CD's as newer material can be a good thing: it potentially creates an inventory of both product- or campaign-specific material AND strong brand reinforcement material as well on the broadcaster's or publisher's shelves. Oh yeah... you've already paid for the creative and production for the older stuff too!

When you send out material that isn't absolutely date-sensitive, tell the broadcaster it can be used for 24 months or more. We have spots running for Help the Aged that were produced in 1998, and continue to get regular airplay over eight years later.

Good creative, good production quality, and messages that don't go out of date, reinforced with new material that still relates to the overall brand.

That's the recipe for long-lasting PSA pie.

HyperNews: Helping Teachers Understand Autism

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Our commitment to children and community drives a significant amount of the work we do, and so we are very pleased that HyperActive has been engaged by the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Autism Spectrum Disorders School Support program to produce an orientation and sensitization video for primary and secondary school teachers. The two-language video will help teachers and Educational Assistants more successfully integrate ASD children into their classrooms. The video features heartfelt commentary and helpful hints from teachers in Eastern Ontario who are involved with these very special children. The video will also feature on-camera talent in a "created environment", using animation and special effects to convey the world of autism spectrum disorder children.

HyperNews: Canada Career Consortium

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

We have just launched a series of six English and six French TV spots promoting jobs in sectors supported by Canada's sector councils, working with the Canada Career Consortium: with a limited budget, we used a cool combination of live-action Ultimatte and animation with vivid colours and soundtrack. The result stands up beautifully in competition with other national campaigns.

MikeBlog: To Pay or Not to Pay

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The predominant group of HyperActive clients (likely 60%) is composed of Canada's non-profit and charitable organizations - groups like CARE Canada, United Way of Canada/Centraide Canada, Volunteer Canada, the Children's Wish Foundation, and others.

Our job is to be the social marketing firm that allows these organizations to connect with people in positive ways, whether the call to action be one for funding, for volunteers, for the purposes of changing behaviour (e.g. our work on bullying, fatherhood, family violence, etc.), or simply to increase awareness of the organizations across a wide range of stakeholder groups.

And so advertising - in traditional and non-traditional forms - comes into play quite often as part of the marketing matrix for these clients. And, quite understandably, the lion's share of these organizations have the tiniest of budgets for the critically important task of connecting their work to Canadians.

Understandably? Sure. I've often said that the catering bill for a 35mm beer commercial shoot would pay a full-time staff position in most voluntary organizations. And I have encountered folks in the voluntary sector who have paid millions of dollars in paid buys in addition to the money they fork out for strategy, creative development, production, and post. Canada's voluntary sector is underfunded, and salaries among the staff of this sector are generally way lower than private sector or government counterparts. Almost invariably, people in the sector do what they do for less dough because they are passionate about their work, and because they know the work must get done. What little money there is is generally spread thinly across the normal operating costs of these organizations.

Now - contemporary marketing and branding wisdom says that the days of free placement and PSA campaigns are over for three reasons:
- Because broadcasters and publishers simply "don't do that any more";
- Because non-paid ads invariably wind up "buried" in either the back pages of publications or at times of day when viewers and listeners are noticeably absent;
- Because "non-paid campaigns are impossible to track".

Nonsense.

Let's look at these things one at a time.

- Because broadcasters and publishers simply "don't do that any more";

I've never believed this and I never will, for practical reasons and philosophical reasons as well. Fact is, material often arrives late for publication deadlines or for airtimes, leaving the broadcaster or publisher faced with a hole where inventory was supposed to go. If non-profit material is available, it solves that practical issue. And in terms of philosophy, there are two important elements at play here: the desire of the broadcaster or publisher to be perceived as a good corporate citizen; and the predisposition toward good causes of individuals who make decisions (layout and production artists, commercial schedulers, and the guy in Master Control).

Over a decade ago, we helped Friends of the Earth get a $5,000 grant from a fund that Rogers offered to non-profits for visual communications. We developed a TV PSA about ozone depletion, and it received an extraordinary amount of airplay over about a two-year period, including placement in the Stanley Cup - all the way to the finals - on Hockey Night in Canada.

Was the creative good? We think so. Was the cause important? We think so. But two things likely happened. 1) Some people simply took a liking to that little spot, its cause, its messaging, and 2) Somebody else - some major advertiser who had bought some very heavy availabilities - pulled out for some reason or other, creating the opportunity.

About two years ago, we decided to push the concept with print. We developed a series of print ads for Children's Wish Foundation, created CDs with a variety of sizes and in a variety of formats including both black and white and colour, and sent the CDs to about 150 publications across the country, including major dailies and major magazines. Within a few weeks, "Only Two More Needles 'Til My Wish" began to appear with regularity in newspapers from coast to coast, and got placement in magazines like Reader's Digest and others as well. Good cause... good creative... and the first major colour magazine full-page "paid" for the creative and the distribution.

- Because non-paid ads invariably wind up "buried" in either the back pages of publications or at times of day when viewers and listeners are noticeably absent;

Not true. In our experience, great creative gets equally great placement. Do you get adjacency to national newscasts? Play during "American Idol" or "Survivor"? Not often. But sometimes you do, particularly if the creative is, in fact, as good as the rest of the spots in a given commercial break cluster.

And when you consider the "street value" of these decent placements, it doesn't take long at all to offset production costs... but that's another blog entry.

- Because "non-paid campaigns are impossible to track".

This isn't true at all. A proper "shepherding process" creates the personal link to the people who make decisions about what goes on air or in print, and that personal link can substantially increase both the chances of getting through AND getting specific feedback about the when, the where, and the how many. We have much more detail on this, and I'd love a call or an email to discuss the matter.

Bottom line: free placement recreates a very special bond between causes and media in which media become partners in advancing the work of the voluntary sector. We need each other... it's a relationship that can be built, sustained, celebrated... and the money that might otherwise go into paid advertising can do a hell of a lot more when put back into the hands of the organizations who are doing all this good work.

Thanks
Mike Hicks

HyperNews: Childrens Wish Foundation of Canada

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

"Our Story" is a narrative-style TV PSA in which real kids talk about the real issues of living with high-risk, life-threatening illnesses, and how Children's Wish Foundation of Canada can make a difference in their lives.

HyperNews: Department of National Defense

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

We are currently in production of a series of fourteen recruitment videos for Army, Navy, and Air Force careers: produced and posted in 1080i High Definition. Each video features a different Forces personnel member acting as host and narrator, describing the intricacies of trades as varied as Sonar Operator and Military Pharmacist.

HyperNews: Department of Justice

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:00:00 -0400

We have just put the finishing touches on a video that celebrates the relationship between youth and some very special police officers from coast to coast.

Together, they are creating successful programs that keep kids out of "the system" and create new opportunities for them.

HyperNews: FINTRAC

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0500

This new graphics-based video explains how FINTRAC fights money laundering and financing of terrorist activity through its system of data analysis, and shows how people in a variety of occupations can be part of this important work.

HyperNews: CAREconnects.ca, CARE Canada

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Sometimes, a project takes on a life of its own, and sweeps you up emotionally in the process. Our previous relationship with CARE Canada had involved development of a campaign during the Iraq crisis, but the CareConnects project, a web-driven fundraising campaign, brought us physically in touch with the heart-rending toll that AIDS has taken on the families of Zambia - indeed all of Africa.

Working with CTV's Ravi Baichwal and his wife Sonja Nordahl , we developed and shot an HD documentary and 3 television public service announcements in the region surrounding Lusaka, Zambia. The focus was on a growing community school movement that is providing hope and tools for the fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS for a new generation of African children through education.

The 45-degree heat, long shooting days, and the incredible energy and grace of the children got into our system... and has stayed there ever since. Take our advice: Visit careconnects.ca and become part of this amazing project.

www.careconnects.ca

HyperNews: Stock Collection Zambia

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400

We have recently returned from two safaris in Zambia and from a visit to Victoria Falls, during which we captured stunning original HD footage of the richness of African wildlife.