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Behind The Brand: Best Buy

Elliott Chun

Name: Elliott Chun

Position: Communications Manager

Education: Visual Arts and Sociology, Western University; Public Relations, Humber College

Professional role model: Richard Branson. He’s a tremendous leader, showman and will one day take us up to space.

Favourite Best Buy purchase: My Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone. I never leave home without it and would certainly be lost without it.

In 140 characters or less, what is your favourite part of your job?

Working with an extremely talented group of people, publicizing everything Best Buy, including our vendors, community work and services.

What are your daily responsibilities as a Communications Manager?

I’m constantly discovering creative ways with my teams to promote and story-tell the fantastic things Best Buy is achieving in Canada. I also protect our brand and build campaigns to engage media and customers while identifying and building a community of advocates.

What are the perks of working at Best Buy?

There are too many to list! First off, the biggest perk is working with incredible people. I genuinely enjoy working regularly with a talented group of people. This includes the gifted team at our head offices in Burnaby, our stores, agency and vendor partners and our senior leadership teams. Secondly, as a guy who naturally loves tech and uses it to simplify and enhance my life, the staff discount comes in handy. Additionally, when I’m at the head office, I always appreciate having access to the subsidized, modern gym, as well as the B.C. trails, which are liberating when heading out on an after-work run. Lastly, the food services in our common areas at the head office and regional offices are a nice perk too.

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Instagram Inspiration: Happy New Year

Many top brands were eager to help consumers ring in the new year. Overall, I noticed that brands posted more GIFs and short videos this year, which signals progress. Last year’s round up included only three posts and this year’s list includes three categories to help marketers with content development on Instagram.

I hope you’ll bookmark this for future reference and maybe even print it in colour to discuss at your next brainstorm meeting!

Inspiration for Small Businesses

While evaluating posts in my feed, I looked for simple posts that small business owners can learn from and treat as templates for future holiday posts. With the right stock photo and some text overlay in a program like Adobe Photoshop, a post that looks like this one from Aroma is fairly easy to create.

Hot On The Street - Happy New Year - 2015 - Aroma - Instagram

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Talk Is Cheap 7

Hot On The Street - Sarah Prince and Martin Waxman

Martin Waxman

Introduction

Talk Is Cheap is an annual conference presented by the corporate communications and public relations students at Centennial College. Last year, I went with my friend Rachel who has a CPG client-side marketing role. It was helpful to compare notes because she found the digital insights interesting and I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about traditional media relations. This year, I was excited to go again. I had a chance to hear different speakers, see familiar faces and extract practical tips.

Location

Centennial College – Story Arts Centre @ Pape Ave & Mortimer Ave

Outfit

Ann Taylor LOFT black jacket, Roots X Douglas Coupland ‘I Miss My Pre-Internet Brain’ ironic graphic t-shirt, Mavi skinny jeans, Sam Edelman black suede boots

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Promotions Around Downtown Toronto

Yonge and Dundas Square is a popular destination in downtown Toronto and therefore a prime location for companies that want to raise brand awareness among a large audience of pedestrians. No matter how often I shop at the Toronto Eaton Centre, I seem to miss some of the most exciting experiential marketing stunts. To compensate, I rely on YouTube and industry publications to get my fix and find out what’s happening.

Thanks to YouTube pre-roll, I discovered two cool campaigns that were executed recently by Koodo and Keurig. The alliteration of these brand names is unintentional, but noted.

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Toys “R” Us Celebrates 30 Years Of Fun

Hot On The Street - Toys R Us 30th Anniversary logo

In case it wasn’t clear when I blogged about going back to Disney World, I’m proud to share that I’m a kid at heart. Toys “R” Us shares that sentiment and wants Canadians to share stories on social media about taking an oath to never grow up.

Where would the retail chain be if parents hit a certain age and decided to abandon their childhood fantasies and stop playing with toys for good?

To celebrate their 30th anniversary, Toys “R” Us is going all out. They’ve partnered with Transat Holidays, AIR MILES®, Lego and Mattel to offer Canadian shoppers major promotions and host exciting events for kids of all ages. Visit www.toysrus.ca/events for more details.

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