Client

Show Choir Canada

Period

07.2010 – 05.2011

Client Bio

The official show choir organization in Canada for high school students. Show Choir Canada runs a yearly competition to find the best show choir in Canada and also has educational services for schools, teachers and students to improve their own talents.

Objective

To help solidify Show Choir Canada as the de facto authority on show choirs in Canada. To help launch, refine and distinguish SCC as the preeminent Glee showcase in the Canadian market. To create a corporate brand and a sub brand for a championship event, an educational/school brand and a brand for the Glee student community. Identity, website, promotional marketing materials, form design, etc., were all combined under the Show Choir Canada umbrella brand to solidify one juggernaut in the industry.

Noteworthy

The branding of a new entity is always difficult when the organization is just beginning to develop who they are and what they mean to the industry as a whole. Constantly morphing, depending on its success in certain areas of the industry, Show Choir Canada was learning about both itself and the sometimes quirky nature of its audience and potential sponsors. But after a considerable number of meetings and group research, four separate but coherent entities were formed to coalesce the vision of Show Choir Canada.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

Discover Card

Period

10.2009

Client Bio

Discover Financial Services is a Direct Banking and Payment Services company with one of the most recognized brands in U.S. financial services. Started un 1986 it has become one of the largest card issuers in the United States. The company operates the Discover card and offers personal and student loans, online savings accounts, certificates of deposit and money market accounts through its Discover Bank subsidiary.

Objective

To design a microsite template and administration portal for a Discover Card contest aimed at College students. The purpose of this site was to engage students to create personal images which would be used for ‘Student Discover Cards’. The contest was held to create a viral conversation about the brand and to ultimately drive student card registrations.

Noteworthy

Although this project was designed as a standalone site, it integrated with a Facebook application named ‘Graffiti’ that enabled students without a drawing or painting tool on their computer to use a simplified online version. A subdued design version and the finished competition can be found here Discover Card Contest.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

da Costa Talent Management

Period

04.2009 – 08.2009

Client Bio

The leading Canadian talent management agency for ‘triple-threat’ talent.

Objective

To further brand themselves via a successful launch online as the premiere triple threat talent agency in Toronto. To make it easier for industry clients to quickly peruse their many talented performers, to help save time and money with their representations and to better serve their agency client’s interests.

Noteworthy

Several years earlier Thirst had rebranded da Costa Talent and because of this we had a solid starting point for the web site. This talent agency has evolved into a mature agency and it needed to have a strong forum for its industry clients to peruse its agency clients (talent). When completed, notices of the launch were sent to every casting director in Canada, LA and NYC, every theatre and commercial production house in Canada and every industry contact that da Costa Talent had made in the past 10 years.

Feedback

I’ve received overwhelming praise on the website from both my clients and the industry just one day after launching. There is a clear consensus that the sites’ layout is simple to navigate and at the same time interesting and unique in comparison to other competing agencies. This is going to be a great tool to both showcase my clients and elevate our status in the industry. I could not of achieved this important milestone without your guidance and expertise.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

Cluster Call Planning (CCP)

Period

2002 – 2005

Client Bio

In 2002 Pfizer merged with Pharmacia to become the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.

Personal History

This story reads like a tale of David and Goliath. Thirst was asked to quote on this project but we were up against several large well-known companies but we knew why were asked to bid and we were glad we did. Because of internal restructuring, Pfizer needed help building this sales application from the ground up, they did not want to use any of their previous tools and thought that the right approach would be a fresh one. Thirst worked with various third-parties, large and small, to create this application that was basically a moving target because of the need for new functionality that crept into the scope on a weekly basis. This was an open source project based on the LAMP standard applications that worked within the confines of proprietary software. As a special point of interest the sales tool was an ‘AJAX’ application before AJAX was even defined or coined.

Objective

In response to the merger, Pfizer developed the CCP methodology to bring together its sales analytics and valuable first hand sales force knowledge. Pfizer turned to Thirst to transform this abstract methodology into a powerful sales targeting application for use by its 45,000 strong US sales force.

Noteworthy

An over 11% upsurge in sales directly resulted from this new application. CCP evolved from a rapid prototyping development process conducted over a 9 month period with four representative sales force teams. CCP was built using an open source toolset including Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP, AJAX and DHTML. CCP included a local data store that was automatically synchronized with targeting data from fellow teammates and Pfizer analytics. In 2005, Thirst’s CCP application was merged into Pfizer’s S3 flagship sales platform.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

EngageMe

Period

2006 – Present

Client Bio

Startup internet venture.

Personal History

This project was slowly evolved during countless brainstorming sessions on how to fix the inaccurate and problematic tracking of user surfing patterns that companies use now-a-days to dictate a user’s online interests. Most of you can probably recognize the issues everyone faces with examples of your own. For myself it was the fact that many companies were tracking my movements across the internet and defining me incorrectly on very narrow terms, and one day it culminated frustratingly on Amazon where I was served up an offer for yet another children’s book just because I bought one for my niece over one year earlier. For my business partner it was the fact that Google kept returning billions of results on such a wide array of topics because they feel that giving you everything is what you deserve but not necessarily what you really wanted.

Keyword advertising had just taken off and Google was not yet the beast it is today. Other search engines were trying to radically change the direction of what search meant and delivered but unfortunately the simple one page of ten results that Google put out in a couple of micro seconds seemed to gain popularity too fast for other companies to challenge. I would bet that now-a-days, since our connections are generally much faster, that what has seemingly become Google’s trademark results would be drastically better.

So how do you make them better? I would argue the answer is to know and understand the user’s interests better and to deliver information that is skewed towards those interests. But to do this you would have to ask the user about themselves and behave honestly and track them across the web. You would also have to make sure that you did not take in any ‘personally identifiable information’ as that isn’t a trustworthy action.

This is what EngageMe intends to be: open, honest and accurate.

Objective

To create a proof of concept for an interest profile toolset using open source tools (LAMP) based on an AJAX model. EngageMe enables a user-centric profile ownership model that leverages non-personally identifiable information (PII) for security reasons and fast adoption and interoperability with emerging open profile standards.

Noteworthy

An interest taxonomy was developed with over 700k+ interests. A bookmark analyzer allows users to create an initial profile that can then be shared across social networks. Advertisers using EngageMe can target users based on their interests rather than tracking.

Vendor

Thirst for EngageMe

Client

Marcus Leatherdale

Period

10.2001 – Present

Client Bio

Marcus Leatherdale is a Montreal-born photographer who has been exhibiting for more than 30 years in galleries and museum collections worldwide.

Personal History

This is one of my most enjoyable projects and I have made a great friend in Marcus. For me, there is no work better than that of helping out an artist, especially one as obviously talented as Marcus. It has always been a thrill to see the next unveiling of artwork and the evolution of the portfolio.

Objective

To enhance the site and make it more easily updateable.

Noteworthy

The old site was almost exclusively blocks of pictures and textual images… a nightmare to update. But it was important to the artist to keep the look and feel of the old site and that is what I did. Within a month, I completely cleaned up the entire site, tweaked the typography and added consistency throughout.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

Morbid Outlook

Period

08.2001 – 11.2001

Client Bio

The premier Gothic lifestyle online magazine portal.

Personal History

There are markets everywhere. This project was for a friend who decided that she wanted a more polished look for her e-zine that was easier to maintain. As a side note, this magazine is still hand coded and would do much better if moved to a CMS.

Objective

To increase the number of viewers online, to enhance and support greater advertising revenue potential and to expand the base viewing audience.

Noteworthy

Thirst completely overhauled Morbid Outlook’s online experience. The new site has easy access to much more content. The levels of editorial are supported within a clear navigational structure and all pages are enhanced by leveraging the site’s personalities and artists. Only a month after the redesign, the hits doubled, the average length of visit increased over 60% and the number of pages viewed per visit more than doubled. Morbid Outlook now has an easily scaleable template framework to facilitate its strong site growth.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

Sakonnet

Period

07.2001 – 10.2001

Client Bio

Sakonnet Technology provides trading and risk management software and services to companies in the global energy markets.

Personal History

I met a wonderful and slightly kooky friend there by the name of Thurstan Bannister. He was great to work with and had more personal energy than me on my best day. I have to repeat myself here, ‘when your client is upbeat, your project is easier to accomplish and better as a result.’

Objective

To bolster the online presence of Sakonnet, to increase the interest in their software and services, and to enable potential clients to peruse a future buying decision based on the information within.

Noteworthy

Thirst extended the brand online. The new information and organization within the site was greatly enhanced, and shortly before its launch a Director of Product Strategy was hired to look after all marketing within the company. Thirst leveraged the employees and their commitment to their company to promote their friendly, cooperative and efficient customer service. This site is fully modular and scaleable, the template framework provided an easy way for a small company to facilitate realistic site growth and easy manageability.

Vendor

Thirst

Client

Cahners

Period

07.2000 – 10.2000

Client Bio

A leading provider of specialized business information through electronic media.

Personal History

This is a project that would have kept everyone busy for a great long time, but in the end, Cahners made the choice not go through with a massive redesign of all its online properties.

Objective

‘To become the number one Business Vortal’

Noteworthy

Branding of properties into a Meta, Vortal, Zine, and Article levels. Leveraging the authors of each inpidual magazine to define an authority. Cross-pollination of information from related brands and from the ‘elogic’ content aggregation engine.

Vendor

Hired by IAB (Roger Black)