Branding Presentation at “Bridges to Better Business" Conference

On October 17, our Director of Strategy, Christina Flavell, was the keynote speaker at “Bridges to Better Business”, a half-day conference offered by the Cornwall Business Enterprise Centre. Christina’s presentation focused on Quality Branding, and provided specific recommendations to help small businesses develop quality brands that will help them succeed. The presentation fostered some great discussion about specific examples in the current marketplace, and what business owners can learn from them.

The “Bridges to Better Business” conference provides an opportunity for businesses in southeastern Ontario to improve their skills, learn best business practices and network with other business owners and economic development professionals from the region. A big thank you to Candy Pollard and the Cornwall Business Enterprise Centre for inviting us to participate.

We have shared below excerpts from Christina’s presentation. If you are interested in more information on this subject, or other branding, marketing and communications sessions we can offer, please contact Christina at cflavell@bsl.com

Quality Branding - Helping Small Business Develop Quality Brands from Banfield-Seguin

Banfield-Seguin Bocce Tournament ends in epic pasta battle

On September 27th , the championship game of the 2012 Banfield-Seguin Bocce Classic was played in front of a crowd of enthusiastic employees and neighbourhood onlookers.

Banfield-Seguin’s front lawn evolved into a venue for some heated competition. What had originally started with a small group casually playing the centuries-old Italian lawn bowling game during our Thursday BBQ lunches, became a 3-month long, 10-team round robin tournament. 

To raise the stakes, we even pulled out Banfield-Seguin’s storied bocce trophy from the attic. It had been stored there since current company owners John and Nancy won it as a duo back in 2001. This piece of company nostalgia gave the tournament a “past-meets-present” narrative that made it difficult for anyone to resist participating (especially since our two leaders would be defending their title). 

The epic final game opposed the first place finishers from each group: 

Team Gnocchi 
(5-0 record in the Cream-Based Pasta division)

          vs.

Team Ziti 
(5-0 record in the Tomato-Based Pasta division)

Forced to play this decisive game one-on-one because their partners were both away from the office, Venise from Team Gnocchi and Pete A. from Team Ziti battled it out over a “best 2 out of 3 sets” game. 

After losing the first game 7-0, Pete rallied to take the next two nail-biters 7-4 and 7-4 to secure the win.

Needless to say, everyone who took part and watched this colourful ball-throwing competition had a great time – proof that in life, like in creative marketing communications, the simplest ideas often lead to the best results.