July 2009

Having just gone through a brand and website refresh, we’ve had some in-depth discussions about who AHA Creative Strategies is, what kind of clients we would like to work with and what organizations we think will want to work with us. It’s been an interesting process.

…I should warn you, this is a bit of a long post!

I came across an interesting article yesterday on Media Post entitled: The Safe Hire. In this piece, writer David Bernstein focuses more on advertising, but he puts forward some thought provoking ideas. His first point: “It’s a basic rule of business, only hire someone who’s done the job before.” He then says that in the ad world, clients almost always hire someone with category experience and then much of the work ends up looking alike.

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Chris Brogan has an excellent post on his site this week on how to influence him, and it translates to how to reach out to anyone either online or not.

One of the key points he makes is “don’t let the numbers fool you” and that is so important. I’ve blogged a bit about this before and according to some of the AHA crew, I am a bit obsessed right now with this topic. It’s not how many people you reach, it’s which people. Reaching a blogger with 100 key readers or one with a wide-range of 10,000 creates different results, but the one with 100 readers may be of more value to your organization.

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We’re excited about the launch of our new website today. It symbolizes several changes in our approach that we believe will benefit our clients and add value to the work we do.

AHA has always been a small agency with the ability to expand depending on the client or project. When we went through our brand refresh audit, we realized that we weren’t showcasing the talent that is AHA well enough. Some of the feedback we have received from potential clients is that while they loved our approach, respected our abilities and wanted to work with us, but they thought AHA might be too small. Well, we took those responses to heart and now we’re a solid team of seven, with a presence in Calgary and Toronto. In some ways, we’re a little bit like South West Airlines or West Jet. Our crew is professionally invested in AHA and committed to our mandate of delivering excellence. Everyone benefits when AHA does well and AHA does well when we exceed expectations. We’re inspired and thrilled to have such an amazing team of professionals onboard that are committed to providing great work for clients. And by the way, they’re not afraid of making a splash either.

AHA comes with a past; a past that we’re proud of. We’re coming up on our seventh anniversary, and we’ve come a long way. We’ve worked (and are working) with some great clients and have evolved our skill sets as the world of communication has changed. As many of our regular blog readers know, over the past few years we partnered with QUAY Strategies on a social media service called Bridging Two Worlds (B2W). After more than 14 years in the business, QUAY is closing their doors and the partners are going on to other episodes in their professional lives. Along with that, we are closing down the B2W brand. AHA still provides social media services and workshops as a part of our overall services, but the B2W brand was a partnership and it didn’t make sense for us to keep it going without QUAY. If you read through some of the older blog posts here, you may see reference to B2W.

We will be touching on a few of the changes at AHA over the next few blog posts and hope you will be as excited as we are about our new and improved agency.

We’re ready to make a splash…how about you?

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If you’re here, that means you are getting a sneak peek at our new website. We’ll officially launch on Monday, but are taking the weekend to do some live testing to make sure we’ve got everything right.

If you happen to find a link that doesn’t work or see something amiss, please let us know…that’s what this weekend is for.

We’ll be making a much bigger splash about this next week!

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Claudia Alan logoFor Immediate Release – July 9, 2009

North Vancouver, B.C. – Claudia Alan Inc. recently launched an inspired collection of readers and sunglasses showcasing the work of First Nations artist Corrine Hunt. The AYA Accessories collection includes high quality ready-to-wear reading glasses (retailing from $39 – $60), sunglasses (retailing at $35), embossed cases and cleaning cloths. The line is available at fine retailers across Canada and at www.claudiaalan.com.

Aya EyewearThe elegant, yet stylish look of the AYA sunglasses and readers are sure to start conversations wherever they are worn. The line created and designed by Carla D’Angelo, Founder and President of Claudia Alan, features original artwork by Hunt. Said D’Angelo: “We are the first company to infuse traditional First Nations art with contemporary eyewear accessories, and that is very exciting for us.” She added: “Working with Corrine was very inspiring, I am a huge fan of her work and I think consumers will love these readers and sunglasses.”

The new AYA line follows fresh on the heels of the successful second season launch of the company’s Pink Ribbon Readers in October 2008.

True to Claudia Alan’s approach to contributing to its community, $2 from the sale of every pair of AYA eyewear supports ONEXONE First Nations Nutritious School Breakfast Program. “It is truly a wonderful honour to be associated with such a passionate and caring company,” said Joelle Adler, Founder of ONEXONE. “At ONEXONE we believe in helping children one by one as well as the power of each individual to make a difference and nowhere is this more apparent than in the partnership we’ve developed with Claudia Alan/AYA Accessories.”

The AYA Accessories collection is composed of ready-to-wear reading glasses and sunglasses. The collection focuses on wearable art, featuring Native art in a range of designs found on four styles of reading glasses (two are specifically designed for women and two are unisex), available in weak (1.50), medium (2.00) and strong (2.50). AYA sunglasses come in three highly fashionable and unique styles – two for women and one for men. The optical line of frames is set to debut in the fall of 2009.

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For more information, please contact Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies at 604-303-1052 or at paul@ahacreative.com.

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