Hey, Peter. Whaaaaat’s Happening?
Today was fraught with busy.
I shot off about a bazillion emails. Mostly to Greg and Jeff about the mock up. We had a little problem with respect to Greg’s burner being on the fritz and him having to FTP the files to me for placement. Might take a bit to get it done, but I should have everything ready for placement once I’m up north and I can take it to Staples for production.
I Called media companies out of Montreal and Toronto. The president of the Montreal agency was really helpful. Because they represent a lot of Quebec companies, we talked about the English-heavy content and the Quebec sponsorship policies in the education system there. Hopefully it’ll help me to refine my approach to Quebec schools.
He also gave me the names of agencies for different interests. We got talking about the fact that they’re starting to represent the Quebec Milk Board [as a possible regional sponsor] and he mentioned another media company, who handle some of the Ministry campaigns. Which is where he dropped the notion of approaching Social Services. I forgot that they do a lot of PSA’s for children. Wicked suggestion.
Additionally, he provided me with contact information for five more companies.
That was my second call. A subsidiary of the New York agency, who I’ve been trying to find for a while now, represent EVERYONE. I had a great opening conversation with the receptionist, who basically told me what I’ll need to do after a meeting is set up.
Essentially I’ll be running to Toronto at some point and pitching to the executives for all of their pertinent clients. After she gave me the skinny, I was then forwarded to the appropriate rep, who was “either on the phone or away from my desk” so I left her a message and hopefully I’ll hear back soon.
Then I heard back from an editor at an educational publishing company and we set up a time to chat on the phone. He handles the person behind the Boys’ Literacy movement through the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He may be able to give me some sound advice about approaching school boards before I send the package out to them.
I also got a reply from the city editor of an Ottawa paper who said he’d be interested in the story and will have someone contact me for an interview! Hooray!
Finally, I set up a freeware email program on the computer for the mass mail-out. Hopefully it’ll do the trick. I’ll be configuring it tomorrow.
Now, it’s time to eat and head to my friend’s place for some quality slacker-time of watching movies and having his buddy play video games at us…