Instructions: Complete all sections of the application and return electronically to Society
Relations by 23 March 2012. Applications received after 23 March 2012 will not be considered.
View more information on requirements to enter, the judging process, and prizes on the Society
Leader Resources Center .
Society Name: CFA Ottawa Society
Society Contact(s):
Name Email
Sacha Imbert sacha.imbert@rbc.com
Trevor Carson Trevor.Carson@brookfieldrenewable.com
Robert Pelletier RPelletier@edc.ca
Award Description - Outreach & Awareness Campaign
This category recognizes efforts to build awareness and understanding of the CFA designation and/or of the CFA Institute and society brand through relationships with employers, universities, the media, other professional organizations, regulators, investors, and/or the community at large.
Describe the process that was followed to identify the need for, or value of, the campaign.
Strategizing at the CFA Ottawa Society started in late summer 2011. We had general board level discussions and decided to meaningfully focus on Outreach and Awareness as our main goal for
2011-2012. The primary objective of our campaign was to significantly increase attendance and participation of our member base as well as promote brand awareness within the community at large. Although we looked to improve on several aspects of our member experience, the largest focus and area for growth was identified as the Forecast Dinner. We had noticed that growth in attendance at our events had stagnated and we were always seeing the same members come out. We emphasized the importance of providing value to all members and putting on programming that would broadly appeal to them. We also noted that the future health and success of our Society would be directly linked to engaging new members and becoming a regular source of information and opportunity for the financial community within Ottawa and beyond as we generally compete for membership with the larger centers of Toronto and
Montreal.
We began planning and marketing for the Forecast Dinner six months earlier than we have in previous years. This was done to ensure maximum exposure to our members and community as well as to build momentum and excitement about the event early in our term. For the first time, we built a comprehensive sponsorship package (attached) that allowed us to generate significant interest and increase our revenue by over 100% from the previous year. Having speakers and sponsors on board earlier was instrumental in bringing forward tickets sales by several months.
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We established a Forecast Dinner committee and brought in new volunteers with fresh ideas and additional contacts within the city. We also re-engaged a former executive of the society who had helped plan the dinner over a decade ago and had been inactive for the past few years.
Given that we are a relatively young board, bringing in someone with more experience and history with the dinner was incredibly valuable. He also brought with him a wealth of contacts we could use to increase attendance and the overall dinner experience.
Another strategic decision we made was to increase the number of speakers from two to three this year. This decision had a dramatic impact on our ticket sales. We have found that speakers will attract significant interest within their firms as well as from their clients. One of the speakers we brought in this year was from one of the large Canadian banks that generally did not support our event. As a result of bringing in this speaker, the company purchased 6 tables at our event and we are very optimistic that they will return in future years which promotes the long-term sustainability of our event.
It is important to note here that Ottawa is primarily a government town and many of our “bread and butter” supporters pulled back support for our events this year given the political climate and general theme of austerity that is tying the hands of many of our crown corporations and pension funds. This was a challenge to overcome but our campaign was incredibly effective and we did in fact succeed in overcoming this obstacle.
Outside of the Forecast Dinner we are also very proud of the success we have achieved related to Outreach and Awareness in other areas of the Society. By bringing in influential and relevant speakers we have been able to sell out each of our monthly luncheons (which was difficult in the past). We also reduced member pricing to make these meals more accessible to our younger members as well as potential members (students). We have pushed very hard to establish a presence at both of our local universities and have received an overallotment of scholarships two years in a row now. We regularly attend and speak at events on campus as well as sponsor numerous student groups and investment clubs to promote awareness to what we view as our number one area for member growth in the future. We have also run a successful research challenge locally for third year students and partnered with the University of Ottawa on an exciting mentorship program.
Describe the outreach or brand awareness efforts related to targeted group(s). Provide samples if applicable.
As aforementioned, we leveraged ideas from other Societies globally and built a comprehensive, tiered sponsorship package that fundamentally changed the dynamics of the event. Several companies jumped at the opportunity to have great visibility at the dinner and this translated to additional dollars we could spend to put on a first class event that will attract sponsors back in future years. We targeted not only the companies that have supported us in the past, but also other companies that have shown support for other Canadian societies. This directly translated into several new sponsors that don’t necessarily have a local presence in Ottawa. We collaborated with contacts at the Toronto and Vancouver societies as well as the CFA Institute to come up with a comprehensive list of potential sponsors and put together a package designed
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to sell this dinner as the premier event for financial professionals in Ottawa.
We also tried very hard to leverage technology this year to help promote our dinner. We would encourage you to go to our website
( http://www.cfasociety.org/ottawa/Pages/ForecastDinner.aspx
) to see how we’ve benefited from the introduction of Sharepoint. Many of our sponsors went out of their way to commend us on the ease of use of our site to register for the dinner through our use of Eventbrite as our ticket management system. We also used online campaign management software for the first time to give a professional and consistent look to all of our member communications (attached).
This also provided the added benefit of being able to track the success of our campaign and track metrics including clicks through to our site and generally how many people were reviewing and sharing our event information through various social networking portals (Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn).
Tickets went on sale three months earlier than they have in previous years. We weren’t sure how this would be received by our members given the event was almost 5 months away at the time of the ticket launch so we also decided to offer early bird discounts for the first time.
Members who purchased tickets by a certain date would receive a 10% discount on their ticket price. This resulted in many early ticket sales and translated to additional buzz for the event.
Word of mouth advertising was particularly noticeable as members and non-members were buying tickets in groups. By limiting the number of tickets available for sale we also introduced an element of exclusivity that made tickets more desirable and drove early ticket sales. You will see from our series of member communications, that each message was specifically designed to encourage people to buy their tickets as soon as possible so that they would not miss out on this event. We also introduced a somewhat unique program of incentive payments to our partners which will be discussed in the next section.
List targeted group(s) and why they were chosen.
There are a number of professional organizations and institutions within the city that we targeted at the outset of our campaign to really enhance the potential reach of our marketing efforts. In order to help promote the event, we partnered with the following groups:
Young Canadians in Finance (YCIF), CMA Ontario, CGA Ontario, Ottawa CA Association and CIMA Ontario
Early in the process we engaged each of these groups to promote our dinner to their member bases which increased our reach by over 1,000 potential attendees. In order to simplify this process we created customized invitations tailored to each of these groups that could easily be distributed throughout their member lists. The invitations were co-branded and professional which made the promotion of our event easy and fast for our partners. In order to further entice these groups to promote the event, we offered a financial incentive for them to partner with us which is something we believe to be unique to our Society. Through the use of the
Eventbrite ticket management system, we were able to create custom registration links for each of our partners to track how many of their members registered for the dinner. We also offered
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to return 10% of total ticket sales to their organizations for all sales directed to us from their promotional campaigns. Given that most of these groups have constrained budgets, this made the offer more appealing to them and gave them some compensation for working with us. We also help most of these groups promote their events and are considering co-hosting events in the future. Although these incentives did not amount to a significant sum of money, we achieved our goal in terms of getting our event promoted to every finance/accounting/professional organization in the city which further increased the buzz and brand awareness around our event.
Other groups that we worked with to promote the event included:
University of Ottawa, Carleton University, Toronto CFA Society, Montreal CFA Society
We were able to leverage our university support and relationships to get our event information in the hands of finance students at both schools. This has resulted in roughly twice as many student ticket sales as we’ve seen in previous years. Carleton University has also sponsored the dinner and filled a table with students and professors. Having professors attend is seen as very positive for us as they can promote the designation to the students as well as have us in to share our information and experiences with them which will help to promote future membership growth which is another strategic goal we have set. Given that geographically Ottawa falls between the large financial hubs of Toronto and Montreal we also reached out to them to help promote our event. The Montreal Society sent an email blast to their members on our behalf and the Toronto Society posted our event on their website. This has resulted in increased participation and sponsorship from those areas. We have had several groups in both cities purchase tables to entertain clients they have in Ottawa even though they don’t maintain offices here. We are now able to successfully tap into “national sponsors” as opposed to focusing exclusively on companies that have offices in Ottawa.
Provide quantitative (i.e. increase in press mentions, increase in attendance by targeted groups at society events) and qualitative (i.e. anecdotal feedback on increased brand awareness) metrics relating to the success of the campaign.
Forecast Dinner
Total attendance this year of 430 vs. 275 last year (previous record) – 56% increase
Total revenue this year of $54k vs. $29k last year (previous record) – 86% increase
Expected profit of $2,500 this year vs. $7,000 loss last year
14 named sponsors (9 which have never supported our dinner in the past)
33 corporate tables purchased vs. 19 last year – 74% increase
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Total attendance of 430 vs. total members of 285 – 151% ratio of attendees to total members
6 ads in national media (Advisor.ca – over 40,000 daily subscribers) vs. none last year
5 targeted campaign messages to mailing list of over 750 subscribers (35% open rate vs. industry average of 21%)
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