Download the 2005-06 Annual Report - Swimming Canada

Communications report
Celebrating our successes
The 2005/2006 season was truly a year in motion for the sport of swimming in Canada. With the success of the Canadian Team at the 2005
FINA World Aquatic Championships, the Commonwealth Games and the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships celebrated by many Canadians
across the country, many news headlines focused on the rejuvenation of Canadian swimming. In line with the Swimming Canada new strategic
direction and set targets, our internal and external communications to the media, general public and swimming family were the focused on “Celebrating
our successes” from grassroots to high performance, to new Swimming Canada corporate direction. The majority of our targeted goals
and tactiĐ
new tools that allowed us to better profile our athletes, coaches and clubs and events to a much larger audience.
Communications Tools
At the start of the 2005/2006 season, the communications department launched the new Swimming Canada website. A complete overhaul of
the site was produced internally adding new sections, new dynamic look and feel and simplified navigation. The vision of swimming.ca was to
become our Đ
content growing to an average of 2-3 new articles per day. Our website traffic consistently increased over the months with a total of 995,083
visits between September 1st of 2005 and August 31 of 2006.
Throughout the course of the year, additional sections were introduced including tailored content for Swim Clubs, Parents and Volunteers, Swimmers
with a Disability as well as Alumni & Friends. In addition, partnerships with major swimming websites across the globe (Swim News,
Swimming World, Swimmers’ World, In Sweep) were created to offer a glimpse of international swimming to the swimming.ca visitors by the
use of RSS syndicated news feeds.
Profiling ouĐy
generated great excitement throughout the swimming and sports media community. Athletes competing for Canada as part of the Youth, Junior,
Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacific Championships teams were featured in the Swimmer’s Bio’s section of the swimming.ca website.
In support of Swimming Canada’s Alumni outreach and Fundraising program, an online virtual community was created. This new interactive
tool allows AlumnĐ
for Swimming Canada to the wealth of knowledge and expertise of our Canadian Swimming Alumnus.
SWIMMING CANADA - ANNUAL REPORT 2005-06
AĐ
the origin of a new electronic Newsletter – eNews, distributed to clubs on a weekly basis.
y generated
With the significant increase of print and online sports media requests for athlete images, the need for an efficient image management tool
presented itself. The involvement of ACDsee as corporate sponsor for the 2006 Pan pacific Championships allowed us to obtain the ACDsee
pro photo manager software that currently manages over 35 000 high resolution images of Canadian swimming.
Media Servicing
Media cĐ
organization.
The 2005 Commonwealth Games Trials in Victoria BC generated a fair amount of media interest
and exposure in Western Canada, but due to deadline times, eastern coverage was predominantly
online and radio. Great measures were taken to obtain onsite media interest for the 2006 Commonwealth
Games in Melbourne Australia. A group of Communications experts was put together
by the CGC to create a communications strategy for the Games. A great deal of Canadian Media
outlets travelled to Australia to cover the events such as CBC Sports, CBC Radio, The Globe and
Mail, The Canadian Press, Journal de Montreal and Swim News.
A new tool for media was initiated by the Canada swimming delegation in order to service media
within Canada. Daily half-hour telephone press conference were organised with swimmers and
coaches. Media where able to dial in from Canada and participate in these press conference and
interact with athletes in a Q & A period moderated by the Swimming Canada press officer. Subsequently,
a thorough media guide for the event was available to press via the swimming.ca website
as well as printed copies.
The launch of the Bell Grand Prix series also generated great media attendance to the competitions
in Vancouver and Montreal. A joint press conference was organized with the Canadian Red Cross
in Vancouver to launch the Bell Grand Prix and the new partnership. We received great onsite
support from The Province, The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, CP, Global TV, A Channel and
CTV.
“The Tele-Press Conferences
from the Commonwealth
Games in
Melbourne Australia
made me feel part of the
action. A great tool that
was greatly appreciated
by media in Canada!”
- Martin Cleary
Sports writer, Ottawa Citizen
The 2006 Pan Pacific Championship Trials in Montreal was a great opportunity to promote our Canadian swimmers. A strong basin of media
(print, radio, internet and television) where present on pool deck and generated great support from Swim News, La Presse, The Montreal Gazette,
The Canadian Press, Journal de Montreal, RDS. The excitement continued on at the Pan Pacific Championships in Victoria with onsite
presence from the Canadian Press, Victoria Times Colonists, La Presse, CH TV, A Channel and TSN. The Canadian print coverage reached a
circulation of 8,139,944 and the Canadian television coverage on TSN and RDS generated more than 90 000 viewers.
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