Table of Contents 6 2012 OVATION Awards Winning Entries

Indigo’s public relations team provided an overview of Indigo’s expanded gift categories, with special
emphasis on toys. They offered insight into gift trends, popular product lines and new items, to ensure
guests had a strong platform from which to build their Holiday features. This messaging was reinforced
by providing a detailed media kit and a package of featured products. The same kit was issued to key
media across the country that had been unable to attend the Toronto and Montreal events.
MSL Canada reconnected with all attending media post event to ensure Indigo and the gift offerings
featured during the previews were top of mind during their planning for Holiday issues. MSL Canada
answered supplemental product questions, provided additional information and images for their fast
approaching deadlines on their individual features. One hundred and twenty media and bloggers had
attended the event and many more were reached proactively post event.
Short‐Lead Media Engagement
As the countdown to the Holiday season continued, MSL Canada reached out to short‐lead media across
Canada to engage them in Indigo’s holiday line‐up, building on the product insights garnered from the
long lead preview events. The effort built on the company’s overall Holiday Moment call to action and
Media Tour
To further drive awareness of Indigo’s unique retail experience, and to specifically promote Indigo’s
online shopping experience, MSL Canada conducted a targeted media tour with Ceri Marsh, editor in
chief of the blog sweetpotatochronicles. Her role was to reinforce indigo.ca as an ideal way for the
time‐crunched mom to get her Holiday shopping done in one‐stop.
4. Implementation and Challenges:
Implementation: MSL Canada executed the program on time and on budget. A detailed critical path, a
system to deliver on individual image and product requests and a weekly conference call ensured all
team members were aligned. Maintaining a strict critical path, the Holiday previews took place on
August 4 /9 in Toronto and on August 11 in Montreal. Long‐lead media liaison took place throughout
August. Short‐lead media, online and blogger Holiday preview took place on October 18 with outreach
executed from mid‐October to mid December 2011.
Budget: The program budget was $105,000. Weekly budget reviews guaranteed that fees and expenses
were tracked in near‐real time, allowing MSL Canada to ensure that the program was tracking well to
pre‐defined budgetary parameters. Focusing on individual media relationships among the MSL Canada
team allowed expedited feedback and requests from targeted outlets, and simple processes for image
and product delivery, when requested, ensured savings in time and budget by utilizing Indigo’s existing
image retrieval system and regional media ambassadors to provide products.
Challenges: With a new focus on the kids/toys category, MSL Canada was charged with ensuring Indigo’s
presence in all gift guides featuring toys. Indigo was not yet top of mind in the toy category and faced
heavy competition for media placement from the traditional toy retailers. The PR program called for
some education with media and targeted outreach to ensure Indigo was a top of the list when
developing gift guides. A separate preview was set‐up to showcase the breadth of the kids/toys
category and a targeted fact sheet was developed and sent to all lifestyle editors with intense follow‐up
with the parenting/lifestyle media and bloggers. In the results section we outline how this media
coverage for toys helped spur the double digit increase in sales in the toys/kids category.