Good afternoon Michel,

We greatly appreciate your interest in our company and in our new media marketing initiatives. TELUS is indeed the first Canadian company to tap into consumer generated media as a new way to promote our brand. At TELUS, we are always on the look-out for innovative ways to reach potential clients and given Second Life’s popularity, we thought that marketing to its avatars would be a great place to start.

After taking a great deal of care to create an environment that is true to our brand and value-added tools that enhance the players’ online experience, TELUS opened its first virtual store, on August 24th. The simple fact that bloggers, like yourself, are reacting to TELUS’ presence in Second Life is a testament to the project’s success and to the true power of this emerging form of marketing.

Developed by our marketing department, this initiative is but one of many cool things we do at TELUS that enable us to stay on top of our game. At any given time, we have thousands of projects in the works in addition to new products and services being launched every week.

We intend to continue exploring innovative marketing avenues within new media, and appreciate your support and understanding if information requests cannot be fulfilled in real-time.

Stacey Masson
Senior Manager, TELUS Media Relations

By the way, j’aurais aimé pouvoir aller au Yulblog; ça prendrait un équivalent à Québec

Dans les années 1900 (au début de 1900), y’a un gars, Jules-A. Brillant qui décide de fonder «La compagnie de téléphone de Rimouski» (ou quelque chose qui ressemble à ça…). Ensuite, ça devient Québec-Téléphone à quelque part entre 1900 et le temps que je naisse.

Puis, de mémoire vers 1995, ça devient QuébecTel.

Vers 2000, le Gouvernement du Québec donne de gros sous à QuébecTel pour qu’ils restent dans la région. On signe un contrat d’une durée X (qui viendra à échéance bientôt dailleurs).

Pendant longtemps on en a entendu parlé (puisque Télus est un gros employeur dans la région), c’était chose faite; QuébecTel venait d’être acquise par Telus.

Pour des raisons administratives, une nouvelle entitée serait formée, TELUS Québec. QuébecTél serait vendue à TÉLUS Québec, propriété de TELUS.

Bref, Rimouski, c’est juste une place d’où le monde a pas voulu déménager et dont on se sert en attendant la fin du contrat avec le Gouvernement du Québec… j’ai même entendu dire, de la bouche d’une employée relativement haut placée (elle en est à sa 29e année pour la compagnie) «De toute façon, j’arrive à la retraite en même temps que le contrat arrive à échéance.»… Ça veut tout dire!

Oh et la nouvelle présidente, alors qu’elle est venue à Rimouski pour une conférence de presse, a dit que si elle voulait habiter Montréal, c’était seulement pour être auprès de ses enfants. Dans un élan de «ohhhh» généralisé, tout a été pardonné… mais c’est drôle, j’ai eu une conversation avec pendant laquelle elle m’a parlé de ses enfants et de son mari qu’elle voit aux deux semaines parce qu’ils sont en Alberta… étrange, non?

Bref, toute cette longue histoire pour dire que c’est pas à Rimouski qu’il faut appeler, Rimouski c’est le siège social de Télus Québec… c’est en Colombie-Britanique, au siège social de Télus Corpo qu’il faut appeler !

Comments

Michel Leblanc has an interesting follow-up on this story (http://www.michelleblanc.com/2006/08/28/telus-dans-second-life-mais-ne-le-savent-pas/). It looks like their PR dept. is not aware of the initiative.

Posted by Seb
August 28, 2006

What is sad about the story is that TELUS itself does not even know its in SL. What a pity!

All the details (in French)
http://www.michelleblanc.com/2006/08/28/telus-dans-second-life-mais-ne-le-savent-pas/

Posted by Michel Leblanc
August 28, 2006

I can definitely add some clarity here.

I found out about TELUS in Second Life through a very senior person at TELUS. They know. They were trying to not “let the cat out of the bag” until it was live, etc…

Some people floating around in Second Life discovered it and started Blogging about it.

Sparkle Dale is a TELUS employee who came up with the idea and, with the approval of her department head, has been doing this all on her own… out of passion.

Maybe TELUS PR was not meant to be in the loop just yet. Maybe this was supposed to spread the way it is… organically by people like us.

I think this story is much more interesting without a press release… don’t you?

Posted by Mitch Joel
August 28, 2006

Dear Mitch,

I understand the rationale here and Sparkle Dale has made quite an interesting and innovative virtual world marketing activity. She should have a major increase for having been so passionately involved and so efficiently innovative in her action and thinking. As I said in my post, it is talked about as far as Netherlands. The catch was probably trying not to “let the cat out of the bag”. I do not believe that you can play with branding. As you well know, markets are conversations. It is hard to keep a secret! And when the secrets out, you’d better brief your PR quickly, get back into the conversation and spin the subject as quick as possible. If it was not for the fact that we know each other and that you are well connected, for how long do you think I would have been kept in the dark.

A contrario example of the same activity would be Starwood Hotels. They build a microsite for their stand in SL, They extensively PRd their innovation and received worldwide attention to their forthcoming Aloft chain of hotel concept. I do believe that viral marketing is a must but that it has to work in synergy with other related marketing and PR cells. By the way, it has been already 5 days since my first post on TELUS. No news from them yet! How strange is that? Don’t they check their branding on the Web?