Safe Digging Month – April 2013

An exclusive sponsorship opportunity

There's more than a natural gas pipeline at risk. Always call before you dig!

Objectives

• To offer our readers stories that they are interested in and that are relevant to the demographic (52 years old average age, high income earners, well educated).

• To offer readers a comprehensive in paper and online series that will offer a continued presence online for readers for two months

• To allow a relevant and credible sponsor to align with this content and present a brand message that will be enhanced by the content of this series

• Sponsor may be able to offer experts that The Vancouver Sun will use to answer reader questions

• Sponsor may write an Op Ed piece to be printed on the Ideas and Opinions page (subject to Editorial approval)

What is safe digging month?April 2013 will once again be National Safe Digging Month, the time of year when all Common Ground Alliance stakeholders come together to communicate how important it is that professionals and homeowners alike follow the safe digging process to help prevent injuries, property damage and inconvenient outages.

Facts:

An underground utility line is unintentionally damaged approximately once every three minutes nationwide, and about one in three incidents are caused because the digger did not call. The phone notification begins the process to learn the approximate locations of underground utility lines, according to CGA data.

Unauthorized digging or excavation is the number one cause of pipeline safety issues, and yet, every year, failure to "call before you dig" results in injury, legal hassles and disruption of utilities - like power, water, and telephone - for hundreds of thousands of individuals and families. With a continued and coordinated focus on raising awareness, Alliance Pipeline is committed to this important safety initiative.

Format – Safe Digging Month

• Print elements will include: a main story; industry profiles with photos; stories about the issues and the impact across the province both commercially and for residential digging

• Pages of content will have advertising on every page. • Run date: Late March or early April (TBD). • The digital components will include video and pic galleries. Stories by area and

risk factor• Reader questions and online experts will allow people at work to go to the web

for follow up information from their morning reading of the series• Sponsors will have full colour ads on the pages including front banner, full page,

half and quarter pages• Online, these same sponsors will have all ad units on a rotating basis on a

dedicated online topic page: www.vancouversun/safedigging • The online topic page will continue to be live for two months following the

section with relevant evergreen content tagged and housed here through to the end of this period

 

Story list:  •What’s lurking underground? •Look at what we had underground 50 years ago vs today: cable, fibre optics, gas, jet fuel lines, phone lines, sewers, water. •Example: Main & Terminal has 14 different lines from 14 different firms/utilities and municipalities. •Track the # of mishaps/accidents in Metro Vancouver  and BC•The cost of these accidental ruptures for the firms and sometime households•The question of liability: who pays and under what circumstances? •Residential and BC One Call: A facilitator who you can call to find out what’s underneath before a dig, including landscaping your front or back yard. But not all firms or municipalities are part of it. Why not have a central repository of information? •Are there new technologies that can help detect all the underground cables, etc. •What should a BC household know before digging? The dos’s and don’ts. Website that you can to for information.

 A column by a Sponsor spokesperson to talk about why these themes are vital to the growth of our city, province and country. Why does what’s under the ground matter? (column subject to Editorial Approval)

Pictured: Op-ed by Indira Samarasekara, President of the University of Alberta inTuesday Nov 6, 2012 - Vancouver Sun

 

  

Issues & Ideas Page: op-eds

Website Dedicated Series Topic page

• Archived stories from the section will reside here for three months

• Daily updated stories tagged from the web• Five minute videos with experts on the

subject from sponsor and other sources • Call out for reader questions and stories that

can be published on-line• Search engine Optimization• All sponsor ad units on the page are

available to the sponsor companies or partners and can be linked by URL to sponsor websites and relevant information

Front page key to topic page

Listed on“Don’t Miss” bar

Sponsorship of the Safe Digging Section and Microsite

Ad rates:• Front banner: $5000 (only ad on the page)• Full page: $12,000 net (full colour incl. online)• Half page: $6,500 net (full colour incl. online)• Quarter page: $4,500 (full colour incl. online)

Value added:• Equal sponsorship of the Microsite with additional online ads targeted to business channels with front banner, half page ad or bigger (min. 50,000 online impressions) • Editorial marketing to enhance the series and push readers to the topic page and the in-paper content

Style only

Source: NADbank 2011/12 Mid-Year Study Base: 916,700/46% Metro Vancouver adults

who read the Vancouver Sun in the past week in print or website.

Profile:An influential and affluent audience

• 52% women/48% men• Average age is 48 (average

age of the market is 46)• 35% have a HHI $100,000+• Average household income

is $86,291 (versus the market average of $81,908)

• 79% own their home• 50% are university

graduates• 23% are senior/ other mgrs./

professionals• 59% are married/ living

together

1.5M unique visitors, Vancouver Sun Online profile:

% IndexGENDERMen 56% 112 Women 44% 88

AGEUnder 18 11% 5418-24 9% 8925-34 20% 119 35-44 22% 132 45-54 18% 109 55+ 19% 103

REGIONBC 46% 329Prairies 15% 83Ontario 31% 79Quebec 5% 20Atlantic 4% 56

HHLD INCOME$60K+ 68% 110 $75K+ 50% 102 $100K+ 27% 95

Visitor Profile

Source: comScore Media, Sept 2012