After 4 years without a sign at the White House, Strut decided we should get one for the new space... sort of.

Wishing to help those in the know to find us while keeping our superhero identity under wraps a little while longer, we opted for identifying ourselves with only a great big Strut "S".

It's a bit obscure, but hard to miss.

A while back, we created a broadcast package for a new reality show on Much called, Disband. You should definitely check out the samples of the work we did for the show, but right now we'd like to focus on the related MuchMusic success story.

Disband is MuchMusic's answer to the constant pleas of, "Make our band famous!" Each episode follows a young band as they work with mentors over a week filled with challenges and helpful advice. It culminates with a live performance in front of an industry panel that decides whether the band has what it takes, or does not and should, "disband."

The season finale aired on Wednesday, May 27 and featured the Edmonton band, Stand By Me. Their name changed to Stereos during their MuchMusic mentorship and they not only escaped the dreaded recommendation to "disband," but we're ultimately offered a music contract with Universal Music Canada.

In a time of declining television viewers – especially within the younger demographic – the show struck a chord and gained a solid on-air and online audience. The proof of this could be seen beyond the standard measurements of ratings or online traffic.

The Stereos' first single, "Summer Girl," was released a day before the show on Tuesday May 26 and by Friday of that week, had claimed the number 1 spot on iTunes Canada's singles download chart, bumping the Black Eyed Peas out of the ranking they'd held for several weeks. Within a week of its release, their accompanying video had close to 100,000 hits on You Tube. As of this Friday, the Peas regained the number one position, but Stereos is holding its own in the number two position.

A huge accomplishment for a band that – since they just adopted a brand new name -- didn't really exist until the airing of the Disband episode a week and a half ago and considering their single was on the regular playlist of only one radio station in Canada – their hometown Bounce FM.

These remarkable results reinforce the importance of identifying with your key audience and providing them with what they want.

Congrats to MuchMusic and Stereos on their success.

Much links:

Disband Episodes

Video for "Summer Girl"

We didn’t have any little elves come by to lend a hand, but we finally set aside the time to revamp our own web site and put some of our advanced CMS innovations into place for ourselves.

Using the same underlying custom content management technologies we've developed for clients such as Horizon North Logistics, Arctica and the Canadian Institute of Natural Integrated Medicine we’ve built a deep site that is easily updated by Strutters with no coding experience required.

Key features include:

• Filtered content presentation so visitors can browse our samples and case studies by client and project type
• Permissions-based administration system governing who can make updates for each section and assigning publishing approvals
• Custom content templates for each section

Shortly we'll be rolling out new features including a secure client section with access to our internal image library and file upload system.

As of April 20, 2009, we have relocated from the big white house in Sunalta to an equally obscure, big red warehouse in Inglewood.

Strut's new home is a funky, restored 100 year old Hudson's Bay Company warehouse at 106, 1215 – 13 Street SE. Be sure to drop by to say hi and check out our new digs.

Our main phone line remains the same: 403-228-9200.

Looking for information on the oil sands? These days it would seem the entire world is looking for more on this hot topic.

As one of the world's largest petroleum companies, and one of the top oil sands producers, Shell has their fair share of requests for information.

To help meet this need Strut developed Shell's oil sands fact book. Distributed to media and government officials, as well as internally throughout Shell’s operations around the world, the fact book is designed to quickly bring people up to speed on the issues surrounding Alberta’s oil sands and provide background on Shell's operations specifically.

With a skim of the main topic areas readers can get a broad understanding of oil sands development. With an in depth reading, this 70+ page fact book offers very detailed information on issues including land use, water and tailings.

The fact book has been very popular upon its release, already being reprinted to meet the numerous requests for a copy. The content from this fact book has also been adapted for an informational display to be toured around to the same groups mentioned above.