What is the Ontario Community Awareness Network?

(Formerly the City of Barrie Network)

A locally-focused and community-oriented media service that builds local business and our community
Overview : Who? : What? : When? : Where? : Why? : Information Package

Your business can now reach more than 5,000 mostly local new clients or customers
for just $25.00 or .5¢ per viewer - and that is without sharing, liking, and reposting

The goal of self-promotion is to introduce your product or service to prospective consumers and convince them to buy from you. Effective advertising is defined as the art of reaching the greatest number of potential customers with a positive or memorable message by using the most effective means that costs the least per consumer reached.

For more than four years our team has worked to develop the infrastructure of the Ontario Community Awareness Network. Now we can offer a proven means of business promotion that allows a hundred local non-competing businesses to promote themselves, each other, and the community through the shared message of ‘Our Community United’.

This is accomplished through the production of locally-focused community videos that are broadcast to tens of thousands of local people through self-promotional sharing on Facebook, and on other social media, and through our website.

The Ontario Community Awareness Network is like no other advertising option available anywhere. We use existing and readily available online communications technology combined with our 30 years of experience in international journalism and video production to reach tens of thousands of local consumers with stories about their own community. For business owners the advantages are numerous.

We currently have in place an established and growing audience of tens of thousands of mostly local people.
On average, when boosted on social media, our videos are watched by more than 5000 mostly local viewers.
Several of our social documentary videos have been watched by more than 30,000 Barrie area viewers.
Each member business will enjoy industry-specific exclusivity, so they will stand out against their competition.
Video is the most effective means of advertising, and interest in local video has increased 1,000% during the past year.
Videos about local issues and stories are amongst the most watched on the Internet and generate millions of dlilars in business.
Local stories generate interest from regional consumers and help boost brand exposure for neighbourhood member businesses.
Member businesses are viewed by our audience as active contributors to the community, which builds customer loyalty.
Local member businesses are promoted as being compassionate enterprises that help those in need.
Those of special needs and their families are known to shop at businesses that show support for their community.
Current youth ‘Hipsters’ have been shown to base a lot of their shopping decisions on the perceived ethics of the business.
Member businesses are seen to be actively building the city economy while helping those in need of community support.
Our local-only network of member businesses and viewers will cross promote and boost business awareness and sales.
Local charities benefit from our donated promotional services, and businesses benefit from being seen to help those causes.
As a locally-focused social-enterprise, we can offer the lowest cost per target audience rate of any local media.

Altruistic Advertising

This is not our video, but we think the people at Google know what works online

When promoting your business through media of any kind you do not meet the customer. They also cannot ask questions. Therefore, the buyer must feel cause to purchase from you instead of a competitor. To build that needed trust, you must find a cost-effective means to engage the consumer in a positive way that will make them feel good about buying from you.

For decades entrepreneurs generated goodwill within their community by supporting charities, youth sports teams, and any public events to which they could attach their brand. This method of promotion worked, and it continues to do so; however now we can broadcast your shared acts of philanthropy to a much larger audience via online video broadcast through social media and YouTube.

It is reported that in 2018, Anheuser-Busch, the brewers of Budweiser, spent two point five million dollars during the Superbowl telling the world how they donated one hundred thousand dollars worth of canned water to disaster relief. Closer to home, Tim Horton’s hired a documentary team to tell the story of how they had brought to Canada a team of aspiring hockey players from Kenya, and McDonalds recently released a promotional video for Ronald McDonald house featuring two families from Muskoka who had benefitted from the corporation's altruistic support.

Why would America’s biggest brewery spend twenty-five times as much money on a one-time goodwill advertisement, and why would Canada’s biggest coffee franchise care about African hockey players?

These massive companies have learned to benefit from promoting their brands in a powerful way that until now was out of reach of most small and medium business owners.

The secret they have tapped into is Altruistic Advertising; or being seen to be active and caring members of the community in which they do business.

Online Video

Return to First Video

Please click on the links to watch all three lengths and styles of online commercials.

Ten-second pre-video commercial.

Thirty-second altruistic commercial

Sixty-second information commercial

Online video accounted for 84% of all Internet traffic during 2017, and viewership of community videos increased by about one thousand percent. This proves that the kind of programming we produce is without question popular with a growing audience and that it is watched, liked, and shared more than any other form of social media. Best of all, the community and charity supporting videos produced by Five Points Media are all local in content and subject matter, or on occasion they are about an exceptional person or organization that is of general interest.

Five Points Media is not a daily news service, and we do not often release our videos immediately after the event. We produce more in-depth social documentaries that involve interviews, research, and fact-checking. The closest comparison we can suggest is Sixty Minutes or Marketplace. We are non-partisan in our reporting and we remain neutral in the presentation of the facts. Regardless of the subject, we speak with representatives from all sides of a story. Our programming has been proven repeatedly to inspire conversation, media interest, research, and repeated viewing, meaning the local member businesses will not be forgotten simply because their name fades from the screen.

In addition to sponsorship credits, we can also offer professionally produced video commercials. Some would be short and inserted before our programming, while others would be longer and meant to be used with links from our Facebook posts and website to a special page on our server that would be designed to promote a specific member business. We can also create altruistic advertising spots through which your business can address why it is personally important to you to help the community. That is a powerful way to generate interest and loyalty.

We can also offer to record and report on any altruistic or community event held by a member business at no charge or at cost, depending on the scale of the production and purpose of the finished video. This offers a very powerful means of self-promotion while helping the community. Please view the link directly above for an example of this kind of no-charge or low-cost method of powerful self-promotion.

Short-Term Introductory Offer – Available Only To Our First Twenty Members

We know that despite the various awards and kudos of the community and business establishment, we are an unknown to many local business owners. We also know we offer an amazing opportunity to those with the insight to understand the power of what we are offering. So, in order to show our abilities, we are offering to record and produce, free of charge, a broadcast-quality promotional video cut to ten seconds, thirty seconds, and a minute in length (see example links) offered only to the first twenty business that commit to a six-month period of membership. We will also provide a standardised webpage where your customers can see that video. We get to the low cost of membership later in this package, but sufficed to say, the value of the video and webpage far exceed the cost of the advertising. We will also be offering other incentives, such as no-cost promotions for altruistic events and reports from community projects organized by member businesses.