For father and son duo Chuck and Kyle Wilson, Chestermere is a place to both live and work. The pair started up Wilson Master Media last year, and their first project was to create and place benches around town.
After a few trips to see town council, they were successful in settling a contract and gaining approval of their design, and shortly after the benches began popping up all over town. The benches were a new source of advertising for Chestermere businesses, and were put to use for marketing immediately.
Instead of stopping there, the Wilson’s decided to move in another marketing direction. After Kyle successfully introduced his dad to social media and the effectiveness of websites like Living Social and Groupon, they decided to put their own spin on it, and they came up with “Chestemere Daily Deals.”
“We wanted to expand product line, and in the summer we came up with some new things like LED billboard signage and some promotions stuff, but then we started thinking about the daily deal business,” Chuck said. “We just thought that it would be a great opportunity for a small town to have a daily deal online, as well as offer local businesses a new form of advertising.
“So we came up with the name, splashed it all over town, and in just over a month we’ve had over 700 subscribers,” he said. “The response from the community has been overwhelming, it is way above our expectations.”
Subscribers will get a daily coupon emailed to them, and they can either print off a hard copy to use, or simply keep the e-mail and show the coupon on their smart phone.
The different between Chestermere Daily Deals and sites like Groupon, is that the Chestermere deals do not have to be purchased, they are just coupons. However, Chuck said that they are careful to make sure the deals are really deals.
“When we get in touch with businesses that want to advertise, we sit down with them and ask them to give a good deal,” he said. “Something that’s 20, 30 or 50 per cent off on an item.
“Our mission is to connect businesses to the community, and to get more traffic into their store. So we work out the best thing they can afford to do, put their creative together for them, they approve it, and then it gets sent out.”
Because Chestermere doesn’t have an endless amount of businesses, some will potentially advertise with them again. Chuck said that if a business wants to do so, they will ask them to come up with a completely new deal.
“Home-based businesses of Chestermere have come out of the woodwork since we’ve started this. I don’t even know how many there are, but there are tons, and they all have different products and offers so we haven’t run out of content yet,” he said. “We will, so what we will probably do when that happens is bring businesses in from Calgary or Strathmore that are non-competitive to businesses in Chestermere.
“Our growth plan in the new year is to move into new markets. We understand that the daily deal business is a hot one, and we really enjoy it, and we’re going to grow for sure.”
Chuck said that they choose to live and work in Chestermere not only because it has been a good foundation for the business, but also because they enjoy the community and working with the people in it.
“We’ve lived here for over 21 years,” he said. “We like the community and we’re glad to be a part of it.”
As far as why they started the businesses, Kyle said that it was mostly driven by them wanting to help out local businesses in a community that is sometimes hard to work in.
“Anyone who has been here long enough has seen businesses come and go, and it’s heartbreaking every time,” Kyle said. “It’s our hometown, so one of the whole reasons for initially starting the project was that we wanted to try to create something that might make a difference and might contribute to helping these local businesses.
“We’re helping market them and so we’re contributing in a small way to help our hometown.”
Both said that they are excited to be a part of it, and are excited for the future.
Wilson Master Media is a full family affair, as it is made up of Chuck, who is in charge of business and product development, Kyle, who is in charge of sales, Chuck’s daughter Jami who is the office manager, bookkeeper and administrator, and his niece Ashleigh who does the graphic design.
For more information or to sign up for Chestermere Daily Deals, visit www.chestermeredailydeals.ca.
This is a great example of how forward thinking and some great community relationships can create a real win-win scenario for all parties involved.
Having went to high school with Kyle I am not surprised to see his drive take him in this direction. As the community expands I am excited to see how WMM will expand with it.
Keep it up!