Smart Marketing - Social Media - Building Brand Loyalty Through Community & Engagement

So today saw the launch of the Bonsai Interactive website, something that had become a labour of love over the last week or so.

Bonsai Interactive itself launched back in June, though it was more a soft launch with our social profiles. The website would have launched sooner, but we had some server hiccups so we transferred over to BlogOnCloud9, who also power this blog and who I have nothing but good words for.

So, Bonsai Interactive. What is it, and why are we kind of a big deal?

Bonsai – The Art of Growing

Bonsai Interactive grew from three people – myself, Troy Claus and Selina Jane Eckersall. Troy and I had founded the SRM Group, and Selina owned Sublime marketing agency. Troy knew Selina from way back, and we all became good friends.

It soon became clear that we had the same values, business ethics and determination to have fun along the way, both ourselves and with our clients. It also became clear that a merger was the natural way forward – and so Bonsai Interactive was born.

Why Bonsai? Simple – bonsai means “the art of growing”, and everything we do to help your business grow we’ll treat like a work of art – with care, delicacy, respect and most of all love.

After all, if you don’t love what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, may as well stop now. So, that’s where Bonsai came from.

SRM Group and Sublime

Obviously, whenever there’s a merger or coming together, one of the main questions that needs answering is what happens to any existing companies? Well, the good news here is that pretty much nothing changes.

While Bonsai Interactive will be the core business and look after marketing, strategy, branding and a host of other solutions, SRM Group and Sublime will remain as two separate entities under the Bonsai umbrella.

The SRM Group will offer social responsibility and education; organizational development; and strategies and workshops on social media for business and non-profits.

Sublime will continue to develop agency relationships and enhance the reputation and respect that Selina has built around the Sublime brand.

With Sublime, we’ll help other agencies get acquainted with the social web, both from their perspective and from that of their clients. Again, this will include workshops, outsourced projects and offering both an introduction and ongoing education for agencies not currently active in social media and digital marketing.

And then there’s Appficient. Still under wraps at the minute, Appficient will be our mobile application arm. We’re currently finalizing a very strong partnership and core team, with offices in Canada, the U.S. and Argentina.

Primarily developing for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry, Appficient will offer a different way of looking at mobile apps, and we’re looking forward to releasing more information very soon.

What Next?

While these arms will continue to operate individually, it may be that eventually everything falls under the Bonsai Interactive roof, if it makes sense to do this operationally.

In the meantime, Bonsai Interactive is live, and we’re looking to keep having fun, and adding a little bit of zen to the marketing space.

We have some very cool client projects we’ll be unleashing soon (including some funky branding exercises in Toronto). We also have some fun live events coming up, the first one being this fall to celebrate the release of The Social Network movie.

We’d love for you to join us online, and you can find us over at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or our blog. And let us know all about you while you’re there – after all, that’s what we’re all here for, right?

Oh, and the “kind of a big deal” tagline? We just kinda liked it.

Hope to see you over at Bonsai Interactive sometime – cheers!

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