Canada Action Coalition Overview
Who we are
Canada Action is an industry-leading marketing and advocacy campaign with the primary goal of educating Canadians about the value of our resource sectors. A coordinated and well-funded campaign exists to derail our national prosperity by leveling false and misleading accusations at industry and disseminating these falsehoods to media and government. Only by presenting the facts to Canadians can we bring balance to the conversation.
With our limited resources, we have already been highly effective in terms of earning more traditional media, creating a significant social media presence, educating government, and generally galvanizing Albertans and Canadians behind the resources sector. Much of our success has come from our ability to engage grassroots support. Beyond our metrics and the success of our brand – notably the ‘I Love Oilsands’ initiative – we provide an opportunity for our supporters to make their voices heard at a national level; an opportunity that did not exist before Canada Action’s formation.
Our strategy
- Earn media through effective branding, counter protests, and other calls to action.
- Generate new and engaging content in order to solicit millions of impressions across multiple social media platforms. In January 2016 we had 48 million individual shares, re-tweets, views, or other engagements across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
- Use positive messaging to engage government at various levels.
- Always center the movement in grassroots support. Responsiveness, respect, and constant engagement are key to success in this area.
What we need
- The basics. Canada Action is funded by personal donations and sales of our gear. We are not funded by industry and we operate on a shoestring budget, which belies our significant impact. We need resources and support. In addition we need a printer, a postage machine for direct mail, a few surplus laptops, and signage for our anti-protest efforts. We also need advertising space, speaking opportunities and other co-branding opportunities.
- Support for our social media initiatives. With a little capital, we would be able to generate an astounding amount of content for Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Cash to mount a wider PR campaign. Our images are incredibly compelling and widely copied and shared, but we would love to give them more exposure through billboards and other advertising.
- Donations to purchase more gear so that we can send it out to our supporters. Our ‘I Love Oilsands’ brand is widely loved throughout Canada, but we need to be able to pay for stickers, buttons and other gear that we send out to our supporters nationwide.
- The continued vocal support of you and your colleagues through forwarding our messages, sharing our posts and mentioning our name – as many of you have been doing from the beginning!
Cody Battershill: Bio
Cody Battershill is a true champion of Canada’s oil and gas industry. Described by the National Post as “a one-man oil sands advocate”, Cody is a realtor by profession who has garnered international attention for his spirited defense of Canada’s resource sector.
He is the founder and spokesperson for Canada Action – a non-profit group that runs campaigns touting the benefits of Canada’s energy and resource sectors. This group works tirelessly to balance the conversation around Canada’s oil and gas industry and reaches millions of Canadians each week through various avenues.
Cody has been published in the National Post, Financial Post, Alberta Oil and other national, provincial and municpal media. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post and BOE Report. He has appeared on national radio and TV and is a speaker at postsecondary and industry conferences.
Advocate wants to change the conversation about Alberta oil sands:
http://globalnews.ca/video/1723021/advocate-wants-to-change-the-conversation-about-alberta-oil-sands
Alberta Oil:
http://www.albertaoilmagazine.com/2015/11/cody-battershill-oil-sands-advocacy/
National Post:
Canada should be the world leader in energy markets — so why isn’t it?