TEAM CONCEPT AT ACADIA KEY FACTOR IN CREATION OF WESTJET’S BLUE SANTA CAMPAIGN By Rachel Cooper (’89)
H
undreds of tiny parachutes floated down at a gala Christmas party last December in Fort McMurray, the northern Alberta community devastated by wildfires in May 2016. The party guests, invited by WestJet, had lost their homes to the fires, and those parachutes brought personalized gift boxes, each containing a Christmas ornament with the recipient family’s photo and free WestJet flights. This initiative was the latest in the airline’s annual Christmas Miracle events whose videos have gone viral (see sidebar for links). They wouldn’t have happened, however, without Corey Evans (’97) and his team. Evans is WestJet’s Manager of Sponsorship, Community lnvestment, Experiential Marketing and Promotions. More than 47 million people have seen the 2013 Christmas Miracle video that features WestJet’s Blue Santa (blue being a company colour).
SPORTS MANAGEMENT AND BEYOND Originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Evans moved to Calgary soon after graduating from Acadia’s Recreation Management program with a specialty in sports management. His wife, Carrie Smith Evans (’97), was in the same program. “We met at Acadia,” Evans says. “We started dating in our third year and we’ve been together ever since.” He worked for six years with Canada Olympic Park in Calgary, primarily as the Special Events Coordinator. “In Recreation, you need to know a lot about planning and
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ACADIA BULLETIN Spring 2017
execution, and I was able to apply those skills right away to my career.” As a way of generating revenue, he facilitated corporate team-building events. “I would design packages, and we would sell them,” he says. After he worked on the finale of season 5 of The Amazing Race at Canada Olympic Park, he and his team started doing Amazing Race-themed team builders. A friend with WestJet asked Evans to do a team-building event on Vancouver Island for their People Department. The day before the event, he drove around and created an Amazing Race course. A few weeks later, when an opportunity arose to join the events team at WestJet, Evans jumped at it. “When I showed up for the interview,” he says, “I already knew the recruiter.” He worked for a year on the WestJet internal events team. Then the sponsorship team on the marketing side, who had started doing World Cup events for skiing, called Evans about his experience with sponsors at Canada Olympic Park. Soon he was working on the marketing team. “I was the Coordinator, Sports Sponsorship, which was great given my Acadia specialty in sports management,” he says. After several career advancements within the company, he was appointed to his present position.