The Calgary Herald
February 10, 2009
By David Parker

Twist Marketing Managing Director Catherine Proulx and CEO Roger Jewett, who recently bought half of the firm.
Photograph by: Lorraine Hjalte, Calgary Herald

It's been one year since Roger Jewett left marketing company Rare Method, where he enjoyed lots of travel while mulling over his next business challenge. Not too surprising that his passion for marketing provided him with a new business card that reads CEO Twist Marketing.

Jewett has purchased a 50 per cent interest in the company that Catherine Proulx founded in 2002; she continues to manage the day-today operations of Twist as managing director.

As the former CFO at Resort of the Canadian Rockies, Jewett says he loves the numbers game and has proved his ability in building successful companies. As president of publicly-traded Rare Method he took it from a fledgling interactive marketing company in 2000 to a $10 million business six years later with 80 staff here and 20 in its Salt Lake City office.

Proulx's business background includes a position as marketing manager for a high-tech company and as a printing firm representative. Calling on small companies, she was soon helping with their marketing on top of their print needs and launched Twist Marketing to fill a niche she felt advertising agencies were not covering.

She started with a staff of three and aggressively went after a client base. One of her first was BJ Services, an oil-field service company that is still with her and looking forward to a move into Torode's new 8th & 8th office tower.

Other long-term accounts include Brews Supply that Twist helped in its rebranding of a new company name and FSC Architects & Engineers based in Yellowknife. A leader in cold-climate and remote-region projects, it has 60-plus staff working in four northern locations. Twist developed its marketing strategy and helped with its recruitment, marketing and new online services.

A large part of Twist's growth--it now has eight staff--is community branding. Proulx responded to an RFP and won the contract to work with the district of Elkford, B. C. to build community pride, attract more residents, increase tourism and encourage economic development.

A similar campaign has just been launched with Castlegar, B. C. After conducting extensive research that included workshops, open houses and stakeholder meetings it created a new town logo and other visual elements to help build a strong community brand.

Twist conducted a community assessment of Chestermere in the fall of 2008 and is in the planning stages of helping the town maintain its identity, values and ideals during this rapid growth.

As a leader in this field, Twist has also been hired by Economic Developers Association of Alberta to design and launch its new website.
With Jewett on board, Twist is looking forward to growth opportunities and expects to double in size this year--it's already looking for larger space.

Read the original article in The Calgary Herald.