Safe Digging Month – April 2013

1. Safe Digging Month – April 2013 • An exclusive sponsorship opportunity

2. Objectives • To offer our readers stories that they are interested in and that are relevant to the demographic (52 years old average age, high income earners, well educated). • To offer readers a comprehensive in paper and online series that will offer a continued presence online for readers for two months • To allow a relevant and credible sponsor to align with this content and present a brand message that will be enhanced by the content of this series • Sponsor may be able to offer experts that The Vancouver Sun will use to answer reader questions • Sponsor may write an Op Ed piece to be printed on the Ideas and Opinions page (subject to Editorial approval)

3. April 2013 will once again be National Safe Digging Month, the time of year when all Common Ground Alliance stakeholders come together to communicate how important it is that professionals and homeowners alike follow the safe digging process to help prevent injuries, property damage and inconvenient outages. Facts: An underground utility line is unintentionally damaged approximately once every three minutes nationwide, and about one in three incidents are caused because the digger did not call. The phone notification begins the process to learn the approximate locations of underground utility lines, according to CGA data. Unauthorized digging or excavation is the number one cause of pipeline safety issues, and yet, every year, failure to "call before you dig" results in injury, legal hassles and disruption of utilities - like power, water, and telephone - for hundreds of thousands of individuals and families. With a continued and coordinated focus on raising awareness, Alliance Pipeline is committed to this important safety initiative. What is safe digging month?

4. Format – Safe Digging Month • Print elements will include: a main story; industry profiles with photos; stories about the issues and the impact across the province both commercially and for residential digging • Pages of content will have advertising on every page. • Run date: Late March or early April (TBD). • The digital components will include video and pic galleries. Stories by area and risk factor • Reader questions and online experts will allow people at work to go to the web for follow up information from their morning reading of the series • Sponsors will have full colour ads on the pages including front banner, full page, half and quarter pages • Online, these same sponsors will have all ad units on a rotating basis on a dedicated online topic page: www.vancouversun/safedigging • The online topic page will continue to be live for two months following the section with relevant evergreen content tagged and housed here through to the end of this period

5. Story list: What’s lurking underground? Look at what we had underground 50 years ago vs today: cable, fibre optics, gas, jet fuel lines, phone lines, sewers, water. Example: Main & Terminal has 14 different lines from 14 different firms/utilities and municipalities. Track the # of mishaps/accidents in Metro Vancouver  and BC The cost of these accidental ruptures for the firms and sometime households The question of liability: who pays and under what circumstances? Residential and BC One Call: A facilitator who you can call to find out what’s underneath before a dig, including landscaping your front or back yard. But not all firms or municipalities are part of it. Why not have a central repository of information? Are there new technologies that can help detect all the underground cables, etc. What should a BC household know before digging? The dos’s and don’ts. Website that you can to for information.

6. Issues & Ideas Page: op-eds A column by a Sponsor spokesperson to talk about why these themes are vital to the growth of our city, province and country. Why does what’s under the ground matter? (column subject to Editorial Approval) Pictured: Op-ed by Indira Samarasekara, President of the University of Alberta in Tuesday Nov 6, 2012 - Vancouver Sun

7. Website Dedicated Series Topic page Front page key to topic page Listed on “Don’t Miss” bar • Archived stories from the section will reside here for three months • Daily updated stories tagged from the web • Five minute videos with experts on the subject from sponsor and other sources • Call out for reader questions and stories that can be published on-line • Search engine Optimization • All sponsor ad units on the page are available to the sponsor companies or partners and can be linked by URL to sponsor websites and relevant information

8. Sponsorship of the Safe Digging Section and Microsite • Ad rates: • Front banner: $5000 (only ad on the page) • Full page: $12,000 net (full colour incl. online) • Half page: $6,500 net (full colour incl. online) • Quarter page: $4,500 (full colour incl. online) • Value added: • Equal sponsorship of the Microsite with • additional online ads targeted to business • channels with front banner, half page ad or bigger • (min. 50,000 online impressions) • Editorial marketing to enhance the series • and push readers to the topic page and the • in-paper content Style only

9. Profile:An influential and affluent audience 52% women/48% men Average age is 48 (average age of the market is 46) 35% have a HHI $100,000+ Average household income is $86,291 (versus the market average of $81,908) 79% own their home 50% are university graduates 23% are senior/ other mgrs./ professionals 59% are married/ living together Source: NADbank 2011/12 Mid-Year Study Base: 916,700/46% Metro Vancouver adults who read the Vancouver Sun in the past week in print or website.

10. 1.5M unique visitors, Vancouver Sun Online profile: Visitor Profile %Index GENDER Men 56% 112 Women 44% 88 AGE Under 18 11% 54 18-24 9% 89 25-34 20% 119 35-44 22% 132 45-54 18% 109 55+ 19% 103 REGION BC 46% 329 Prairies 15% 83 Ontario 31% 79 Quebec 5% 20 Atlantic 4% 56 HHLD INCOME $60K+ 68% 110 $75K+ 50% 102 $100K+ 27% 95 Source: comScore Media, Sept 2012