Frontenac Heritage Festival gets fresh marketing

Jeff Green | Feb 02, 2014

Thanks to a grant from the St. Lawrence College Employment Centre, the Frontenac Heritage Festival will employ a new marketing strategy this year and into the future.

Jesse Mills, a graduate of Sharbot Lake High School who has studied film in Toronto, has been engaged to help upgrade the festival's website and facebook page, to help promote the upcoming festival, and to create some videos to create visibility for the festival into the future.

Mills started his one-month contract with the festival late last week, and he began by bringing the festival website up to date, including all of this year's events and plotting the locations of each event on a map.

“The main thing I'm here to do is promote the festival, particularly to a younger group. I'll be running around and filming things for the next few weeks,” Mills said.

This year's Heritage Festival, which is set for the Family Day weekend (February 14-17), features many of the popular events from previous years, including the Sharbot Lake Snow Drags, the Fall River Pioneer Log Home, The Polar Bear Plunge and the Talent Show.

New this year will be a number of events on Saturday in Arden, including displays by the both the Kennebec Historical Society and the Kennebec Trappers, a Fur Traders Camp re-enactment, chain saw wood carving by Rob Deruchie, and more at the Kennebec Hall, the Arden Legion Fishing Derby and the Kennebec Lake Family Fun Day.

One of the events that Jesse Mills is promoting is the revamped Festival Photo Contest. This year there is only one category for the contest, Frontenac Landmarks, and entries, up to three per photographer, can be submitted to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The deadline for submissions is February 10, and there are cash prizes for contest winners, which will be announced on the Saturday of the festival.

Further details are available at the festival website, which is most easily accessed through the Frontenac Heritage Festival facebook page or Twitter feed.

“One of the things I plan to do is prepare a video from previous years' festivals and during the festival I plan to get as much footage as possible to prepare videos for internet release afterwards,” said Jesse Mills.

Mills graduated from Sharbot Lake High School in 2011, and has a sister attending Granite Ridge Education Centre, so he hopes to be able to approach the students and staff at the school seeking volunteers to help out at various festival events.

“I also want to encourage students to participate in the festival this year,” he said. “As I was updating the website I saw how many diverse events there are and I began thinking about how I can let people know what will be happening.”

He will also be looking at promoting the festival in Kingston and beyond through services such as Kijiji and Craigslist.

Look for more about the Heritage Festival in these pages over the next two weeks. A flyer will be included in next week's paper in many communities, or go to sites.google.com/site/frontenacheritagefestival/