Cove Media began when the principals, Al Hyland and Elizabeth Rains, moved to Smith Cove in 2010. Smith Cove is an ocean-side neighbourhood on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. Al heads the company’s paid-media division. Elizabeth specializes in earned media development.

Al Hyland is one of the top-rated educational marketing strategists in Canada. During the past thirty years he created and managed many hundreds of successful marketing campaigns for individual clients, mid-sized corporations, and large non-profits. About twenty years ago he  transformed the brands of two private career colleges though savvy media planning and buying. That led him to focus on educational marketing. For the past fourteen years he has planned all of the prominent media campaigns for Douglas College. Through Cove Media, Al has consulted with dozens of colleges and universities, transforming their campaigns that had low response rates into highly successful, well targeted campaigns. Through well-honed strategy and superior negotiations skills, in every instance he was able to significantly reduce the institutions’ costs for paid advertising.

Al has been certified in online marketing and analytics by Google, in mobile marketing through the University of San Francisco and the Canadian Mobile Marketing Association, and as a Hootsuite social media consultant. He teaches workshops on Facebook, Hootsuite, and mobile marketing.

Al frequently travels as a guest speaker and media planning consultant. He has been a director on both on the Gibsons Chambers of Commerce and on the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce and is currently on the board of Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue.

Elizabeth Rains, an award-winning journalist, was the head of the Publishing Program at Langara College and is currently teaching in the Editing Certificate Program at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of two non-fiction books, and has  been a reporter for the Vancouver Sun, an editor for Canada Wide Media, and the publisher of Pacific Rim Magazine. She was an advertising copywriter for Ken Koo Creative and Vision Presentations, large advertising studios in Vancouver. She worked many years as a publicist in the education sector.

Elizabeth was twice president of the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers and was vice-president of the Capilano Press Society. She has been a frequent public speaker on public affairs and earned media topics.