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THE BRIEF: “Hey, bleublancrouge and TBWA-Vancouver, what makes you great?”
Wednesday November 17th 2010By TO411Daily Columnist Linda Chandler
I’m thinking it’s independence.
As with Toronto’s john st., (featured in last week’s column), the two independently-owned Canadian agencies highlighted in this week’s Brief are their own head office. And this freedom, this absence of inherited initiatives and global adaptations is perhaps, in some part, what makes these agencies great!
They both also enjoy a new kind of collaboration with clients who work in close partnership with them to create relevant brands, and new brand initiatives that manifest in breakthrough communications, in a media neutral environment – that go like Cupid’s arrow straight to the heart of the consumer who tweets, Facebooks and Diggs them a lot. This hotness makes these shops the stop for creative thinkers, not just creatives, who make these agencies worthy of answering the question: What makes you great?
One agency is an iconoclast and the other is free at last.
Say hello to bleublancrouge – Montreal and TBWA-Vancouver.
The iconoclast: bleublancrouge with Sébastien Fauré , Senior Associate, Chairman of the Board
The Brief: What makes you great?
In 170 bpm!
Fauré: Courage. Courage forces you to go outside your comfort zone. You need to be scared. Should I do the thing nobody did?
If you ask everyone around you what they think, and they say it’s good… what then? Imagine if Showtime asked everybody what they thought of Dexter? What we need to be is innovative – We’ll make a little Dexter.
The Brief: Yes! Do that!
Fauré: You need to be willing to not ask someone’s permission. The problem with the industry is too many agencies and clients doing the right thing! A lot of brands spend a lot of money to stay invisible - to pass the test. Get 7 to 12-year olds and ask them what’s wicked and cool. Then there’s no barriers!
The Brief: Then Fauré said something truly blasphemous!
Fauré: Ask less what consumers think! Trust the expertise of creative people to see what the consumer wants next.
The Brief: Trust has proven to be a sound principle for bleublancrouge. As Marketing Magazine reported in “The Best of ’08 Agencies” … 2008 was a breakthrough year for the shop, which announced itself as a major player on the national stage by winning accounts for clients such as Vidéotron, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Imvescor, a multi-brand restaurant company that owns Baton Rouge, Mike’s Trattoria, Scores and Pizza Delight.
These national wins, Fauré believes, were spawned by successes closer to home. bleublancrouge’s “Believe” ad, part of the “Words Matter” campaign for The Gazette was tapped as the best brand awareness campaign across multiple platforms (for a newspaper with a circulation of 75,000-300,000) by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association last May, and also earned a Campaign of the Year nod at the Créas-the first time in Créa history that the top award went to an English-language campaign.
“What that campaign helped us to do is convince people that we can do English copy and English creative,” says Fauré. “If you combine strong advertising ideas with strong English and French capacities, then you can work from Montreal on accounts from everywhere.”*
Fauré: Stay courageous! Try new things!
The Brief: Try to break into an agency like bleublancrouge! But not until you read about our next “great” shop: TBWA-Vancouver
The Brief speaks with Andrea Southcott, President of TBWA-Vancouver – the one that’s free at last.
The Brief: What makes TBWA-Vancouver great?
Southcott: Fearlessness.
The Brief: Such as buying back the agency from the multinational network a few years ago?
Southcott: TBWA-Vancouver has the best of both worlds because we can make independent, local decisions and work with clients who fit our values without having to report to New York accountants
Vancouver is very creative and has small budgets. That creates an energy in the shop. The idea has to work to attract people. It’s all original. The planning. The culture. And the creative leadership in the brief stage – we put a lot of time into that.
The Brief: The muse of any great idea.
Southcott: And we have a shop full of people who make brands exciting and fearless. And we’re not afraid to swim in the deep end.
We can approach each of our clients with a fresh start – get the traditional things out of the way. Not be a slave to the old ways of doing things.
The Brief: Advertising is changing radically. The divisions between ads, online, events, testimonial, PR – they’re all open like the wild west. Bloggers have weight.
Southcott: Changes in business have changed how we do business. Clients expect us to be partners and find exciting new ways to connect their brand to the consumer.
With the Smart Car we had a small budget but we wanted the consumer to experience the car. So we branded the car as a taxi. And when people hailed it, we offered them the driver’s seat and a no fare drive. We created small space print ads along with radio to promote the test drive, and TBWA filmed drivers for a later YouTube posting.
The Brief: Small budgets but great experiences.
Southcott: For Okanagan Spring, a Vernon, B.C. beer company, we developed this online engagement campaign which invites consumers to ask Okanagan to sponsor their everyday occasions. Like barbecues and baby showers!
The website Sponsermespring.ca invites people to send Okanagan videos explaining why the beer company should host their event. Visitors to the site would vote for their favourite entries. Okanagan’s sales went up by 10% in a month, and in two months had received 13,000 hits. By doing great work we naturally attract great talent… and great clients.
The Brief: Bryce Zurowski, regional VP western Canada, Okanagan Spring Brewery says a great deal about what makes TBWA great.
“After six years of stalled brand growth, the work by TBWA has reaffirmed our leadership position in the category and vaulted us to a place of real aggressive growth again this past year,” he says, adding that the brewery is now hitting double-digit positive growth numbers. “They’ve pushed us into new mediums and they’ve helped move us from very functional type advertising to develop an emotional tone of voice for the brand.”*
The Brief: What we learned from talking with these two great shops is that “great” includes the client. A client who challenges their agencies to innovate in ways that look like frisbees flying above Jack Russells jumping wildly across a vast park…
Or, a collaboration of people who believe great advertising isn’t an inch from good. It’s an inch from terrible.
—
Sources for bleublancrouge:
* Marketing Magazine on bleublancrouge
Sources for TBWA-Vancouver
Smart Car Plays Taxi to Vancouverites
*Click to Sponsormespring.ca
Marketing Magazine on Okanagan Spring Brewery
—
Comment to Linda at this address: thebrief@to411.com.
LinkedIn // Facebook // Twitter
Front Page, Industry News
THE BRIEF: “Hey, bleublancrouge and TBWA-Vancouver, what makes you great?”
Wednesday November 17th 2010By TO411Daily Columnist Linda Chandler
I’m thinking it’s independence.
As with Toronto’s john st., (featured in last week’s column), the two independently-owned Canadian agencies highlighted in this week’s Brief are their own head office. And this freedom, this absence of inherited initiatives and global adaptations is perhaps, in some part, what makes these agencies great!
They both also enjoy a new kind of collaboration with clients who work in close partnership with them to create relevant brands, and new brand initiatives that manifest in breakthrough communications, in a media neutral environment – that go like Cupid’s arrow straight to the heart of the consumer who tweets, Facebooks and Diggs them a lot. This hotness makes these shops the stop for creative thinkers, not just creatives, who make these agencies worthy of answering the question: What makes you great?
One agency is an iconoclast and the other is free at last.
Say hello to bleublancrouge – Montreal and TBWA-Vancouver.
The iconoclast: bleublancrouge with Sébastien Fauré , Senior Associate, Chairman of the Board
The Brief: What makes you great?
In 170 bpm!
Fauré: Courage. Courage forces you to go outside your comfort zone. You need to be scared. Should I do the thing nobody did?
If you ask everyone around you what they think, and they say it’s good… what then? Imagine if Showtime asked everybody what they thought of Dexter? What we need to be is innovative – We’ll make a little Dexter.
The Brief: Yes! Do that!
Fauré: You need to be willing to not ask someone’s permission. The problem with the industry is too many agencies and clients doing the right thing! A lot of brands spend a lot of money to stay invisible - to pass the test. Get 7 to 12-year olds and ask them what’s wicked and cool. Then there’s no barriers!
The Brief: Then Fauré said something truly blasphemous!
Fauré: Ask less what consumers think! Trust the expertise of creative people to see what the consumer wants next.
The Brief: Trust has proven to be a sound principle for bleublancrouge. As Marketing Magazine reported in “The Best of ’08 Agencies” … 2008 was a breakthrough year for the shop, which announced itself as a major player on the national stage by winning accounts for clients such as Vidéotron, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Imvescor, a multi-brand restaurant company that owns Baton Rouge, Mike’s Trattoria, Scores and Pizza Delight.
These national wins, Fauré believes, were spawned by successes closer to home. bleublancrouge’s “Believe” ad, part of the “Words Matter” campaign for The Gazette was tapped as the best brand awareness campaign across multiple platforms (for a newspaper with a circulation of 75,000-300,000) by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association last May, and also earned a Campaign of the Year nod at the Créas-the first time in Créa history that the top award went to an English-language campaign.
“What that campaign helped us to do is convince people that we can do English copy and English creative,” says Fauré. “If you combine strong advertising ideas with strong English and French capacities, then you can work from Montreal on accounts from everywhere.”*
Fauré: Stay courageous! Try new things!
The Brief: Try to break into an agency like bleublancrouge! But not until you read about our next “great” shop: TBWA-Vancouver
The Brief speaks with Andrea Southcott, President of TBWA-Vancouver – the one that’s free at last.
The Brief: What makes TBWA-Vancouver great?
Southcott: Fearlessness.
The Brief: Such as buying back the agency from the multinational network a few years ago?
Southcott: TBWA-Vancouver has the best of both worlds because we can make independent, local decisions and work with clients who fit our values without having to report to New York accountants
Vancouver is very creative and has small budgets. That creates an energy in the shop. The idea has to work to attract people. It’s all original. The planning. The culture. And the creative leadership in the brief stage – we put a lot of time into that.
The Brief: The muse of any great idea.
Southcott: And we have a shop full of people who make brands exciting and fearless. And we’re not afraid to swim in the deep end.
We can approach each of our clients with a fresh start – get the traditional things out of the way. Not be a slave to the old ways of doing things.
The Brief: Advertising is changing radically. The divisions between ads, online, events, testimonial, PR – they’re all open like the wild west. Bloggers have weight.
Southcott: Changes in business have changed how we do business. Clients expect us to be partners and find exciting new ways to connect their brand to the consumer.
With the Smart Car we had a small budget but we wanted the consumer to experience the car. So we branded the car as a taxi. And when people hailed it, we offered them the driver’s seat and a no fare drive. We created small space print ads along with radio to promote the test drive, and TBWA filmed drivers for a later YouTube posting.
The Brief: Small budgets but great experiences.
Southcott: For Okanagan Spring, a Vernon, B.C. beer company, we developed this online engagement campaign which invites consumers to ask Okanagan to sponsor their everyday occasions. Like barbecues and baby showers!
The website Sponsermespring.ca invites people to send Okanagan videos explaining why the beer company should host their event. Visitors to the site would vote for their favourite entries. Okanagan’s sales went up by 10% in a month, and in two months had received 13,000 hits. By doing great work we naturally attract great talent… and great clients.
The Brief: Bryce Zurowski, regional VP western Canada, Okanagan Spring Brewery says a great deal about what makes TBWA great.
“After six years of stalled brand growth, the work by TBWA has reaffirmed our leadership position in the category and vaulted us to a place of real aggressive growth again this past year,” he says, adding that the brewery is now hitting double-digit positive growth numbers. “They’ve pushed us into new mediums and they’ve helped move us from very functional type advertising to develop an emotional tone of voice for the brand.”*
The Brief: What we learned from talking with these two great shops is that “great” includes the client. A client who challenges their agencies to innovate in ways that look like frisbees flying above Jack Russells jumping wildly across a vast park…
Or, a collaboration of people who believe great advertising isn’t an inch from good. It’s an inch from terrible.
—
Sources for bleublancrouge:
* Marketing Magazine on bleublancrouge
Sources for TBWA-Vancouver
Smart Car Plays Taxi to Vancouverites
*Click to Sponsormespring.ca
Marketing Magazine on Okanagan Spring Brewery
—
Comment to Linda at this address: thebrief@to411.com.
LinkedIn // Facebook // Twitter
Leave a Reply
Front Page, Industry News
THE BRIEF: “Hey, bleublancrouge and TBWA-Vancouver, what makes you great?”
Wednesday November 17th 2010By TO411Daily Columnist Linda Chandler
I’m thinking it’s independence.
As with Toronto’s john st., (featured in last week’s column), the two independently-owned Canadian agencies highlighted in this week’s Brief are their own head office. And this freedom, this absence of inherited initiatives and global adaptations is perhaps, in some part, what makes these agencies great!
They both also enjoy a new kind of collaboration with clients who work in close partnership with them to create relevant brands, and new brand initiatives that manifest in breakthrough communications, in a media neutral environment – that go like Cupid’s arrow straight to the heart of the consumer who tweets, Facebooks and Diggs them a lot. This hotness makes these shops the stop for creative thinkers, not just creatives, who make these agencies worthy of answering the question: What makes you great?
One agency is an iconoclast and the other is free at last.
Say hello to bleublancrouge – Montreal and TBWA-Vancouver.
The iconoclast: bleublancrouge with Sébastien Fauré , Senior Associate, Chairman of the Board
The Brief: What makes you great?
In 170 bpm!
Fauré: Courage. Courage forces you to go outside your comfort zone. You need to be scared. Should I do the thing nobody did?
If you ask everyone around you what they think, and they say it’s good… what then? Imagine if Showtime asked everybody what they thought of Dexter? What we need to be is innovative – We’ll make a little Dexter.
The Brief: Yes! Do that!
Fauré: You need to be willing to not ask someone’s permission. The problem with the industry is too many agencies and clients doing the right thing! A lot of brands spend a lot of money to stay invisible - to pass the test. Get 7 to 12-year olds and ask them what’s wicked and cool. Then there’s no barriers!
The Brief: Then Fauré said something truly blasphemous!
Fauré: Ask less what consumers think! Trust the expertise of creative people to see what the consumer wants next.
The Brief: Trust has proven to be a sound principle for bleublancrouge. As Marketing Magazine reported in “The Best of ’08 Agencies” … 2008 was a breakthrough year for the shop, which announced itself as a major player on the national stage by winning accounts for clients such as Vidéotron, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Imvescor, a multi-brand restaurant company that owns Baton Rouge, Mike’s Trattoria, Scores and Pizza Delight.
These national wins, Fauré believes, were spawned by successes closer to home. bleublancrouge’s “Believe” ad, part of the “Words Matter” campaign for The Gazette was tapped as the best brand awareness campaign across multiple platforms (for a newspaper with a circulation of 75,000-300,000) by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association last May, and also earned a Campaign of the Year nod at the Créas-the first time in Créa history that the top award went to an English-language campaign.
“What that campaign helped us to do is convince people that we can do English copy and English creative,” says Fauré. “If you combine strong advertising ideas with strong English and French capacities, then you can work from Montreal on accounts from everywhere.”*
Fauré: Stay courageous! Try new things!
The Brief: Try to break into an agency like bleublancrouge! But not until you read about our next “great” shop: TBWA-Vancouver
The Brief speaks with Andrea Southcott, President of TBWA-Vancouver – the one that’s free at last.
The Brief: What makes TBWA-Vancouver great?
Southcott: Fearlessness.
The Brief: Such as buying back the agency from the multinational network a few years ago?
Southcott: TBWA-Vancouver has the best of both worlds because we can make independent, local decisions and work with clients who fit our values without having to report to New York accountants
Vancouver is very creative and has small budgets. That creates an energy in the shop. The idea has to work to attract people. It’s all original. The planning. The culture. And the creative leadership in the brief stage – we put a lot of time into that.
The Brief: The muse of any great idea.
Southcott: And we have a shop full of people who make brands exciting and fearless. And we’re not afraid to swim in the deep end.
We can approach each of our clients with a fresh start – get the traditional things out of the way. Not be a slave to the old ways of doing things.
The Brief: Advertising is changing radically. The divisions between ads, online, events, testimonial, PR – they’re all open like the wild west. Bloggers have weight.
Southcott: Changes in business have changed how we do business. Clients expect us to be partners and find exciting new ways to connect their brand to the consumer.
With the Smart Car we had a small budget but we wanted the consumer to experience the car. So we branded the car as a taxi. And when people hailed it, we offered them the driver’s seat and a no fare drive. We created small space print ads along with radio to promote the test drive, and TBWA filmed drivers for a later YouTube posting.
The Brief: Small budgets but great experiences.
Southcott: For Okanagan Spring, a Vernon, B.C. beer company, we developed this online engagement campaign which invites consumers to ask Okanagan to sponsor their everyday occasions. Like barbecues and baby showers!
The website Sponsermespring.ca invites people to send Okanagan videos explaining why the beer company should host their event. Visitors to the site would vote for their favourite entries. Okanagan’s sales went up by 10% in a month, and in two months had received 13,000 hits. By doing great work we naturally attract great talent… and great clients.
The Brief: Bryce Zurowski, regional VP western Canada, Okanagan Spring Brewery says a great deal about what makes TBWA great.
“After six years of stalled brand growth, the work by TBWA has reaffirmed our leadership position in the category and vaulted us to a place of real aggressive growth again this past year,” he says, adding that the brewery is now hitting double-digit positive growth numbers. “They’ve pushed us into new mediums and they’ve helped move us from very functional type advertising to develop an emotional tone of voice for the brand.”*
The Brief: What we learned from talking with these two great shops is that “great” includes the client. A client who challenges their agencies to innovate in ways that look like frisbees flying above Jack Russells jumping wildly across a vast park…
Or, a collaboration of people who believe great advertising isn’t an inch from good. It’s an inch from terrible.
—
Sources for bleublancrouge:
* Marketing Magazine on bleublancrouge
Sources for TBWA-Vancouver
Smart Car Plays Taxi to Vancouverites
*Click to Sponsormespring.ca
Marketing Magazine on Okanagan Spring Brewery
—
Comment to Linda at this address: thebrief@to411.com.
LinkedIn // Facebook // Twitter
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