2 minute read
There's No (Work)place Like Home
WHEN DAN EVANS AND BILL HUNT founded their eponymous communications agency in Calgary in 2008, it was both the beginning of a new chapter and an unlikely homecoming. The colleaguesturned-friends-turned-co-founders met 18 years ago as account executives at digital design agency Critical Mass, whose offices were then located in a six-storey mid-century building at 809 10th Avenue. When they went looking for their own office space, that same building (now owned by Allied Properties REIT) was available—a total coincidence but, also, a good omen. “For both of us, there was a sense that with our own agency, we wanted to turn back the clock a bit,” Evans says. “Ending up in that location, there was that sense of going home.”
This is exactly where both men wanted to be after years of serving massive international clients like Mercedes and Nike and often spending more time on airplanes than with their families. The work was rewarding, but the lifestyle wasn’t. “Some guys in our business are seduced by the idea of Madison Avenue or opening the big London office,” says Evans. “Neither of us ever had that urge.”
Instead, the two friends from Thunder Bay (Evans) and Lethbridge (Hunt) imagined an agency with a little bit of smalltown mentality—less of the smoke and mirrors commonly associated with the marketing world and more genuine solutions. “One motto that we adopted early on was a Tom Peters quote: ‘Execution is strategy,’” says Evans. In other words, when you have a good idea that you can put into action, you don’t have to spend much time worrying about how to spin it.
That same appreciation for folksiness informed the workplace environment they wanted to create. “Back then, we said we’d know we had gotten too big if we didn’t know the name of everyone who was working for us,” says Evans. Ten years later, keeping track of who’s who can be a challenge. Once a two-man start-up, Evans Hunt is now a 100-strong powerhouse with clients like Shaw Media, Tommy Bahama and Shopify. Just recently it executed a rebranding for Alterra Mountain Co. ski resorts. “Our people absolutely loved working on it,” says Hunt. “We’re in Calgary—I guess it’s a ski-bum thing.”
Last year, the company expanded. Evans Hunt now occupies four of the six floors of its Beltline building, with the new space allowing for a dedicated lounge area. (“Sitting around a boardroom table is not a particularly creative environment,” says Hunt.) Though the stereotype of the cool ad agency with a gaming room (which Evans Hunt has) and a stocked beer fridge (that too) is well worn, Evans and Hunt insist that it’s more than just fulfilling some post-Zuckerberg vision of the modern workplace. “Culture is not something we just pay lip service to,” says Hunt. Every month, in fact, they host a company-wide gathering called Drinks and Thinks—a chance for Evans and Hunt to communicate with their staff in a relaxed environment. It’s a way, Hunt says, to ensure that they make good on that original promise: “We have new employees stand up and introduce themselves to the group. Once you hear someone give a five-minute speech about themselves, it’s a lot harder to forget their name.”
BY COURTNEY SHEA
PHOTOS BY PHOTOS PAR COLIN WAY
