FCB: CREATIVITY AS AN ECONOMIC MULTIPLIER

How have you evolved your approach in the last few years?

We’ve had to fundamentally change how we work and the way we think. It’s meant making deeper investments in research tools, data analytics, marketing automation and nimble production capabilities.

It’s also meant finding new solutions to extend budgets and reach customers. We’ve been very proactive in finding and creating partnerships between our clients and other trusted brands as a way to connect them with new audiences, find new avenues for growth or change behaviours. From partnering Lotto Max with Mr. Saturday and Creamery X to help them reach a younger player base, to partnering the Bank of Montreal with Twitch to connect gamers with financial advice, to partnering with Google and LinkedIn to fundamentally change the way these platforms work for people with Down syndrome.

To unlock all of this, we’ve had to foster a culture of innovation and experimentation, encouraging our teams to test new ideas and approaches that go outside the box of what a marketing solution can be.

How have you changed the way you mentor and recruit?

If there was one theme over the last few years around talent, it’s the focus on DE&I. We’ve exponentially increased our rigour around it. We recognized that our traditional means of sourcing talent usually led to hiring people with the same experiences we had. Not a recipe for success around diversity of thinking. So, we’ve broadened our search to not only include people with transferable skills from outside our industry, but also actively source talent from underrepresented communities through long-term partnerships with organizations like POCAM and IMDOINGIT to bridge and expand our talent market.

What skills are you looking for and developing?

It’s pretty simple. People who are great at what they do and great humans, too. We have a strict “no wankers” rule. We have a strong culture and protect it fiercely. Beyond that, we are looking for people who are as passionate about proving that creativity is an economic multiplier as we are.

What makes an agency great?

What makes an agency great is people working towards the same goal. For us, “great” means being the most innovative agency in Canada, so we’ve implemented habits to get us there. One of those habits is regular learning sessions at our weekly all-staffs where we share everything from emerging production solutions to new platforms and technologies, to what’s happening right now in culture. Every week, one of our staff also shares what creatively inspires them beyond advertising. This has proven to be an incredible way to open the aperture on creativity. One of our most successful habits is our annual Hackathon. Every year we identify priority creative briefs with our clients, then block two days for the entire creative and strategy department to “hack” them. This is our way of investing in one of our core goals – to do our best work across all our brands and teams. We want great campaigns coming from everywhere, across agency teams and clients. We call this getting lucky, which ironically, more often than not, has nothing to do with luck and more to do with being intentional about how we work.

What other work do you admire most from the previous year?

Well, I wouldn’t be true to everything I’ve talked about if I didn’t pick something that I thought was the perfect intersection of purpose, innovation, a killer partnership and just plain stupid fun. I wish I had come up with the Dominos “Stranger Things” partnership that put fans into Eleven’s shoes by creating a mind-ordering app that mimicked her telekinetic powers. It used a mix of facial and eye tracking technology to let customers order a pizza using only gestures. Pizza and watching TV are a very expected match, but they took something that could have been pedestrian and used creativity to establish a new benchmark for partnerships and what it takes to make them successful.