Designing with purpose

Daughter Creative wins over brands with technical expertise and collaboration

unwanted surprises but also ensures the agency is accurately capturing what the client wants to message and deliver.

True to its collaborative culture, Daughter invited TransAlta to its offices, where it displayed 40-to-50 early logo concepts on a long corkboard wall.

“We asked them to stick a note on everything that was interesting to them,” Dawes explains. Then they walked the wall again, took everything that had a sticky note on it and were asked why they liked the ones they chose.

As a result, early on in the RFP process the agency had already done a huge amount of the work and had client insight and feedback. It made some adjustments, and by the time it came to present, the prospective client already had a strong sense of ownership in the work.

DDAUGHTER CREATIVE BLENDS design-centric thinking and campaignable ideas to help brands distill their positioning and go to market with a fresh voice aimed at winning over new audiences.

And it all hinges on collaboration that starts very early on, according to Jill Dewes, partner and director of business development at the Calgarybased agency. It’s an approach it used to score a major win for a TransAlta rebranding campaign.

The 110-year-old energy company wanted more than just a corporate rebrand. It wanted to be seen through a consumer lens.

Above: The Alberta Cancer Foundation’s 2022 Report to Our Community is told from two points of view. The printed piece can be opened two ways: one revealing an accordion of pages that tracks one person's cancer journey, alongside a business case for how donations feed into care, treatment, and research.

How did a small-but-nimble independent shop get on a multinational, corporate brand’s radar? A member of TransAlta’s team liked the rebranding campaign Daughter had done for Cabin Brewing, resonating with the mandate to come across friendlier and more human. It wanted to know how TransAlta would look through more of a consumer lens, Dewes explains.

“Someone internally asked who did the Cabin brand work, and as a result, we were invited to be part of a competitive pitch,” she says, noting that the agency has worked with other craft beer brands, including The Establishment, Annex Ale Project, and Big Rock.

Daughter maintains a confident “We got this” mien, with a critical qualifier: “‘We’ includes you.” It means bringing the client into the process from the outset – even in the RFP phase – which some aren’t necessarily comfortable with. But to the Daughter team it’s an invaluable test that not only avoids

Ultimately, “TransAlta chose us because the work we presented felt like something aspirational they could grow into as they transition to clean energy,” Dewes says. “Their CEO also was excited to support a local, women-led and -owned company.”

The win has blossomed into a North American and Australian mandate to build awareness around the organization’s journey to carbon neutrality.

Daughter’s definition of campaign success makes it further stand out.

Dewes points to work for the Calgary Cancer Centre. The key insight? Cancer isn’t the death sentence it used to be. Albertans have the opportunity to take away its power and give it back to patients and family members.

Hence, “Own cancer.” As Dewes explains, “The more we own cancer, the less it owns us,” weaving in the idea that donating to the centre is one way to “own” it. “It flipped the dynamic on something that has made people feel powerless, and spoke to an Albertan determination when it comes to taking on big challenges."

The campaign included overall branding efforts, a digital portal (www.owncancer.ca), and a TV spot. The centre is tracking ahead of its fundraising objective ($150 million in two-and-a-half years of the $250 million five-year goal).

Daughter is creatively driven with 10 staff on the creative side and four on the account services and finance side, including Dewes. It took home 2022 bronze for Small Agency of the Year and Design Agency of the Year, and Dewes foresees growth to just under 20 employees over the next five-to-seven years.

She summarizes that Daughter’s business and brand is all about people. “We’re not a brand talking to a business. We’re people talking to people. Our goal isn’t to centre your brand, it’s to centre how you’re solving a problem.”

Above: 1 To draw attention to the alarming and often unacknowledged rates of childhood literacy in Canada, Daughter created a book that can’t be read, and placed it at Calgary’s biggest book sale. The “Left Unread” platform also included OOH and ambient elements such as lawn signs, stickers, and bookmarks and the website: leftunread.ca. 2 Daughter’s rebranding campaign for energy company TransAlta sought to position the brand as friendlier and more human, like any other poster on Instagram. 3 This campaign for ConnectFirst Credit Union highlights the institution’s personable customer service. It generated over 12,000 visits to the campaign landing page and exceeded the goal of 3,000 conversions. 4 Annex Ale Project’s seasonal can design system reflects the fleeting nature of small-batch beers, and allows for new releases with minimal tweaking. The launch of the new packaging led to a 50% sales increase in AAP’s experimental batch production and won Daughter multiple awards.

CONTACT: Jill Dewes

Partner and director of business development

Jill@daughtercreative.com