Invested in brands

Open employs a process by which clients are invited early to the creative table. “That way you get better work, rather than sequestering ourselves and coming back with a ‘ta-da,’” he says. “We engage them early and often.”

The philosophy has paid off with major longtime clients including Food Basics (Metro Inc.) and fashion brand Smythe. Twitter was a client until Elon Musk became its owner, and Google Canada was recently added to the roster.

Many of Open’s 15 employees have also stuck around. Director of client services Anne Ngo has been on staff since nearly day one, while art director Jessica Rogers has been in place for a decade.

During the pandemic, Open added digital, video and print production to its services “to be faster than we already were,” Beauvais says. “Clients are hungry for content that can be on platforms quickly.”

Beauvais notes that many other agencies provide content production, but only as separate entities. “In our case, it’s baked in with the creative folks” and Open can respond to client needs within an hour.

TTORONTO AGENCY OPEN IS putting its money where its mouth is with the opening of its Alchemy division, which invests in some of its clients by taking a small minority equity stake in their firms.

Alchemy “is a way for us to telegraph to our clients and to the market that we believe so much that our work works, we’ll put not only our time but also our money behind it,” says partner Martin Beauvais. “It's just one of the ways we show confidence in our work.”

Above: Food Basics’ annual Wowza! event, in which shoppers get great grocery deals, has become a major traffic driver for the brand. This spot features a dancing customer shopping to the tune of “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”

The new venture-capital-like division is investing “largely in B2C brands where we can affect everything from design to how they market,” says partner Christian Mathieu. Investments have been targeted at pharmaceutical and women’s lifestyle company Damiva; CBD wellness brand Yesterday Wellness; paddleboard maker Beau Lake; and the DTC Orthotics Direct.

It’s just one way Open, which launched in 2010, tries to stay “open” to new ways of doing things.

“We started with an eye toward opening things up and doing things differently,” says Mathieu. The agency aims to keep an open mind on everything from how it engages with clients and hires staff to how it gets compensated, he says.

“There’s also a firm belief that if we do work that works for our clients, it’s going to have to be creative, different and memorable,” says Beauvais.

Mathieu adds that arguably the most creative work is the most effective.

Among its major campaigns, Open recently spearheaded a rebrand for Metro’s online delivery service in Ontario and Quebec. The “As You Wish/Comme je veux” campaign and branding highlights the Metro difference when it comes to online delivery, which uses humans instead of robots, thus offering greater potential customization for shoppers.

The rebranding has been emblazoned on Metro trucks, making the vehicles moving billboards. It also includes OOH, digital, web, and email marketing.

Beauvais, an ex-Montrealer, says the Metro campaign reveals how Open works seamlessly in both English and French. “We usually come up with a campaign that will work for both markets,” he says. “We say ‘one office, two languages, and one less problem for clients.’”

For Food Basics, Open established a notable event “that nobody else could own, at a time of year nobody else could own,” Ngo says. Called “Wowza,” it’s the discount banner’s biggest annual savings promotion. “It’s a massive traffic driver that has almost become synonymous with the brand,” she says.

During the pandemic, when crowds couldn’t congregate in stadiums, Open created the B2B Twitterdome campaign that showed sports fans were still congregating on Twitter. “We positioned Twitter as the largest stadium in the world,” Mathieu says, with the ambition of generating ad dollars from marketers no longer advertising in sports venues.

Meanwhile, as its name suggests, Open aims to remain open to change. “You can’t stay still any more,” Mathieu says. “We need to be ready to embrace anything,” he says, citing AI as one factor that will have a huge impact on marketers and agencies, and one his shop is currently exploring.

Above: 1 To demonstrate that Metro’s online delivery service in Ontario and Quebec is customizable, Open created the “As You Wish” campaign. Those words appeared on red Metro trucks and the campaign also included OOH, digital, website and email marketing. 3 Open developed a breakthrough awareness and fundraising campaign for WoodGreen, showing how the social services agency removes the “un-” for Torontonians whose needs are unmet and unsupported. Left: 4 During pandemic lockdowns, Open created the #Twitterdome B2B campaign reminding marketers they could still reach sports fans on Twitter. A real-time "Tweet Meter" gauged the loudness of the crowd based off the amount of Tweets during a game.

CONTACT: Christian Mathieu Partner christian@openacreativecompany.com