It’s time to review our finalists for 2011 Agency of the Year. To find out which of our top 10 shops takes top honours, pick up the January 2012 issue of Marketing.
Taxi
Who said selling out would be bad for business?
When news broke that the multinational media communications company WPP had acquired Taxi, many wondered if the Canadian indie darling would become just another cog in the network’s ever-growing agency wheel.
Created as an alternative to the big-agency model, Taxi became known for its small-team approach that resulted in award-winning creative work for clients in Canada and Europe. Yes, Taxi was gaining a parent company with financial muscle, but would it come at a price? Would the agency lose its creative edge? Would clients get lost in the shuffle? The answer to those questions is no. It’s the same Taxi, but with a bigger engine. The agency’s revenue is up more than 19% and it received dozens of awards and won noteworthy assignments including Sun Products, Capital One, Corvus Energy and Microsoft.
“The outside industry was waiting to see change and, maybe to their disappointment, they saw none,” says agency president Jeremy Gayton.
Rob Shields, senior vice-president of marketing at Canadian Tire, says he sat down with Taxi (the retailer’s AOR since 2005) and WPP around the time of the Nov. 19 acquisition to discuss how or if things would change. Shields says he walked away feeling “really good” about the acquisition and, if anything, the working relationship between Canadian Tire and Taxi is “slightly better” thanks to the breadth of resources available through the WPP network.
The acquisition has benefited both parties. The deal allows Taxi to execute creative on a global scale and give clients access to digital services, and WPP has the creative spearhead it needed. In June, Taxi’s New York office and Young & Rubicam London won the global assignment for the Revlon brand of makeup.
Taxi also secured a place on Kraft’s agency roster, winning AOR status for its Kraft Dinner, Kraft Mio and Kraft Gevalia brands. Taxi New York was awarded Mio—a liquid water enhancer—shortly after McGarryBowen launched it in the U.S. In a statement to Advertising Age, Kraft said, “As the brand continues to grow, we are growing with it, taking it to new places that are, as of yet, uncharted. We believe Taxi is the right partner for the next leg of this journey.”
Taxi CEO Rob Guenette calls 2011 a “turnaround” year for the New York office which was, he admits, “not doing well” the past couple of years.
The Revlon win seemed to spark a winning streak that included multiple Kraft brands, some Capital One business and Amazon’s Audible.com account. “We also re-engineered the creative department,” he says. Noteworthy new hires included Stephen Leps as CD and later Dave Clemons as executive CD.
There’s more! To read the full story in the Dec. 12 issue of Marketing, subscribe today.
