Regularly mentioned as one of the best agencies in Canada, this shop hit a creative hot streak thanks to social know-how
John St., the 92-person agency that introduced the concept of “catvertising” and has a self-appointed mandate to make its clients “unignorable,” showed just how good they’ve become in the social space and produced work that got the attention of everyone from Zellers customers to the President of Poland.
Whether it was having a man hitchhike from coast-to-coast clad in nothing more than Stanfield underwear, helping Zellers mascot Zeddy find a new home with children’s charity Camp Trillium, or providing a never-before-seen look inside the mind of an autistic person with its interactive website Carly’s Café, John St. further enhanced its reputation for creating highly engaging—and shareable—creative concepts.
A series of Facebook-led initiatives for soon-to-shutter Zellers that kicked off with last year’s “Festive Finale” continued in the spring with “Memory Showcase”—humorous videos based on submitted memories of the 80-year-old retailer. It concluded in summer with the “Everything must go (including Zeddy)” campaign to find a new home for the lovable mascot. Both were emblematic of John St.’s insight-driven creative approach.
Videos for the yearlong social media initiative garnered more than one million views on YouTube, and helped Zellers amass a Facebook community of 135,000 people with engagement scores five times the industry standard, according to the agency. More importantly, the campaign boosted Zellers to its most successful fourth quarter results in 10 years.
“What I enjoy about working with John St. is they usually bring three very strong creative approaches to the table and you’re actually torn about which one you should take,” says Jennifer Zedic, director of marketing for Zellers.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a point where I’ve said to John St. ‘Take it back and rework it.’ There’s always been strength in their initial presentations because they take the time to think through what the business needs are and they know they’ve nailed a number of needs in each of the approaches they’ve provided.”
This year, the agency’s comedic “Your Man Reminder” online film for Rethink Breast Cancer has been viewed more than 2.5 million times and featured on national newscasts by Global, CTV and CBC in Canada and ABC in the United States. It also won a Webby Award and was named one of the world’s 10 “Ads Worth Spreading” at the TED conference in February. The accompanying app—which uses hunky men to remind women to check their breasts—has been downloaded more than 85,000 times.
In September, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski showcased “Carly’s Café”—which provided visitors with insight into the life of someone afflicted with autism—during his presentation at the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. That was particularly gratifying for John St. president Arthur Fleischmann, whose autistic daughter Carly is the inspiration for the video.
“I went into advertising because it’s a way of changing behaviour… and the irony is not lost on me that a young adult who can’t do a whole lot on her own has had the ability to affect behaviour worldwide,” says Fleischmann. “She doesn’t speak a word and yet she’s able to influence millions of people.”
After winning ING Direct late in 2011, John St. also added several pieces of business including Great Gulf Homes and Ivanhoe-Cambridge, expanded its mandate with automotive client Mitsubishi to include digital and grew revenues 5% in a year in which its biggest client, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, reduced spending by 20%.
“It’s the best year we’ve ever had as an agency, in terms of the kind of work we’re doing, the range of clients we work with and the breadth of solutions we’re coming up with,” says partner and co-creative director Angus Tucker. “We were really firing on all cylinders.”
For Fleischmann, however, the development of a new proprietary analytics tool called livemetric, which enables clients to track the cumulative impact of their online and offline media efforts, is “unquestionably” the biggest development of the year for the 11-year-old agency.
Livemetric is a subscription-based service (annual or campaign-specific) that enables clients to track the impact of social media engagement through general awareness to attention, engagement, action and echo (amplifying a client message to their followers) and adjust their campaign accordingly.
The program has already helped some clients make changes to their media plans on the fly, says Fleischmann, who believes it will have significant ramifications for clients as they continue to adopt more social media advertising platforms.
