Canadian Tire has awarded Toronto’s DAC Group its search engine optimization and search engine marketing business in an effort to consolidate all its search-related responsibilities with a single agency.
DAC Group emerged as the winner in a review that began last December and included two other agencies. The agency had previously handled paid search engine marketing duties for Canadian Tire, while Non-Linear Creations was responsible for optimizing unpaid search results. DAC Group now takes over the full search spectrum on the account.
“We had been working with [DAC] already and it made sense to continue on,” said Kristine Hughes, online marketing specialist for Canadian Tire. “A lot of the learnings you get from organic search and paid search feed into one another.”
Ken Dobell, president of digital for DAC Group, agreed that the new arrangement would likely result in more efficient service to the client.
“Sometimes it’s helpful to erase the divisions between certain channels,” said Dobell. “Thinking about things separately can help you optimize within each channel, but right now we’re helping Canadian Tire think about [the search channels] as a single input, in the sense that we’re not necessarily as focused on which channel generated the visitor as we are on the behaviours that correspond to various segments of consumers and what outcomes can be tied to that.
“It’s a much broader view of consumer intent than is possible with the [paid and unpaid search] mandates separated.”
According to Hughes, the consolidation of search responsibilities is not an indication that Canadian Tire plans to further trim its roster of agencies, which includes creative shop Taxi, public relations firm High Road Communications and digital agency Trapeze, among others.
