The Agency
123W, the newest Vancouver ad agency to open for business is founded by former Dare creatives Rob Sweetman and Bryan Collins, former Rethink partner and design director Jeff Harrison, and Scot Keith, who founded Kommunity in 2010 to look after brands such as Hockey Canada and the BC Hockey League. The new agency – which is named for Vancouver’s longitude (west 123 degrees) – is an evolution of Kommunity’s business model, which Keith continues to run as a separate brand, said Sweetman.
“The other thing that we like about [the name] 123 is that we’ve always felt that really powerful strategy can be articulated simply and really the best ways to work are also the simplest,” he said.
The Script
Keith likens his business model to the movie business where the best actors, directors and crew are assembled for each project. He points to projects where he has been able to work with creative powerhouses such as Alan Russell, Lisa Francilia and Lara Palmer. “That’s the exciting thing about this,” said Keith. “We can assemble and mobilize a team literally in an hour of some of the finest talent in Canada.”
“Our approach is not to build a really big company, our objective is to keep things small and outsource to really senior talent across North America,” added Sweetman.
The Stage
Sweetman said the idea is to take a “low overhead approach” and they’ve reflected this in their offices – Harrison’s garage – and the website 123w.ca built entirely from fiverr.com, a site where people offer services starting at $5. “We were looking for an entertaining way to demonstrate our low-overhead, collaborative approach,” said Collins. “People don’t want to read endless paragraphs about structure, but they might like hearing someone sing about it with a ukulele.” The strategy behind the agency is to stay lean and mean. “We want to keep getting better not bigger,” said Sweetman. “[This model] allows us to get in on the ground level as brands are being developed and bring a level of creative and expertise that they haven’t seen.”
The Cast
Sweetman and Collins have worked together for the past decade, first at Highwood Communications in Calgary and then at Rethink in Vancouver and most recently as co-creative directors at Dare. Both have notched up an impressive array of awards including One Show Pencils, Cannes Lions, Clios and appearances in the Communications Arts Advertising Annual. The duo also worked with Harrison at Rethink. Harrison, who was behind Rethink’s design division when he joined the agency in 2004, worked with Keith at DDB.
The Clients
It’s early days and so far work has been on a project basis for clients such as Canadian Pacific and SAXX Underwear. Sweetman said there’s been a lot of interest in design and he anticipates that will be the largest part of the business for the first year or so.
