Brian Hickling, former senior vice-president and creative director at Colour in Halifax, has launched his own agency in the city.
The new venture, One Hundred And Ten Communications Inc., emerges just months after Hickling left Colour on amicable terms last fall. He said the name is inspired by his commitment to giving 110% effort on behalf of clients and that he is positioning the agency as a creative-owned boutique firm.
In meetings with potential clients Hickling has also conveyed his commitment to giving marketers a larger role in the creative process.
“So many agency-client relationships are based on what I call the ‘ta-da’ moment: here’s a problem that [the marketer] is interested in solving, here’s the research document, we’ll see [the agency] in three weeks and we hope you guess right,” said Hickling. “It really discounts the client’s creativity in the ideation process, and I really think it’s important to have an ideation partnership with my clients and actually demand that clients take part in the process.
“I want to be a creative director for clients as well as for my own creative team.”
Hickling is working with freelance creatives on pro bono projects for clients he declined to name, with plans to build a core of roughly 10 full-time employees while assembling a larger team of freelancers to work on a project basis.
“The idea is that those 10 people are the culture, they are the company. They define its essence, so to speak,” said Hickling. “Outside that will be what I call ‘dedicated freelancers’ who are committed to a certain number of hours for my firm, and we make a commitment of those hours to them, but they’re used as needed on projects that fit their interests.”
