Jack Russell‘s self-promotional video paints an unflattering picture of the modern client/agency relationship. Simmering tension. Plastic smiles. Idiotic business jargon. Wasted time. The new Toronto agency’s positioning appears as a super at the end: “There is another way.”
Don Saynor, Jack Russell’s chief creative officer and co-founder, has spent his career at a number of large-scale agencies. But, he’s watched the business change into something that he believes big shops can no longer cope with.
“Having been at large agencies for almost 20 years, there was a great time and place for those types of shops. But, everything is leading me to believe that the model is completely changing. I want to be part of the future, not the past.”
Clients, he said, want more efficiency from their agency partners, “just a few smart people in the room” turning assignments around quickly. Big agencies’ large overhead and head counts just get in the way of that goal, he said.
“And many clients are leaving the retainer model and going to project models, which is virtually impossible for big agencies to do,” he said.
The solution Saynor found with partner and managing director Ali Dalfen (both of whom soft-launched the agency back in January after ending lengthy tenures at J. Walter Thompson) is a small agency that tries to go from business problem to creative solution as quickly as possible and without “all the crap that happens in between,” said Saynor.
With three full time employees and a cadre of freelancers, Jack Russell is already serving one client in the U.S. — Bushmills, an Irish whisky brand acquired by Proximo Spirits from Diageo in 2014.
Seeking sales among millennial consumers to put a dent in Jameson’s domination of this market segment (the Pernod Ricard-owned brand is the fourth-best selling whisky overall and has more than 80% of the Irish whisky market worldwide), Proximo put a TV, print and online media buy behind the agency’s creative that Saynor said steered away from the rolling green hills found in other ads for Irish whisky.
“They’re from the north, so they’re determined… We thought it was interesting to connect that with millennials.”
There is more Proximo work on the way, but Saynor is unwilling to discuss details on that or other client work until closer to the campaigns’ launches. Aide from hinting at another client in the tech sector, he remained mum.
Going forward, Jack Russell’s model won’t be as reliant on freelancers in the long term, Saynor said, hoping to step away from what has become a trend among startup agencies. “If I were to look five years down the road, I wouldn’t want us to be ‘the freelance shop.'”
What he does foresee, however, is more American clientele, hoping their big-shop know-how will appeal to CMOs looking for cheaper, more efficient options. “Our focus won’t be to go after small, local clients,” Saynor said. “We’d like to go after the large, multinational pieces of business that really are sick and tired of dealing with large agencies that cost too much money.
“We think Canadian agencies have a leg up: we’re more global-thinking, and we’re simply cheaper here, even if the dollar’s at par.”
