Financial marketing firm Stan Adler Associates is expanding into Canada, opening a four-person Toronto office on Jan. 13 with plans to staff up as their client list grows.
The 35-year-old Manhattan-based company is a division of The CHR Group, a “next-generation agency network” that recently acquired Toronto digital firm Stone Canoe.
Heading north was a natural move, according to president and creative director Stan Adler.
“Over the years, we’ve done work in Canada, in and out,” said Adler. “We’ve helped Canadian firms go public in the American stock markets, writing and producing the securities presentations for brokers that help them come up with the story to sell to their clients. This is not foreign territory for us at all. We’re going to be very comfortable up there.”
The firm has already snagged work with RBC Capital Markets handling its targeted direct marketing. And it’s also created digital and broadcast advertising for Macquarie, an international investment bank now growing their presence in Canada and the U.S.
Outside Canada, Adler’s clients have included J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, GE Capital, Chase and other institutions.
Canada presents a great opportunity for marketers, said Adler, because our financial services industry has such a strong, stable foundation, marketers are allowed to communicate with investors in a much more open, forthright way – especially compared to the U.S.
“The banking system and investment community in the States are guilty of many sins. So they’re being held accountable, and the ways in which they communicate now are quite constrained,” Adler explained.
The firm’s offerings run the gamut from advertising, branding and analytics/research to digital and web development, SEO, graphic design and media planning. But the lack of a narrow niche is what Adler considers their main advantage.
“Our view is different from most firms in our space. We’ve always felt that… if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” said Adler. So if a client goes to a PR firm, for example, they can’t be surprised that the proposed “solution” to any problem is a PR campaign.
“We believe there is a more holistic approach,” said Adler. “We refer to ourselves as being media-agnostic. We can do things on the web, or in print, or in broadcast, or with iPad apps. We don’t want the solution to dictate itself. We want the problem to dictate the solution.”
