The market experts
By Danny Kucharsky
National Public Relations, Montreal
Thirty years ago, it would have been considered the ultimate in hubris to call a PR agency National Public Relations when you were really a one-man show based in Montreal. But not any longer. The agency founded in 1976 by chair and CEO Luc Beauregard is now the biggest shop in the land, with eight Canadian offices, as well as outposts in New York and London and 325 employees, including its wholly owned subsidiary Cohn & Wolfe Canada.
Model agency: Andrea Muizelaar (right) winner of Canada’s Next Top Model, made her runway debut and Miss Universe Canada 2006, Alice Panikian, participated in a downtown Toronto fashion show this September presented by National PR client, Wal-Mart Canada
With forecasted net fee billings of more than $54 million for 2006-almost 15% more than last year-Beauregard estimates National now has a 15% share of Canada’s PR market. “We’re twice the size of our closest competitor. That speaks for itself.”
And National just keeps on growing. Take Axon Communications, the agency’s London, England office, which opened three years ago and is mostly involved with pharmaceutical clients. It more than doubled this year to 25 employees and Beauregard expects that number to increase to 35 within the next six months.
Closer to home, National obtained a minority interest in Halifax-based MT&L Public Relations at the start of the year. The move gave the company its first Atlantic presence and true sea-to-sea coverage. It also created a baby boomer division that’s working with market research firm CRA-Cogem to track the opinions and attitudes of boomers. And more growth is on the way, given that much of Beauregard’s time is now devoted to potential acquisitions-there are always three or four such projects on the plate.
Its client base has grown to around 1,000, including Molson, Provigo, National Bank and McDonald’s (who’ve stuck around for more than 15 years each), to the country’s largest oil and gas producers and several of its biggest pharmaceutical firms. “You don’t become big by accident. We’ve become big because clients stick with you or recommend you to their friends,” Beauregard notes, adding: “I can’t think of anyone who likes sending big cheques to people unless they add value.”
Certainly National’s clients are seeing value in working with the firm. “They really work hard to become a strategic partner, versus a supplier, and that speaks volumes to me about why they’re successful,” says Mike Randall, vice-president, social responsibility communications at the Moncton, N.B.-based Atlantic Lottery Corporation.
Randall credits National with building a cross-Canada network comprised of a number of boutique agencies with expertise in domains from health to energy. The result: “There’s a place in National I can go to that has experts that understand the markets, that understand the company or business I’m working for and that provides me with national scope.” In particular, he raves about National’s work in helping the lottery develop a social responsibility framework and says its senior VP of corporate responsibility, Rick Petersen, has become one of the leading CSR experts in the world.
Reinforcing its CSR expertise, National has been holding for the last three years the annual Tremblant Forum on Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability, which brings together experts to share information about the discipline. “The future of corporate social responsibility is that you set up public objectives, benchmarks, and you assess every year what you’ve accomplished,” Beauregard says. “It’s not just doing something nice, as it was perhaps 20 years ago. It’s part of doing business. We are really at the forefront in this area.”
Making PR fashionable
By Matt Semansky
Strategic Objectives, Toronto
Judy Lewis starts to say “toilet paper,” but quickly corrects herself. Lewis is discussing Cashmere, and in the Cashmere brand story there is no such thing as toilet paper. There is only “premium bathroom tissue.”
As co-founders and partners at the Toronto-based independent public relations firm Strategic Objectives, Lewis and her sister Deborah Weinstein know that how a story is told is as important as the story itself. In the story of the 23-year-old, 50-person agency, 2006 has been a particularly good chapter.
To begin with, Strategic Objectives added 22 national, international and regional awards to the trophy case which doubles as its office lobby. That tally included five international Gold Quill awards from the International Association of Business Communicators and a national Canadian Public Relations Society Award of Excellence in Special Events for its Cadbury Chocolate Couture Fashion Show. That event, which garnered publicity for Cadbury’s rebranding of 165 products by sending models down the runway in clothes composed of chocolate, was named best-in-show at the ACE Awards by the Toronto chapter of the CPRS, which also tapped Weinstein and Lewis as the ACE PR professionals of the year.
Strategic Objectives demonstrated a flair for the grandiose in fashion again this September with the White Cashmere Collection Fashion Show (pictured), at which students showed off clothes they’d made from toilet paper. It capped off a three-year initiative to rebrand Scott Paper’s Cottonelle brand as Cashmere.
“They are amazingly ingenious and creative,” says Nancy Marcus, vice-president, marketing for Scott Paper, of Strategic Objectives. “They break through the clutter.”
Weinstein and Lewis say their headline-grabbing ideas are tied to concrete goals. “Within our creativity and innovation there is a cut-like-a-knife connection to business growth” says Lewis, whose own business earned $7 million in billings this year. “If (campaigns) win awards but don’t do anything for the client, you’re not really winning.”
Weinstein echoes the sentiment, pointing out that in addition to its high-profile events, Strategic Objectives also excelled at behind-the-scenes work in 2006. An example, she says, is the agency’s business-to-business work supporting Interac’s launch as an online payment option. “It’s a huge chunk of business for us, but nobody ever sees it,” Weinstein says. “It’s all seen by bank presidents.”
Strategic Objectives’ dedication to results earned it new accounts for the Ontario government and Reitmans’ new fashion brand, Cassis, in 2006. But the sisters point to the retention of The Body Shop-a 21-year client-as the year’s biggest win. “We were sitting on the edge of our seats thinking it would be too good to be true to hold onto it, especially because they were bought by L’Oréal,” says Weinstein. “But we did hold onto it.”
With an expanding trophy case and big account wins, the Strategic Objectives story doesn’t require any PR finesse to impress.
One-stop shop
By Sarah Dobson
Environics Communications, Toronto
Bruce MacLellan, president and CEO of Environics has a number that indicates what kind of year the Toronto-based agency has had: 80. As in, Environics won 80% of the competitive pitches it was involved in this year. “Clearly we’re offering something the market likes,” MacLellan surmises. “People come to the table with a favourable disposition of Environics. We’re highly creative in terms of developing ideas and strategic plans.
The increased business is reflected in the agency’s revenues (expected to be up 12% this year) and hiring (the staff count has risen 18%). Propelling the gains were new business from EBay, AOL Canada, Bell Canada, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Juniper Networks, Lilly and North York General Hospital, along with successful work for older clients such as Palm, Panasonic and Pfizer.
But the 12-year-old agency is hardly resting on its laurels. Using old and new media and its research and analytics divisions, Environics is diversifying, says MacLellan. “There’s so much opportunity beyond media relations…through seeding, sampling, blogging, e-mail.” As an example, Environics has used seeding for Listerine Pocketpaks, and last year during Gingivitis Week it put together an event in Toronto (pictured) in which 300 people broke the Guinness world record for the most number of people rinsing with mouthwash at once.
MacLellan himself was inducted into the CPRS’ College of Fellows this year for his 25 years of contributions, and Environics won two silvers for MasterCard and GM Canada work and a bronze for Pfizer at the CPRS 2006 ACE Awards, along with a gold and silver at the 2005 CMA awards for GM (with MacLaren McCann) and Puretracks.
One of Environics’ strengths is that it doesn’t limit itself to the narrow definition of PR, says Jennifer Reid, vice- president of public affairs at MasterCard in Toronto. As proof, she mentions several initiatives by the agency, such as the Financial and Payment Services Leadership Summit in late 2005 (a first for the industry in Canada, in which 250 key payment industry players got together), the “Priceless Index”-which generated over 40 million media impressions for the last campaign-and the PR extension of the Zamboni TV campaign.
Lan Lai-Minh, director of communications at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, says Environics has been provided valuable customized measurement and strong media relations for Tylenol and Safe Kids initiatives. “I like the ability to work with a one-stop shop and the fact that they’re Canadian-based to me is very important because that’s what drives their very positive relationship with the media.”
With a total staff of about 100, Environics puts a big emphasis on internal training programs and invests thousands of dollars per person, says MacLellan. “That’s considered a real attraction for people considering a career change.” And it’s not a bad PR move for a company looking for new employees to keep driving the growth. And if he’s to be believed, you can bet this Taxi isn’t about to run out of gas anytime soon.
