John St. has picked up the creative assignment for Winners following a formal review, Marketing has learned.
Representatives from Winners’ parent company TJX Canada declined comment, but sources say the Toronto-based John St. – which was recently shortlisted for Marketing’s Agency of the Year, in part for stand-out work for another big-name retailer Zellers – beat out two other shortlisted agencies for the assignment.
John St. partner and president Arthur Fleischmann referred calls to TJX.
TJX currently operates more than 220 Winners stores across the country, along with 88 HomeSense locations and 14 Marshalls stores. Comparable store sales for the company’s Canadian operations – a unit of Framingham, Mass.-based The TJX Companies – were up 4% in the third quarter, while net sales were US $769 million.
The Winners assignment comes on the heels of John St.’s recent win of the Kobo account. An April report from Ipsos-Reid stated that Kobo controlled an estimated 46% of the Canadian e-reader market at the time.
