1-800-Got-Junk has chosen Taxi Vancouver as its agency of record following a competitive review.
“We are looking forward to taking a fairly bold step,” said Bryan Mavrow, vice-president of marketing for the Vancouver-based trash removal company. “We’ve built the brand and the company largely through PR excellence and guerrilla tactics, so this is now a pivotal point for us.”
Mavrow said the final short list included Taxi, an agency from New York and another from Vancouver.
Got-Junk worked on projects with TBWAVancouver this year and with Rethink last year. Neither agency participated in the review.
Karen Pearce, general manager at Taxi Vancouver, said the agency researched Got-Junk by going on pickups with company drivers and visiting the company’s offices to get a sense of its culture.
“We sat in on a morning huddle,” she said, where employees gather before 11 a.m.to “pump each other up and tell stories about good work franchisees are doing.”
“In franchise marketing you need to package up something that’s bullet proof and perfect for all the franchise partners, and Taxi was able to convey that in the pitch stronger then we’ve ever seen,” Mavrow said.
The company plans to launch an integrated campaign in 2010.
“We will invest in brand research to really understand what the emotional tug is of the service that we provide our customers, and then that will come out in some overall brand refresh and two distinguished sales campaigns–one in the spring and the fall,” Mavrow said.
Mavrow declined to give a budget, but said approximately 75% of the marketing spend comes from more than 240 franchise partners in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.
Pearce said the agency is doing more digital work to better serve new and existing clients. In addition to Got-Junk, Taxi Vancouver also recently won the Westminster Savings Credit Union account, and is readying a rebranding campaign for 2010.
