You’d expect Starbucks, Google and Honda to work with subsidiaries of global communications conglomerates. But their presence on Media Profile‘s client list is indicative of a eager, employee-owned agency competing at the top of its game.
In the past 16 months, the Toronto firm has won AOR status from almost a dozen brands, including Kokanee, Longo’s and State Farm. But perhaps no win was bigger than Starbucks Coffee Canada. Breaking file from the rest of Starbucks worldwide (for which Edelman handles PR), it hired Media Profile at the start of 2015 following a competitive review.
Media Profile’s work to promote the coffee chain’s new bakery offerings last year more than doubled Starbuck’s target KPIs thanks to a cross-country media tour, meet-and-taste experiences in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, and coordinated product drops to social media influencers and broadcast outlets with b-roll.
Carly Suppa, Starbucks Coffee Canada’s director of public affairs, has been impressed by the firm’s innovative approach. “They are locally minded and continuously push the envelope with creative and inspiring ideas that not only spark conversation but also reflect Starbucks values as a company,” she says.
Thanks to new business, Media Profile’s revenues have increased by 35% over the last three years. Like its competitors, the firm has become more involved in other areas of marcom like content creation and media planning, but not at the expense of doing remarkable bread-and-butter PR work.
Traditional PR was the driving force behind its strategy to promote Google’s first North American YouTube FanFest. It got the event’s launch announcement covered on the front page of the Toronto Star thanks to a rigorous plan to get YouTube’s product (i.e. big stars and big audience numbers) out to the mainstream media. A media tour with YouTube stars showed reporters the rise of content creators as celebrities. The day before the event, Google executives and YouTube creators ran a massive press junket to hammer home the scale of the event.
The resulting news coverage helped attendance in Toronto reach 15,000 — triple the attendance of events held in Asia, India and Australia.
“They excel at media relations and strategy with great connections right across Canada,” says Leslie Church, head of communications and public affairs, Google Canada. “The team we’ve worked with has been consistently at the top of their game and have become trusted advisors and colleagues.”
