Some East Coast ad shops are forming their own agency association because they believe national groups don’t represent their interests.
Although still nameless, the association’s purpose is to raise the profile of Atlantic agencies and improve agency/client relationships in the region. Brian Hickling, creative director at Colour in Halifax and one of the new association’s unofficial executives, tentatively calls it The ICE Society, after the ICE Awards (the acronym stands for Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise).
“There’s a lot invested in the ICE brand name; people recognize it, but nobody owns it,” says Hickling. “Shouldn’t there be a bigger association in charge of the awards as one of its mandates?”
Taking over the show was one of Hickling’s reasons for starting The ICE Society. Having worked at Bensimon Byrne and Leo Burnett in Toronto, he was dissatisfied with national organizations’ presence east of Quebec.
“We might end up working in concert with the ICA,” he says. “We’re not doing it to be adversarial, but we feel that a bunch of East Coast folks-sitting around, having a Keith’s and talking about issues-have a pretty good chance trying to solve our own issues.”
Colour left the ICA in 2007. It wasn’t a revolt, Hickling says, but more a realization that “this part of Canada is starting to mature. There is a critical mass of agencies that all want to be known for doing national- and international-calibre work.”
For its part, the ICA is willing to work with the Society as it does other regional associations.
“There’s always room for regional perspectives,” says ICA president Jani Yates, who says her organization’s focus is unmistakably national but points to collaborations with the Association of Quebec Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Agency Association of British Columbia as examples of its willingness to partner up on regional concerns.
Of course, Yates says, she’d love to have more ICE Society agencies as ICA members. The ICA currently has only one Maritime member, Extreme, which plans for now to be a member of both associations.
Hickling, along with Larry MacEachern, vice-president at Colour; Mark Gascoigne, managing director at Trampoline; Paul Card, vice-president at Bristol; and Andrew Doyle, president of Extreme Group, all want a mandate similar to the ICA’s to deal with business development and regional issues such as client retention and recruitment.
“We need to raise our profile to repatriate some of the accounts that have left the region in recent years,” says Gascoigne, specifically mentioning Sobeys (with Rethink in Vancouver) and Alexander Keith’s (with Publicis in Toronto).
The fledgling ICE Society is still in planning mode, hoping to finalize its mandate, hold an AGM and start collecting fees over the next year. Talks have also begun with 27 Marbles Training, which has been working with A-list agencies north and south of the border. Hickling hopes the company will be a preferred supplier, offering seminars in the same way the ICA offers accreditation courses.
“We’re all fighting for the same piece of business,” Hickling says. “I see this as a way to create some initiatives beneficial to all people in the agency business… the story here is to put the swords away.”
