Virdis makes its place in Newfoundland

Virdis Place Brand and Design opens its door in St. John’s today. The five-person agency is a subsidiary of Tract Consulting and headed by Tract’s president, Neil Dawe.
 
Des Ryan, formerly of Bristol and Spark Marketing, has been installed as creative director at Virdis, while Andrea Cooper, who comes East from NKPR in Toronto, is the agency’s account director.
 
Virdis’ services include branding, design, digital creative, social media, event marketing and public and media relations.
 
Cooper said the firm aims to work with clients looking to establish a distinctive “place” brand for their geographical area or business.
 
“Every place has a brand,” said Cooper. “It could be a ship, it could be a line of hotels – we’re really quite open.”
 
Virdis has already signed on to work with convenience and gas station brand Orangestore. While growth is on the agenda for Virdis, Cooper said the agency’s plan is to retain its boutique sensibility.
 
“We don’t want to get too big to provide timely and reliable client service,” she said. “We’ve all been part of that big [agency] machine before and we really wanted to create something different.”