There’s a legend about Jimmy Lovick, the greatest of Vancouver ad men, stripping off his pinstriped pants in the midst of a presentation and throwing them out the window of Toronto-Dominion headquarters to demonstrate how his Left Coast shop would change the bank’s stuffy image. The Lovick Agency (later Baker Lovick) won the account, but couldn’t hold it for long. TD would ultimately move its ad business back to the Centre of the Universe.
The recent turmoil in Vancouver’s agency scene shows the more things have changed in the 50 years since Lovick’s TD pitch, the more they’ve stayed the same. TBWA\Vancouver set the rumour mill spinning in February when it sought protection from creditors, mostly TV broadcast outlets to which it owed $5.4 million. The loss of accounts including BC Hydro, Vancity Savings and B.C. Lottery’s media no doubt contributed to its fi nancial troubles. Since then the agency has kept its doors open—minus its media department—under the temporary name Trees and Rocks and retained a third of its staff. (At the time of writing, this group was about to be acquired by a local digital marketing company under a plan unanimously agreed to by creditors, said former president Andrea Southcott.) “I’m personally going to be taking some time” before rejoining the operation as an employee, Southcott said.
About 20 of a previous 30 staff have been laid off or left voluntarily since the start of the year. While the agency earned a reputation for some of the best creative in the country (under creative director Paul Little who announced his departure in April) Southcott blamed the company’s troubles on a combination of industry changes, the paucity of local business and “shifts and cutbacks in key clients.” Entering creditor protection was the “fairest” way to balance the demands of various creditors, she said. TBWA hasn’t been alone in its Lower Mainland misery. The last 12 months have also seen Publicis withdraw from the market after its Rogers Video account migrated to Toronto. Cossette West, previously the city’s largest shop, restructured into a leaner Dare (part of a larger national restructuring), and even Rethink, another local star, cut its staff by about 25% (22 positions).
Those looking for a single cause to so much upheaval won’t fi nd one. Vancouver’s small market and high concentration of government work has produced an environment where a small number of changes causes ripples far and wide. “What’s happened to the agency business is a reflection of the business climate,” says Rethink partner Chris Staples, who recalls arriving in Vancouver in 1990, when big accounts like Canadian Airlines, Woodward’s department stores, IKEA Canada, and Kokanee beer were still based in B.C. “The Vancouver market has been tough. I think the Olympics provided a bit of a respite for agencies that were plugged into government,” he adds. But that has come to an end with the government all but stopping much of its spending post-Olympics and post-Premier Campbell, considerably shrinking the advertising pie.
“In a smaller market, those shifts in client spending have a much bigger effect [than in Toronto],” says Rick Hart, senior vice-president and associate general manager for MacLaren McCann Vancouver. Vancouver has always produced and attracted more creative talent than its modest clutch of marketer head offices (skewed as it is towards the resource sector) can effectively put to work. Corporate consolidation among clients and national media companies further relegated the city to second-tier status in the marketing world. As in Lovick’s day, the holy grail for the surviving ad shops remains capturing out-of-market accounts on the strength of creative and strategic chops. Rethink had success with this, as have digital marketing houses such as Blast Radius, but it remains an uphill battle. Regardless of how flat digital networks were supposed to make the world, business is built on relationships, which are hard to maintain over long distances and time zones. Rethink seemed to acknowledge as much by finally opening a Toronto office in 2010 after steadfastly refusing to do so for years.
The need to complement local business with out-of-market accounts can put offices of network agencies at a disadvantage. “If you’re an agency that doesn’t have the ability to go fishing in Toronto waters, you’d have a tough time sustaining yourself here,” Staples says. “It’s a much leaner, tougher market to work in,” adds Bill Downie who, along with partner Robert Clements, bought out Publicis Vancouver and relaunched the agency as Slingshot in January. “Every agency in this market will pitch a $200,000 marketing budget or a $2-million one.”
But reports of the Vancouver agency scene’s death are grossly exaggerated, especially considering the growing cohort on the digital and social media side—companies such as Powershifter, Village & Co., Engine Digital and Tangible Interaction along with digital pioneer Blast Radius. “Vancouver isn’t as buoyant as it once was,” says Frank Palmer, chairman of DDB Canada, which maintains 140 staff and its national headquarters in Vancouver. But for companies attuned to new media and client demands, he maintains, “there’s still a lot of business out there.”
