Although it has been around for less than a decade, Toronto agency Grip Limited has already seen a lifetime’s worth of triumphs and trials.
The shop opened its doors in 2001 as the brainchild of its founding client, Labatt—which sought better value for its advertising dollar—and quickly drew scorn for its unusual model. Detractors in the industry and in the media suggested Grip’s pay-per-performance system, overseen by eight equal founding partners who eschewed traditional titles such as creative director or president, was untenable. Before it could build its first castle, Grip was very nearly snubbed from the sandbox.
The agency withstood the criticism, and it began to build. Still, no one
But when the review was over, Grip not only had the Solo account, it was the proud new custodian of Bell’s overall brand. Grip began to grow exponentially, expanding from 22 full-time staffers to 55 in six months with 15 operating partners. A year later, they were up to 90 employees. That was when the bottom fell out.
After an 18-month partnership that had resulted in Bell’s We Are Connected campaign, Bell moved the account to Cossette, leaving a huge gap in Grip’s bottom line. Panic, in the form of mass layoffs and scattershot pitching, would have been understandable. But Grip chose a different response, and to hear the agency’s leaders tell it, the decisions made in the aftermath of Bell’s departure have resulted in a smarter, wiser, stronger shop today.
“We learned an awful lot about winning that business, running that business and losing that business in a very short space of time,” says partner Bob Shanks.
That learning came with a painful price. Bell was Grip’s largest client, representing about 23% of the agency’s revenues, and when that business left the building, many Grip staffers assumed they’d be forced to follow suit. Complicating matters was the fact that Bell pulled its blade out slowly rather than abruptly, having Grip do project work even after both parties knew there was no future in the relationship. Grip partner David Crichton describes the atmosphere at the time of this “slow bleed” as one of confusion, rumours and fear.
“It was uncomfortable, and no question you’ve got some people saying the ship is sinking,” says Crichton. “And those people ended up leaving.”
Not as many as might have been expected given the size of the Bell account, however, and shortly after the loss, Crichton and his fellow partners held a meeting to talk strategic direction with their remaining employees. The message: no widespread downsizing.
“We made a conscious decision not to strip things down,” says Crichton. “Obviously in a situation like that, you’ve got people afraid for their jobs and everyone’s got a cloud hanging over them. We just said, what’s done is done, let’s move on and let’s win some business.”
Though eventually about 12 people left the agency, Shanks says Grip’s staffers were relieved and energized by the partners’ confidence. “There wasn’t this massive run for the doors,” he says. “It was the opposite. After that meeting, there was a lot of, ‘How can I help, what can we do?’ That was very encouraging for us.”
Of course, enthusiasm doesn’t replace a 23% hole in an agency’s revenues, nor does necessity always breed winning pitches. But as Crichton relates, Grip had a few advantages going for it. As a private firm, for example, it could afford to be patient when it came to replacing Bell’s dollars.
“We’re an independent company, so we don’t have to hit a certain number,” says Crichton. “We decided that as long as we continued to stay in the black, we’d retrench, focus on our business and focus on organic growth.”
And when it came to organic growth, Grip benefited from a big client with a brilliant sense of timing. Honda—a longtime Grip client—began to feed the agency more work. Eventually, Grip expanded its Honda portfolio to include motorcycles as well as cars, which “took some of the sting” out of the Bell loss, says Crichton. In addition, stalwart client Labatt added promotions to Grip’s list of responsibilities.
According to Harvey Carroll, former vice-president of marketing at Labatt and now president of Grip, these organic additions were made possible by the agency’s steady stewardship in a time of crisis.
“They reached out to us [at Labatt] and indicated that it wasn’t going to have any impact on how our business was managed,” says Carroll. “Which was very believable, because from [the time] they’d acquired Bell our relationship hadn’t changed.”
As Grip began to maximize the value of its existing clients, it also began to court new ones, taking on pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, as well as project work for Allergan Canada and Frito Lay (the latter in the U.S. market). Crichton says this series of smaller victories gave the agency a welcome sense of momentum, even though it was during this period when Grip also parted ways with some of its original partners. Mike Robitaille was the first to go, followed by Terry Drummond, Jill Nykoliation, Barry Quinn and Alan Madill. And although Crichton praises his former colleagues, he says their exits left behind a more cohesive, focused agency. “When our partner group downsized, the partners who were left were the ones that worked really well together and had chemistry,” says Crichton. “That was kind of a defining moment, to be able to say, ‘Here’s the team.’ ”
Grip also invested in its interactive and in-house production capabilities, and Crichton says it’s been money well spent. Grip’s staff complement has shot up to 100, with 30 employees specializing in interactive work.
Hitting triple digits inspired Grip’s partners to bring Carroll aboard as a partner and the agency’s first-ever president last year. (With Thom Antonio a partner, brand design, the Grip full-partner count stands at an even dozen.) While the move represented a shift in Grip’s structure, Crichton says it was necessary for the company’s growth. “The partners are still very involved, but… when you get to a certain size, [the senior partners] can’t be working on clients’ business and trying to run the company at the same time.”
Organic growth, increases in staff and the addition of Carroll all point to Grip’s successfully surviving the loss of Bell. The shop has also become more conscious of its own values and those of potential clients after riding the rollercoaster of Bell’s highly politicized corporate structure, where clients representing some divisions of the business were allies while others were adversaries.
“We did say ‘never again,’ meaning we wouldn’t go after a client that size where there wasn’t a buy-in, top to bottom,” says Crichton. “We didn’t have the time or exposure to get to know everyone we’d be working with.”
Which is not to say the agency would turn away other big clients that came knocking, only that Grip will remain mindful of these lessons. Even Carroll, a relative newbie to the agency, has taken this to heart.
“We’ve had a chance to institutionalize that knowledge, and maybe the questions we’d ask when that knock came on the door would be different than they were in the Bell days,” Carroll says.
As dark as the “Bell days” may have sometimes been, there is no doubt Grip is better off for the experience.
