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Vision 7 begins its international conquest
Cossette Inc.’s profile had been pretty fluid prior to its rebranding as Vision 7 International.
Previously regarded as a stand-out communications holding company with a slowly growing international footprint, Cossette Inc.’s last big splash was the 2009 ownership fight between long-time partners François Duffar and Claude Lessard, the eventual acquisition by private investment firm Mill Road, and a massive reorganization that finally did away with its infamous tangle of unintegrated agencies.
When Vision 7 emerged as the result of that shake-up, even though it was leaner and had a revamped (and decidedly younger) executive suite, it inherited Cossette Inc.’s reputation as “Canada’s holding company” and all the stereotypes that come with it: big, consistent, good, but uninteresting.
Then 2011 rolled around and the Quebec City-based company went mostly quiet. Its agencies chugged along, working on massive national brands such as McDonald’s, occasionally creating award-worthy work (such as the Cannes-winning “I Am One Thousand” for Enablis and “Cenakovski” for Theatre Du Nouveau Monde, both from Cossette’s Montreal office). But it kept its doors closed to gossip. The volume had been lowered. It was plotting.
These days, Vision 7 (V7) is finally revealing some big plans: digital brand agency Dare has come to Toronto after a prolonged (and perhaps premature) soft-launch period. But with the announcement of a few key execs, V7 executives say Dare is now officially open for business—an opening that marks the beginning of what could be an ambitious growth period for the holding company.
Cossette Inc. acquired the London-based Dare in 2007 and subsequently merged the digital hot shop with another U.K. acquisition—branding agency MCBD. Dare enjoys a good reputation in its homeland thanks to evocative and widely shared work like Barclaycard’s “Waterslide” mobile game, EA’s “Human Avatar” campaign, and even television work such as “Go On Lad” for Hovis.
V7 first brought Dare to Canada via Vancouver in late 2010 by merging its digitally focused Fjord agency in that city with some of its Cossette West team, putting John Hall, Sandy Fleischer and Rob Sweetman in leadership roles. That office, too, was soon generating attention with strong work for clients like McDonald’s and MTS Allstream.
This, however, was but a small step in Dare’s march. V7’s leaders clearly believe it has an agency brand with momentum, offering a product that could be expanded across the world.
“We’re trying to go into five continents with this thing,” says Brett Marchand, vice-chair at V7. “It’s risky and ambitious. You don’t launch in Singapore and cut a cheque. You invest.”
In the short term, the focus will be on expansion into the U.S., a market it retreated from once already in 2009 and where Canadian-owned agencies generally have a spotty record of success.
Plus, Dare Toronto snuck into the market a bit prematurely in 2011, lacking a few key executives thanks to unexpected defections. That may be countered, however, by who has been hired since and a bit of buzz from jolly ol’ England.
Just as Dare Vancouver was born from Fjord, Dare Toronto will also have a strong digital focus. Marchand says this will distinguish it from the more integrated Cossette, V7’s largest and “more mature” Canadian agency. While Cossette is a large shop built with multiple account teams in multiple cities to tackle campaigns from TV to coupons, Dare will be smaller, leaner, edgier.
“Dare is, by its name and the fact that it’s new, more for challenger brands looking to take bigger risks,” says Marchand. “It’s not in five cities [across Canada] and probably never will be. It’s not fully integrated; it’s very much about digital work. It’s not going to start doing design work on packaging, direct campaigns or launching events.”
Put another way: “I’m not trying to start the next Wieden + Kennedy. I’m not trying to compete with BBDO… But I do think that in activation, digital branding and marketing PR, clients are looking for international options.” Below the line, he says, must stretch around the world.
Still, during that quiet period in 2011, Marchand quietly took the vice-chair role at the holding company while keeping his president and CEO title at Cossette and began promoting Dare right away. Perhaps a bit too hard.
Prior to even hiring a leader for the agency, Marchand negotiated with Coca-Cola to have Dare take over for Cossette in its 2011 review. “I decided that Dare was a better fit. It was a really independent decision on my part, and we weren’t ready to launch, but Coke’s the kind of client you launch an agency around.”
The soft drink company took some convincing, but let Marchand make the swap. A hastily created Dare team, comprised of talent borrowed from the network, was led by heavyweight account planner Nick Emmel, flown in from Dare U.K. to present some form of executive leadership. It speaks to the reputation of Dare U.K. and the market’s hunger for cool digital hot shops that Coke even entertained Dare’s participation, but in the end Zulu Alpha Kilo won that review.
“It was a good pitch, but rightfully, Coke was nervous about us,” Marchand admits. “We didn’t really have any work to show them, and here we were led by a Brit.”
In the months that followed, Dare filled two of four key executive roles—senior vice-president and managing partner Peter Bolt, who lead the agency, and digital technologist Nick Barbuto, whose reputation as digital visionary is cemented among his former clients at Cossette Media. Dare was again put to work ahead of its formal launch by pitching Molson (Marchand’s former employer) for the Canadian and Rickard’s business in September. While it didn’t win (Rethink did), Dare made the shortlist, surprisingly well for a company still only half-formed.
While these early, runner-up finishes were impressive given the agency’s half-built team, the staffing shortfalls have continued into the agency’s launch period. At press time there was no one filling the brand planning role (which Bolt considers essential) or officially overseeing the creative department.
The creative shortfall occurred mostly through bad luck, however. Marchand had tapped Cossette’s co-CCOs Pete Breton and Dave Douglass to run creative at the startup, but was caught off-guard in the weeks before launch when the pair announced they were joining Interpublic’s Lowe Roche. At press time, Bolt and Marchand have people in mind for the position, but Breton and Douglass’ surprise departure left Bolt in no shape to take his agency into hard pitch-mode right out of the gate.
“I’m anxious to get the team together,” says Bolt. “You may not only get one chance at this, but I feel like you do. People will look at us when we come out, look who’s here, who the creative director is, and our first six to 12 months. They’ll either say we’re players and we’re legit, or ‘Hey, another agency in Toronto.’ We have no intention of being the latter.”
Despite staff gaps, Dare does have some clients at launch and is borrowing talent from its network as hiring continues. Dare’s work on Mr. Big (Cadbury) with NHL star Alex Ovechkin is already in-market (though this is technically a Rocket XL client). It’s also won Diageo’s Baileys brand, Kao Brands’ Curel and Eska water, which Bolt brought in his first week on the job.
These Canadian accounts are good, non-dogwalker clients, but are insufficient if Dare is to live up to the high standards set for it by V7. Dare’s Canadian expansion is not necessarily about winning Canadian clients. Its two Canadian offices are meant to be “beachheads,” in Marchand’s words, to cover the markets on their respective coasts, including New York and Los Angeles.
“You can’t go win Procter & Gamble and not have a presence [near] the U.S.” says Marchand. “Do I think you have be headquartered in the U.S. and put all your investment there in order to take care of the North American market and international clients? Not necessarily.
“But we’re not launching Dare in Toronto to just go after the Toronto market.”
There is currently a small Dare presence in New York to serve Sony Ericsson, for which it is global AOR. (In 2009, Dare sent creative director James Cooper to the Big Apple to probe the market for possible expansion. The probing ceased when Cooper was hired away by Saatchi & Saatchi after reporting that such an expansion would take years and “a lot of work” to accomplish, according to Dare partner John Owen.)
Marchand does not rule out expanding the New York office to meet client needs. But, like the 2009 experiment, he is wary of forcing Dare into becoming an “American agency.” He points to the successful growth of Canuck shops like Blast Radius, which serves U.S. clients from satellite offices but never announced the grand opening of Blast Radius U.S.A. with bold statements about storming the market. It may be a semantic argument, but Marchand is unafraid of serving huge U.S. brands from Toronto and developing U.S. resources on an as-needed basis.
Dare and its sibling agencies within V7’s EDC Communications group (integrated agency Elvis, PR shop Citizen Optimum and social marketing shop Rocket XL) are currently planning similar beachheads in Asia, where Owen was recently pitching for new business.
There is considerable risk, and thus pressure. But the Cossette team is used to finding success beyond its hometown. Lessard and Duffar, the architects of Cossette’s growth through the ’90s and 2000s, built a successful Canadian agency out of often-cloistered Quebec—and Quebec City, no less. If it can successfully bridge Canada’s English/French agency divide, maybe Singapore isn’t insurmountable either.
“Every time I get butterflies about [going to] Singapore, I think about Claude sitting in Quebec City, conquering Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, buying agencies in London,” says Marchand. “He’s a real entrepreneur—he’s ambitious and takes risks. That’s why I’m personally so invested in Dare. It’s not necessarily about winning Molson (although that would have been nice) or dominating Toronto.
“To me, even the name ‘Dare,’ and what we as a young management group are trying to do with this company, we’re trying to be ambitious and do things that are risky. Not a lot of agencies are doing that right now.”
A Bolt From the Blue
Peter Bolt, Brett Marchand
“I know lots of people, and I couldn’t think of anyone,” he says. “I thought ‘This is going to be a tough search.’”
V7 hired Egon Zehnder, a firm specializing in global headhunting, to scour the industry. Its efforts came back with finalists from the U.K., U.S., New Zealand, Turkey and Canada.
As it turns out, the Canadian contender—Peter Bolt, then vice-president and director of business development and integrated solutions at DDB Canada—was a perfect fit.
“When they first called me, I wasn’t looking to leave DDB. I loved the people there,” says Bolt.
He’d heard of Dare U.K. and Dare Vancouver, “but I didn’t know they were a Vision 7 banner.”
But after some research and a one-hour chat with Marchand and Colin Schleining, president of Vision 7’s EDC North American unit, Bolt was sold.
“I’m a guy who likes to build things and Dare looked like a no-brainer.”
Prior to DDB, Bolt helped launch Toronto agency John St. in 2001. Before that he’d helped launch tech start-up Mobshop Inc.
“His John St. work was great, both strategically and creatively,” says Marchand. “But it was the number of things he worked on at John St. that gave me the confidence. You can have an ‘I Am Canadian’-caliber campaign, but that doesn’t make you a great brand guy. Everyone can hit a home run if they swing as hard as they can and are lucky enough to hit the ball. Not everyone can hit .400 like Peter.”
What chance does Dare stand of making an impact on the North American market? Post your thoughts in our comment section.
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