After almost three decades working client side, Geoff Craig, one of Canada’s top marketers, is trying agency life as the president of Extreme Group, overseeing day-to-day operations of the agency’s Halifax and Toronto offices
Craig was most recently senior vice-president of marketing and innovation at Maple Leaf Foods and before that oversaw marketing at Unilever. While there, the CPG giant produced award winning work for Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” and Becel’s “The Heart Truth Campaign”–campaigns that earned it Marketing‘s Marketer of the Year honour in 2007.
“I’ve spent my entire career being passionate about innovative creative solutions to drive business results and in fact sometimes as the saying goes taking no risk is the biggest risk of all,” said Craig.
“Being on the other side, as an agency executive, I can have the right conversations with the marketing leaders because I certainly understand where they’re coming from,” he said.
Craig and Extreme Group CEO Paul Leblanc first met four years ago after a Marketing awards event. “He went up on the stage and he was dropping F bombs and just very casual and funny and I thought, ‘My God, this guy is like my twin separated at birth. I’m gonna call him,’” said Leblanc who shortly after the event reached out to Craig.
The two kept in close contact over the years, and Leblanc reached out to Craig about the new president position in January.
Leblanc decided it was time to find a Toronto-based president after Andrew Doyle, president and part owner of the Extreme Group, left the agency (and the advertising business all together) in November 2010.
Up until Doyle’s departure all three partners (Leblanc, Doyle and chief creative officer Shawn King) were based in the agency’s Halifax office, with Leblanc making regular trips to Toronto. Strategically, it didn’t make sense, he said.
When it came time to start the search, Leblanc said he was looking for a well-respected team player within the industry. They needed a love for creative, and they couldn’t be “an asshole.”
“The talent pool in Toronto for those set of criteria is pretty deep so we added another layer, which was, can’t have worked at an agency before,” he said, adding that the list got drastically shorter when it was decided they’d look for a candidate from the client side.
On the decision to look only at marketers as potential candidates, Leblanc said, “There’s more change happening now than I’ve ever seen in my 14-year career, and we don’t necessarily, as pure agency folk, understand the world clients live in and how those changes will impact marketing organizations.”
“What we do know is marketers’ budgets are less than they have ever been before, and there’s 50 times the places to spend it” he said. “One of the observations we get from clients is ‘we wish you understood our business more,’ and one of the best ways to do that is to find a marketer that lived in it day in and day out.”
Leblanc said the agency met with a few candidates, but spent the last four months in negotiations with Craig, who was fielding offers from other agencies.
Among the numerous benefits of adding Craig to the team, Leblanc believes his presence will help sell creative ideas to wary clients. “The cool thing about Geoff is he has incredible accolades and he has dedicated his life to using great creative… and has the sales results to prove it.”
Extreme has been working hard to generate buzz around its new hire, revamping the landing page of its website for example, to include a news banner that read: “Extreme lands monumental new client. Official announcement coming May 18.”
Similar announcements were made through the agency’s Twitter feed and Facebook pages. Members of the industry have responded with comments, e-mails and calls looking for hints, or in some cases, looking for jobs, said Craig.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s social media at its finest – our website traffic literally jumped 500%.”
On Wednesday morning the site was revamped to include a video of Leblanc and Craig in a playful exchange of words on how they first met.
