Because Taxi Canada regularly appears on Marketing’s top agencies of the year list, some might be tempted to joke about its “staying power” or “endurance.” After all, this is the agency that markets Viagra. But Taxi has convinced us to leave such punchlines unspoken, just as it leaves Viagra’s benefits unspoken, creatively skirting a law that forbids discussing the erectile dysfunction drug’s purpose in advertising.
A Cannes Lions jury awarded Taxi’s most recent “Confessions” Viagra ads a Gold Film Lion this year–the campaign’s third Gold Lion in four years.
“The hardest thing to do is to take [a long-running campaign] and make it new all the time,” said Lions Film judge and Ogilvy & Mather creative chief Janet Kestin.
That campaign, like Taxi itself, is mature now, yet heralded as a fresh alternative to the status quo. Strange that after 17 years of growth and international acclaim, Taxi’s brand is still that of a boutique of high-minded creatives. Consider its work for the Museum of Modern Art: a two-minute short fi lm called “I See” that uses abstract sculpture to make the museum accessible and relevant. It’s beautifully written and art directed by agency co-founder Paul Lavoie, and demands far more attention and thought than most ads.
But a boutique, Taxi is not. It’s big, with fi ve Canadian offi ces, one in New York and a newly opened offi ce in Amsterdam. And big agencies invariably hit some bumps in the road in any given year, let alone during a recession.
And yet, despite the loss of a few clients to agency alignments (Aviva and Allergan) and in-house marketing teams (Herbal Magic and Holt Renfrew), new client wins contributed to a 10.3% increase in revenue for Taxi. Some of that increase is also attributed to the expansion of business with existing clients. Telus gave its Mobility Digital and Future Friendly Home Digital AOR assignments to Taxi’s Toronto and Vancouver teams, respectively.
Vancouver also won Westminster Savings Credit Union and 1-800-Got-Junk, leading to “the best year since we opened in Vancouver by far,” according to CEO Rob Guenette.
Nationwide, Taxi won 21 new pieces of business in 2009 for brands as diverse as Heineken, Yellow Pages Group, Burger King and Sony Playstation.
The Burger King win perhaps explains Taxi’s success best. The network pitched as a whole to present a semi-modular operation–one that would customize itself to suit the client. Guenette asked the burger chain’s director of marketing, Jason Keown, what he was after: big client at small agency or mid-sized client at big agency . Taxi 2 landed the job with the promise of senior-level involvement at a smaller offi ce. It s fi rst effort was a campaign for the Angry Whopper, presenting a sandwich so spicy it was enraging. Television work showed friends fuming over each others’ small, annoying habits while eating the burger. Online, Taxi created the “Angrrrometer” to measure the intensity of visitors’ screams using face recognition software.
“We were 20% above forecast for unit movement… Our traffi c was way up [ during August and September],” says Keown adding the campaign caught the attention of other Burger King marketers around the world. Crispin Porter + Bogusky isn’t the only shop turning the King’s big, smiling, plastic head.
At Taxi, clients benefi t from the “one creative team” that exists across the entire network, a now fully realized concept built by chief creative offi cer Steve Mykolyn. Other large-scale network shops aspire to such collaboration.
Taxi seems to make it work with regular travel for key executives and videoconferencing technology Mykolyn had installed this year.
“They’ve got a great collaboration between the Montreal and Toronto offi ce,” says Annie Marsolais, director of corporate communications at Yellow Pages, which moved its business to Taxi 2 late last year, partly based on its ability to work across offi ces. “They’re great at adapting to our needs, which is important for us.” Taxi is currently crafting a major rebranding and ad campaign in English and French for Yellow Pages, set to launch in 2010.
The agency’s single creative team now spans an ocean since Taxi invaded Europe in May with the acquisition of Amsterdam agency Ottonico (now rebranded as Taxi Europe). Meant as the fi rst of multiple European shops, Lavoie says he plans to make Taxi a “local agency” in its new city. “People from our shop can walk out of here and see our campaigns and feel that we’re part of this community,” he says. The acquisition ads local telecomm client Telfort to the portfolio, along with Heineken and LG digital work.
So while we may giggle over rejected erection jokes, Taxi’s big clients wins, artful creative, international expansion and consistent success show its staying power is all natural.
