In addition to changing its name, the Montreal agency formerly known as Diesel wants to change the way advertising and the advertising business model operates. The new agency name, Sid Lee, which is an anagram of Diesel, was created to end brand confusion with the popular Diesel jeans. While there was a real Sid Lee-an astronomer of some repute in Calgary who died in 2001-the agency seems to have licked the brand confusion issue.
But that’s only part of a transformation. Sid Lee is broadening its strategic and creative horizons far beyond mere advertising, says agency president Jean-François Bouchard. “We have never believed in the ad-centric model,” he says. “Actually, we hate it and we are out to destroy it.”
In the Sid Lee mantra, advertising should be seen as a tool, as opposed to a tool box. Rather, what Sid Lee calls “commercial creativity” is the tool box. And it can include a lot more than just advertising, which explains why Sid Lee is now involved in such things as retail architecture, experiential marketing and industrial design.
In a novel move, Sid Lee forged an alliance with architectural firm Aedifica and has a few architects working in-house with the agency on retail design. The idea is to help Sid Lee develop rich brand experiences in stores, Bouchard says. It’s similar to the in-house employee agreements Sid Lee has with media agency Touché PHD (which has about eight employees at Sid Lee) and M&H (Sid Lee’s print production partner).
Sid Lee and Aedifica complement each other well, according to Aedifica president Michel Dubuc. They’ve already worked on a Bose prototype store at the Time-Warner Center in New York, a new store format for Brite Smile teeth whitening spas in the U.S., and they’re now working on a retail project for Adidas in Portland, Ore. Most recently, the two collaborated on a new store prototype for SAQ Selection, a Quebec liquor board store, which opened last month. Launched in Laval, near Montreal, and soon to be trotted out across the province, the concept groups wines by type, not region of origin.
So far, the Sid Lee name change and retail design vocation has been well received. As Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image in Montreal notes, in a world where agencies have unusual names like StrawberryFrog, a name like Sid Lee is no big deal. As for Sid Lee getting involved in architecture, Joel says: “I’m a big fan of marketing agencies sticking to what they’re great at, which is idea creation. If they can execute that on different platforms, great.”
The agency has also released a 10-page manifesto titled “Building Strong Brands by Leveraging Conversational Capital,” in which it touts “conversational capital” (a variation of word-of-mouth marketing or consumer storytelling) as “an extremely powerful tool for promoting strong branded products/service experiences.”
The manifesto explains that whether it’s Sid Lee clients Cirque du Soleil or the Skylofts at MGM Grand in Las Vegas or Schwartz’s smoked meat restaurant in Montreal, “all three, through different combinations of flair, talented leadership, perseverance and a great deal of integrity, have created branded products and services that consumers generally love to (positively) talk about.”
As for future Sid Lee ventures, one to look for is an office outside of Canada. However, that move would be more about providing access to a new talent pool than being close to clients, Bouchard says, given that the agency already works with several international clients. Still, “we know it’s going to happen; the questions of when and where are still totally up in the air.”
