A Montreal-based agency emerging as a global creative force, an historic retailer that is looking very modern these days, and the media organization that connected all of Canada for 17 days in February. These are Marketing’s picks for the best of the year in 2010.
Marketing profiles all three of its honourees in the Dec. 13 issue out tomorrow:
•Sid Lee, Agency of the Year
•HBC, Marketer of the Year
•Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, Media Player of the Year
Thanks to impressive new business wins at home and abroad and continued envelope-busting creative work, Sid Lee pulled off a very rare repeat this year. “After winning for the first time in 2009, Sid Lee returns as our ‘Agency of the Year’ because beyond the measurable success enjoyed in 2010, the shop put on a clinic for what the industry may (and arguably, should) look like in the not-so-distant future,” wrote Jeff Beer in his profile of the agency which became one of the lead agencies for Adidas worldwide in 2010.
“Sid Lee continues to redefine what it means to be an advertising agency,” added Marketing managing editor David Brown in his editor’s letter that opens the issue. “When reviewing the contenders, we look for signs of vibrancy and excitement; agencies doing things this year that they didn’t do last year; things that nobody else is doing. Sid Lee checked all the boxes.”
HBC was the official outfitter of the Canadian Olympic team and the unofficial outfitter for all of Canada during the Winter Olympics with its red mittens ubiquitous from coast to coast.
But that was only part of HBC’s success story in 2010. In just over two years in charge of the Bay, Bonnie Brooks has reinvigorated the iconic Canadian retailer, boldly planting a new flag on the Toronto fashion landscape with the opening of The Room which quickly became a style hotspot in the city.
Toronto Star fashion columnist Derick Chetty told Marketing’s Kristin Laird that the Bay was the big story in retail this year.
“They’re really working on getting rid of that stodgy image and making it a very cool destination, a place where you can actually find unique items.”
“The Room really served notice that we were back in the fashion business,” said Patrick Dickinson, the Bay’s vice-president, marketing.
“HBC seemed a little lost in recent years. In 2010, it proudly proved it has found its way again,” added Brown in his note.
In his profile of Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, Chris Powell explains that the group was chosen for the remarkable success born from an “improbable melding of two fierce media rivals in CTV and Rogers Media” to deliver an unprecedented content-delivery platform.
“The result was a 17-day event that reached virtually every Canadian, produced the top-five most-watched programs in Canadian TV history (led by 16.7 million for the Canada – U.S. men’s hockey final), and ushered in an era of ‘three-screen’ viewing—TV, internet and mobile—that established a new benchmark for how major sporting events will be delivered from now on,” he wrote.
“Some of the halo around the Consortium may come from the tremendous success of the Olympics themselves,” wrote Brown. “But far more than that, this remarkable joint effort… truly revolutionized coverage of a major international sporting event and delivered to advertisers and viewers alike an unforgettable experience on whatever platform they desired.
