Regional ad agencies are creating great work for their clients—and are being recognized by international juries. Extreme Group’s recent Cannes Lions bronze medal is just the latest notch in the industry’s belt

by Kathleen Martin

Imagine if a team from Halifax won bronze in the Olympics or some other giant worldwide sports competition. Surely there would be a parade and plenty of TV coverage. Surely the team members, Sidney Crosby-style, would become spokespeople for something—doughnuts or trucks or an anti-bullying campaign.

This year Extreme Group of Halifax took home a bronze medal in the advertising equivalent of the Olympic Games: the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. And although Shawn King, Extreme’s creative director, may still be waiting for his first promotional  gig, let’s be clear: this is a monumental achievement for the regional industry.

This year at Cannes there were more than 28,000 entries from 85 countries in categories ranging from film (television ads) to promotional campaigns. Extreme won its bronze “film” lion for a TV ad called Nail that it produced with its clients: Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia; Workplace, Health, Safety and Compensation of Newfoundland and Labrador; and Workers’ Compensation Board of Prince Edward Island.

This is the first lion Extreme has won, after being short-listed at Cannes seven times. And although it is the first Nova Scotian agency to win, it isn’t the first in Atlantic Canada. In 2006 Target Marketing and Communications of St. John’s took home a gold “promo” lion for work it did with Irving, and the previous year Target won two bronze lions for radio work promoting Irving and the St. John’s–based Nickel Independent Film Festival.

Target winning gold at an international ad festival means that regional agencies are not only producing world-class creative work but are doing it again and again. This is an impressive resource—and not just the teams at Extreme and Target, because one agency doesn’t fit all. Marketing agencies have personalities and strengths, and the team you choose must fit your particular business philosophy and style. Impressive creative teams work at agencies, and as independent contractors, across Atlantic Canada.

I have watched and reported on the marketing industry in Atlantic Canada for the past decade and have repeatedly seen magic come from good agency–client relationships. As Target president Noel O’Dea says with conviction, “Creativity that is applied in a way that helps to solve an organization’s problems is a powerful business tool.” And it doesn’t have to cost a fortune, nor is it just for the big companies. It can be as small a project as designing your business card and as big as an international multimedia campaign. Working with an experienced creative team to help push your message through the marketplace makes sense for anyone who wants their business to soar.

When King first talked about winning at Cannes, he credited the Workers’ Compensation Board teams in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. “Every single piece of work we’ve done that has been good has been the result of great collaboration with a client,” he says. “Clients who trust you and respect why you’re at the table—who want to work with you as a partner.”

That’s how something as seemingly prosaic as a workplace safety advertising campaign can win at Cannes. “We are a public sector organization,” explains Shelley Rowan, the vice-president of strategy and employee engagement at the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia. “We are committed to making a change in our community, and marketing is one tool we use to achieve that. Extreme Group’s creative team got us to look at our business differently, and they got us to do things that we probably wouldn’t have done otherwise, but that were within our strategic vision. We wanted to do what was right, not what was easy.”

Although there may never be a parade celebrating your marketing achievements, there will be other important rewards: increased revenue, heightened profile, the ability to influence how others perceive your work—and, maybe, even preventing injuries. Nova Scotia Workers’ Compensation statistics show that time lost due to injuries fell in the period it worked with Extreme.

At its best, marketing changes how we see the world in a creative, engaging, thought-provoking, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes heartbreaking way. It attempts to leave an impression so that your product, your brand, and your ideas resonate with the people you want to reach. When done well, it is a complicated blend of art, imagination, research, gut instinct, and passion. In my experience, it pays to talk to the people who stake their careers on getting it right.

Kathleen Martin is a freelance journalist based in Halifax. She can be reached at masthead@ns.sympatico.ca.