‘Today, creative people have the challenge of dealing with tremendously sophisticated consumers. Advertising is a mature industry, so how do you catch the attention of a very savvy, sometimes cynical, audience? How do you delight them? Or captivate them in a fresh way?’ asks Steve Conover, executive creative director at Ambrose Carr Linton Carroll.
Conover remains undaunted by this task. In fact, he relishes it – as does the entire team at ACLC.
Their own theme line is ‘Brand Smart and User Friendly.’ It’s a unique combination of packaged-goods strategic thinking and pretense-free working style, which has earned them raves from clients.
Bustling in their Eglinton Avenue East building in midtown Toronto, the team at ACLC is upbeat and relaxed, beaming over their new interior design, one that’s distinguished by several skylights and a fresh coat of yellow paint.
‘The 25-foot ceiling gives us a warehouse quality, and we only have a few half-walls. The art studio is completely open,’ notes Esmé Carroll, the agency’s president and CEO. ‘That reflects how we do things at ACLC. There are no barriers between departments – we function as a team.’
ACLC has grown from a full-time staff of 30 to a team of 50 over the past two years – all while managing to maintain that boutique feeling. Their clients comprise an impressive list, including Honda Canada, Hershey Canada, Harvey’s, Swiss Chalet, The Stratford Festival, Paramount Canada’s Wonderland and The Toronto Sun.
Thanks to ACLC, everyone knows that ‘Harvey’s makes a hamburger a beautiful thing’, and that Swiss Chalet is ‘Always so good for so little.’
ACLC is proud of its heritage, creating some of this country’s most memorable and enduring ad campaigns: Buckley’s ‘Tastes awful. And it works’; TSN’s ‘Real Life. Real Drama. Real TV.’ launch campaign; and The Toronto Sun’s ‘The Little Paper That Grew’ all sprang from the fertile minds at ACLC.
And there’s no sign that the agency’s slowing down. For the big ideas that build brands and move product (as they say in the industry) keep coming on strong.
The agency’s recent work for Honda is just one example. A TV spot that cautions owners to bring their cars back to Honda for servicing, shows a competitor’s mechanics mistakenly reassembling a horse from a menage of other species’ body parts – to hilarious result.
In another recent commercial, a woman in apparent distress leaps into a stranger’s car and yells out rapid-fire driving instructions in heavily accented English, as if she’s on a dangerous secret mission. At the end of the commercial, in an unexpected twist, she simply thanks him for the test drive in his Acura EL.
Clearly, big ideas abound at ACLC. ‘But we’re not big agency-like at all,’ says Conover, who started with the firm 15 years ago as a copywriter and then returned as the creative director.
‘There were just 12 of us in a house back then and we had a very comfortable working style with our clients,’ he says. ‘It’s the same feeling now that billings have quadrupled.’
Carroll and Conover are proud that no barriers exist between in-house departments at ACLC.
‘For us, the strategic planning process is important in relation to creative,’ explains Carroll.
‘It’s the underpinning from which creative is developed. We put a high value on it and the creative people participate in the strategic process. They attend research meetings, attend focus groups and get ‘hands-on’ experience with the client’s products, then they collaborate with the account director in writing the creative strategy.’
This makes sense, Conover adds, because an insightful strategy is what sparks a truly great creative execution.
This inclusionary process is also extended to ACLC’s outsourcing partners.
They outsource media buying and planning to Harrison Young Pesonen & Newell, and they use outside multimedia firms for Web sites and interactive production.
‘But we don’t really consider them ‘outsiders’ at all,’ says Carroll. ‘We bring them into the process, just as if they were the media department down the hall, instead of across the street. A person from HYPN comes in at the beginning of the project to discuss what’s the best media from a budgetary standpoint and creative point of view. We need everyone there.’
How, exactly, does ACLC build better brands? By positioning them with precision, explains Carroll.
‘We do three things for clients,’ she says. ‘Continually monitor their competitive position. Aggressively pursue consumer trends. And learn what the consumer truly wants and leverage brand strengths. The next thing, of course, is to nail that position in creative.’
Carroll agrees with Conover that today’s creatives are particularly pressed to find new ways of engaging consumers after 50 years of ad history. It’s a task further complicated, she says, by the bottom-line mentality that permeates today’s business environment.
‘A business-minded conscience has entered into the evaluation of creative product,’ notes Carroll. ‘Creative has become more bottom-line driven. That means that creative has to go through more research processes. And sometimes unusual ideas aren’t easily tested. The goal, then, is to keep that original spark alive, in the face of evaluations that are oriented to predicting success in the marketplace.’
And how does Conover’s team of creatives keep current?
‘We act as huge receiving dishes,’ he adds lightheartedly. ‘In our private lives, we try to expose ourselves to as many fresh things as possible – in the arts, pop culture and in regular life. We’re all vacuums, sucking up influences. We go to the latest films, read the hot magazines and pick up on cultural cues that get melded in intriguing new combinations in the work.’
After all,’ adds Carroll, ‘there’s still nothing that sells better than a fresh idea.’
Also in this sponsored supplement:
– Agencies speak out on what it takes to be a leading creative agency in today’s business environment, the changing role of creative teams, and why clients should be paying attention to how the best in the business are doing it. p.CA1
– MacLaren McCann: Better creative = better results p.CA2
– Ammirati’s method for success p.CA3
– Palmer Jarvis DDB keeps it simple p.CA4
– Y&R ‘resists the usual’ p.CA5
– The ‘disciplined brilliance’ of Bates Canada p.CA6
– Ogilvy & Mather doesn’t do ads, it does ideas p.CA7
– BBDO seeks ‘creative leverage’ p.CA9
– Harrod & Mirlin/FCB: Creatively driven. Creatively led p.CA10
– TAXI – Six years old… drives like new p.CA11
