For the fourth year, Strategy presents its Top Clients report, an annual feature devoted to recognizing the accomplishments of leading clients in the Canadian marketing community.

This year, as before, Strategy’s editorial staff reviewed the year’s news in an effort to identify those clients that stand out most clearly as exemplary marketers.

These selections are based on what we consider the fundamental tenets of good marketing: sales results, attention to brand development, innovation and productive relationships with suppliers.

Measured against these criteria, Levi Strauss & Company (Canada) has unquestionably earned the distinction of being named Strategy’s 1998 Client of the Year.

Call it the baby boomlet.

In the next few years, the children of the baby boomers – the so-called ‘echo generation’ – are going to be making their presence felt in the marketplace, as they enter their tween years (ages 8 to 14).

While not as numerous as their parents, these youngsters represent a pretty sizeable population bulge – and they probably exercise more influence over family purchase decisions than their counterparts of any previous generation.

Binney & Smith Canada, makers of the venerable Crayola brand of products, saw this wave coming and decided to do something about it.

The result was the 1997 launch of the tween-targeted Crayola line iQ – arguably one of the most successful new product introductions in the company’s history.

Fred Geyer, general manager of Binney & Smith Canada, says the idea for the iQ line grew out of the understanding that, when it comes to drawing and coloring products, tweens have very different desires from their younger brothers and sisters.

For children under eight and their parents, he explains, washability and ease of use are the priorities. Kids in the 8-14 range, by contrast, are looking for products that offer vibrant colors, and are designed to meet some of the very particular needs that they may have for school projects.

The iQ line delivers both of these: more richness and variety of color, as well as greater specificity of use. You won’t, for example, find items such as a brush-tip marker, a writing marker and a highlighting marker in the core Crayola line.

While iQ is still part of the overall Crayola brand, and stands for all of the same things – ‘kids, color, creativity and fun,’ as Geyer puts it – the company has differentiated it more strongly from the core line than it has any other new product in the past. That’s evident in the design of the iQ products and their packaging: A darker color scheme lends a more sophisticated, ‘adult’ look than any traditional Crayola product possesses.

The launch of iQ was promoted with a television spot by TBWA Chiat/Day of Toronto, which aired during two key periods – August and January – and a major back-to-school promotion.

In iQ’s first year on the market, Binney & Smith registered double-digit sales increases, and similar results are projected for the second year. That doesn’t just reflect sales of the new line, either. According to Geyer, the introduction of iQ also enabled the company to better define the positioning of its younger children’s products, with the result that those, too, saw growth.

With the iQ line now firmly established, the company will be using it as a platform for the introduction of new products, Geyer says.

The success of such initiatives, of course, will depend upon the company’s ability to stay on top of the ever-changing wants and needs of the burgeoning tween market.

‘It’s an audience you have to listen to pretty carefully,’ Geyer says. ‘They don’t speak the same language as adults. And what they say and what they mean are not necessarily the same thing.’

Also in this report:

– Top Client Overall: Levi Strauss develops intimate relationships p.21

– Top Client, Entertainment: Playdium partners to grow entertainment pie p.22

– Top Client, Retail: Canadian Tire revs up power brands p.24

– Top Client, Business Services: UPS pushes overnight delivery envelope p.25

– Top Client, Alcoholic Beverages: Labatt builds equity Out of the Blue p.26

– Top Client, Telecommunications: Bell makes 10-cent comeback p.27

– Top Client, Media: Canoe proves ad-worth on-line vessel p.28

– Top Client, Transportation: Air Canada hones in on business target p.28

– Top Client, Financial Services: Amex fills generation gap p.31