It has taken tiny Toronto agency Brandworks International four years to finally live up to its grandiose name, but with the recent opening of an office in Atlanta, Ga., it is now a truly international operation.

While other agencies aspire to centres such as New York City and Chicago, Brandworks’ choice of Atlanta was made with the same solid strategic thinking the agency believes is its primary strength.

The appeal of the Atlanta area is that it is part of a seven-state region that’s heavily populated with small- to medium-sized businesses – companies with ad budgets that are insignificant to a big u.s. agency but are attractive to a small Canadian firm.

‘We’re an agency that targets companies that are too small to be of interest to the multinationals, but too large not to be out there aggressively marketing across North America, and even globally,’ says Michael Clancey, Brandworks’ creative director and cofounder.

‘We’ve identified that the south-east United States is full of companies like that. I think there’s much more opportunity for our style of agency there than there is here.’

As Clancey sees it, every time there’s a review in Toronto, the same dozen agencies are all fighting for the same account, leaving smaller agencies out in the cold.

‘We’re saying, ‘Let’s fish where the fish are’.’

In addition, MacDonald says the agency has a couple of Canadian technology clients who do a great deal of their business in the u.s., allowing Brandworks to broaden its relationship with them.

Expansion into the u.s. was not exactly the news from Brandworks that the Canadian industry expected to hear.

The recent losses of Kaufman Footwear and The Globe and Mail were major blows to the agency, ones that some speculated might close such a small shop.

But Bill MacDonald, a partner at Brandworks, says the account budgets as reported in the media were inflated and so the losses were far less wounding than they seemed.

‘[The losses] weren’t a shot in the head, they were a body blow…but the losses from a financial standpoint are hardly crippling.’

He says the Kaufman account, while reported at $10 million, was actually worth a small fraction of that and while everyone assumed The Globe’s account was close to the $10 million its competitor the National Post reportedly allotted for its launch, the reality was somewhere in the region of $1 million to $1.5 million.

Since those two losses, the agency has picked up three new pieces of business in Toronto, including its most recent win, the CN Tower.

In December, it won Bell Sport Canada of Granby, Que., a maker of bicycle helmets and parts, and early this month, the agency will be launching a large branding campaign for a client that wants to remain anonymous until then.

If all goes well, Brandworks expects to make some announcements later this month about u.s. and North American work resulting from a couple of recent new business pitches in New York and Wisconsin.

The opening of the new office gives Clancey and MacDonald a chance to work with an old friend, industry veteran Bill Williams, who heads up the three-person u.s. office as president of Brandworks USA.

The American-born Williams has spent most of his career with multinationals such as J. Walter Thompson and the McCann-Erickson Worldwide network in the u.s., Europe and, most recently, Toronto.

During his five years in Europe, he worked with Clancey managing the us$250 million Opal car account across six language groups and 22 markets.

For the time being, Clancey, MacDonald and others in the agency will shuttle to and from Atlanta as required. Although MacDonald says the agency has every intention of increasing staff of the Atlanta office, he expects one of the major selling points for u.s. clients will be cost savings on creative and production handled in Canada as a result of the weak Canadian dollar.

Williams concedes that many u.s. marketers, particularly those of the size that Brandworks is targeting, may be reluctant at first to deal with a non-American agency, but he’s confident that the fierce competition within the region and an extremely favourable exchange rate will soon win them over.

‘It’s true the highways are littered with agencies who have had aspirations to move from Canada into the u.s., but we’re actually starting in the u.s. and moving it back towards Canada.’

Sidebar: Canadian invasion

A number of Canadian agencies set up shop south of the border last year in the belief that a u.s. office helps with their credibility when pitching new business in that country.

Some, such as The Wolf Group have made inroads through acquisitions. In 1998, the Toronto-based agency added Partners & Shevack of New York, The Playground, a Cleveland, Ohio kids’ marketing firm, and Sirianno Associates of Amherst, n.y. to its growing chain of u.s. shops.

Likewise, The Communiqué Group bought Hampel Stefanides of New York and San Francisco, an agency with a strong creative reputation and us$12 million in billings.

Toronto-based Vickers & Benson chose to open a new agency in Chicago with its name on the door in July 1998. It had already gained u.s. experience through its work on the Canadian Tourism Commission account and for Harris Bank, an affiliate of Canadian client Bank of Montreal.

Most recently, The BrainStorm Group announced last month it would be opening an office in New York. The Toronto agency’s roster is heavy with clients in the fashion and retail sectors such as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Jones New York, and Kenneth Cole, many of which are headquartered in New York.

There are also a number of Canadian agencies such as Marshall Fenn Communications, Padulo Integrated, and Glennie Stamnes Strategy, that handle work for the u.s. market out of their Canadian offices. PS