Terry Bell is the first to admit he’s a better creative director than an agency president. But, even on that point, the erstwhile president and current creative director of Vickers & Benson Advertising is pretty tough on himself.

Don’t pity Bell, though. His self-criticism isn’t without purpose. It’s all part of a strategy to regain the creative magic of V&B’s past by placing more responsibility in the hands of the younger generation of creative talent.

The change began about a year and a half ago when Vickers & Benson Companies went through some major soul searching to assess what it was doing well and what it wasn’t. The exercise stemmed from the realization that V&B was continuously losing out on new business pitches.

‘We had a history of showing up as the number two pick,’ explains Bell. ‘That was really frustrating because we came so close. [We asked ourselves] what should we be changing? What do we need to fine-tune to make the conversion [to number one]?’

When Bell and his colleagues finally sat down to tally the good and the bad, Bell concluded he was part of the problem. ‘I realized I was one of those parts – in terms of being president of the agency – that fell into the bad column. I felt, ‘Oh gawd, I shouldn’t be doing this.”

It was shortly after this that Bell conceded the presidency of Vickers & Benson Advertising to Tony Altilia, so that Bell himself could concentrate on the creative product for V&B Companies as a whole, as executive vice-president, chairman of creative services.

But the changes didn’t stop there. Bell, together with Larry Gordon, V&B’s executive vice-president and director of creative services, knew the agency could do better.

‘We were doing too much of the work,’ says Bell. ‘We needed to be more creative managers and less ‘doers’, and I think that was a very critical decision. There is a role for gray hair, and I think we had to assume that role.’

After hiring several young, talented creatives – Brad Monk, Vince Tassone, Brent Choi and Mark Tawse-Smith, among them – Bell and Gordon encouraged them to hone their creative skills by taking on several pro bono assignments for some very grateful charities.

Among the campaigns that have given V&B’s creative thoroughbreds a workout are a number of television executions for the Multiple Organ Retrieval and Exchange Program – which included some surprisingly funny executions – and a 30-second TV spot for the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre.

But perhaps the most hard-hitting campaign to come out of V&B’s young creative department is a television spot for Alcohol and Drug Concerns of Toronto, crafted by copywriter Choi and art director Tawse-Smith.

The commercial shows a nine-year-old girl telling a story all too often heard at the water cooler on a Monday morning. The girl talks about how she got ‘hammered’ the night before and how she’s now ‘hung over. At the end of the spot, the announcer asks, ‘Why is it such a great story whenever you tell it?’

Bob Walsh, executive director of Alcohol and Drug Concerns, says the commercial conveys a clear message around responsible drinking and has given the small charity a boost it never would have been able to accomplish without the help of V&B.

Bell says the time devoted to pro bono projects has paid off in spades with the creation of some outstanding work for the agency’s paying clients.

This includes television advertising for Jhirmack shampoo earlier this year, print and cinema for Cineplex Odeon and radio campaigns for new clients Jobshark.com, and Chariots.com.

As confirmation the pro bono strategy’s been working, a recently launched print effort for British Airways has been picked up by the airline’s global creative agency, U.K.-based M&C Saatchi, for use around the world.

Bell says there’s a cyclical nature to the work of agencies – the work goes from good to great back to good again roughly every five years – and he believes it’s V&B’s time to be at the top of its form.

While five years might appear a mere blip on the industry space-time continuum, Bell says it can seem like forever ‘when you’re dealing with young pups, trying to convince them to hang in and keep at it.’