Terry Horton
VP, media director, Cossette Media
It didn’t take Terry Horton long. After becoming top dog at Cossette Media’s Toronto office in 2010, he’s already become one of strategy’s Media Directors of the Year, leading his office of 50 through a year of growth.
Cossette brought in significant accounts in 2011, including Royal Canadian Mint, Transat and the $125 million Telus media account.
Horton, an 18-year industry vet who joined Cossette back in 1998, welcomed 17 new employees to the team, adding to its digital depth. Digital practitioners now account for almost 50% of agency staff, and Horton says that a digital mindset is something he encourages his entire team to embrace: “Digital has always been part of the fabric of Cossette Media,” he says.
A spirit of giving is also part of the agency’s make-up. In the past 12 months Horton and his team donated more than $300,000 in cash, media inventory, pro bono work and participation to events including The Walk to End Women’s Cancers, the Telus Walk to Cure Diabetes and cervical cancer initiative Julyna. Also, under Horton’s tutelage, Cossette Media teams have won trips to compete in Cannes three out of the last six years at the Globe and Mail’s Young Media Lion Awards.
Going forward Horton says his hope for Cossette Media is to stay a leader in the digital and media innovation space and have the best client service, something the agency aims to achieve with a partnership it formed with global client satisfaction company Aprais that’s resulted in a satisfaction survey it presents to clients every six months.
“It keeps us really attuned to how we’re doing and every six months there’s no surprise,” says Horton. “It forces us to constantly be better.”
Mark Sherman
Founder, owner, executive chairman, Media Experts
Mark Sherman has had a big year. On top of Media Director of the Year accolades (as well as Media Experts winning Media Agency of the Year Silver), he’s celebrating three decades since founding Media Experts in Montreal with a team of three in 1981, and growing it to three offices and 120 employees servicing 28 clients.
Another cause for celebration was winning the Bell Canada business, beginning work on the account back in October 2010. It was also a year of innovation with Media Experts recently unveiling the Xpeto demand side platform, making it the first independent media services firm in Canada to operate its own online media trading desk.
Awards have also been on the uptick. The Olympic Torch program that saw Bombardier take on a role at the heart of the Games secured Gold in strategy’s 2010 B!G Awards and a Gold at the Internationalist Awards in 2011. It also resulted in Media Experts being the only Canadian winner at the 2011 Festival of Media.
Sherman, who was a judge at Cannes this year on the media jury, also worked to inspire Canadians through a joint venture with Zulu Alpha Kilo and its creative director Zak Mroueh. Together they launched “People for Good,” a multi-platform media campaign focused on creating a better Canada one good deed at a time. Over 300 media vendors donated space across the country. An iPad and iPhone application created by Toronto-based Thinking Box was also part of the mix.
As for the future, Sherman says his goal is for Media Experts to simply continue to get better across the board. “If you’re going to be the best, you have to excel in every aspect of the business,” he says.
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Next Media Star: Shahnaz Mawji, supervisor, communications strategy at Carat
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