After two years of developing a new agency, marketing veterans Kyle Lynch and Chris Sura unveiled their venture to the public this week, with plans of growing it even further.

Sura (pictured, left) and Lynch (pictured, right) agreed to jointly launch Everise, a Toronto-based sponsorship agency, because they believed by collaborating, they could refine processes, expand relationships and do a better job for the independent properties they were already working with.

“So our thought was to level up and for us to go wide and get more partners to build out a team, versus an individual property trying to build out their team,”  Lynch tells strategy.

“We really wanted to refine our process before we became public,” Sura adds. “We wanted to get our efficiencies in check, and have our processes in place.”

The agency hired its first staff member several months ago, and Lynch and Sura say they’re looking to grow its workforce and client base.

The agency’s first clients were the Boots and Hearts Music Festival and the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, which Lynch and Sura had relationships with. Since then, the roster of clients has expanded to include Ottawa music festival Bluesfest, Prince Edward County-based venue Base31 and non-profit Darkspark.

Prior to Everise, Lynch worked in marketing for Mosaic and worked directly with Boots and Hearts in his role as director of corporate partnerships with Republic Live. Sura, meanwhile, worked at XMC as director of brand solutions before working directly with the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair as director of corporate partnerships.

Everise’s stated mission is a commitment to enhance the impact of partnerships across all lines of business for properties and brands. Sura says that he and Lynch saw room for growth in the industry for a new agency, supported by their collective experience and networks.

Lynch adds that the clients the pair are looking to work with are largely organizations that operate in music, sports and cause. The aim, he says, is to bring the commercial marketing side of the industry to independent cultural initiatives.

“It’s really about connecting culture and commerce. The thought is that culture will lift up brands and brands will lift up culture,” Lynch says. 

“The reality of the space within Canada is that for properties, budgets are incredibly lean and if not for brand sponsorship, a lot of these events wouldn’t take place. So we want to elevate the level of expertise and offering for these respective properties to ensure these amazing events that we all love continue.”

He adds that Everise is also concerned with ensuring brands see increased opportunities within sponsorship and the impact it can have across all lines of business.

Sura and Lynch have worked on both sides of brand-property partnerships. Lynch says they understand sponsorship has ripple effects across all departments of any event, and that on the brand side, sponsorship can be leveraged across PR, content, influencers and more. He argues this puts Everise in a strong position to put for the best possible partnerships for both sides.

“Seeing how other agencies have worked in the past, I think that there’s just another level of care that we bring to the table,” Lynch says. “We created a process that really is all about cross-collaboration across all departments within a property. When we’re putting together partnerships with a property and linking a brand, it’s really got to be synchronous and under a common goal.”