Pop star Ciara’s new skincare line, OAM (On A Mission). Round created the brand from nothing in 3 short months.
In the ever-evolving marketing world, Toronto-based Round is championing a model that thrives on agile independence.
Co-founders Mike Davidson and Paul Riss are agency veterans that have built a dynamic agency, leading a team of over 150 industry experts that join projects exactly when their expertise is required. It’s a lean model thats been especially useful during uncertain economic times.
Revelios is a brand that is out to show that employee mental health has a direct relationship to business results. Round handled brand strategy, naming, logo, and visual identity centered around a visualization of positive brain activity.
“We talk to a client, understand their business, and put together a proposal to tackle the problem,” explains Davidson.
Round draws from the talent pool to assemble the perfect team. “Our model is all about cutting the fat and working with senior decision-makers,” he says.
5 Paddles Brewing was looking to create clean labels that reflected their approach to brewing, ‘Simple beer tastes better.’
The main benefit of being able to provide on-demand top-tier talent to clients of all sizes and budgets, says Davidson, is that “we can get there faster and cheaper using senior talent. There’s no bait and switch. We don’t offload work to junior people, which is more frustrating and, more expensive.”
BGC Canada’s TV campaign, Unshareable Stories, led viewers down a path but obscured the climax, allowing them to ‘imagine’ what happened. This technique let people push how bad the situation was to the limits of their own imagination.
Organizations that benefit most from Round’s agile, low overhead model are early-stage companies, mid-sized brands, not-for-profits, and large organizations requiring senior talent on priority projects. To date, they’ve worked with the likes of Mackenzie Investments, Subaru, Boston Beer Company, DoorDash, Disney, Harlequin, Go Auto, BGC, RBC, and more. They were recently selected as a preferred creative agency for Purolator and have also partnered up with business accelerators MaRS and The Forge at McMaster University.
Case in point: Round recently created pop-star Ciara’s new skincare brand OAM, developing the brand strategy, name, logo, packaging and visual identity in just 3 months when other agencies said it couldn’t be done.
BGC’s Out-of-Home campaign showed portraits of the children they serve but covered their mouths because the stories are too much for an ad campaign.
“We are not beholden to current staff bandwidth. Instead, we assembled a senior-talent swat team of 2 strategists, 6 writers and 6 designers across Canada and the US with the goal of getting as many options in the shortened timeline as we could,” says Davidson. The product launched on time, on budget, and managed to pick up several awards in the process.
Another noteworthy client is BGC (formerly Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada), a service that supports over 200,000 kids across the country through more than 700 locations. Round played a pivotal role in its rebranding and has developed several campaigns to promote it, including the most recent, “Unshareable Stories,” which highlights the problems affecting kids without explicitly showing them.
“We took the approach of great horror movies,” explains Riss. “You saw some of the story, but the camera became obscured during the climax. We really wanted to allow the viewer to create the ‘monster’ in their own head, because they will always push it as far as they’re comfortable with.”
And push it they did. Website traffic reached more than six times the monthly average, page views were up four times. An incredible 80% of visitors were new.
The L’OCA website is being built in phases with the goal of a complete online shopping experience managing many thousands of SKUs.
L’OCA is a new specialty food market that’s launching along with two restaurants managed by Top Chef Canada winner Paul Moran. Round was brought in for branding, website design and development work. “They have a robust internal creative department, but we plug right into it,” explains Riss. “We’re working together to create a holistic brand, and sometimes there’s bits they lead and sometimes there’s bits we lead. L’OCA plans to expand nationally in the future.”
“We have an extensive network,“ says Davidson, “that allows us to deliver everything from branding, creative, production, website builds, PR, media and more; everything a client might need,” says Davidson.
The American Birding Association needed a brand refresh including a new brand strategy, logo, visual identity, and magazine redesign. Round created a logo based on the dual binocular lenses.
And they don’t see any reason to change. “We like being able to pick the best team for each project – it’s faster, less expensive and delivers better work.”
CONTACT:
Mike Davidson
Partner & managing director
mike@weareround.com
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