Oceana worked with Elemental to turn the tide on how much plastic packaging ends up in our oceans.
Toronto indie Elemental built its reputation as the human connection agency: a shop capable of bringing together companies and customers, brands and audiences. Today, as the ad world gets more and more chaotic, Elemental is bringing as many of its services and required skillsets in-house as possible.
“2023 was a year focused on investing in our approach as the Human Connections agency,” said Brent Wardrop, CCO and partner at Elemental. “We have expanded our team beyond creative and strategy, offering in-house media and social to allow us to work faster at creating more effective solutions.”
Elemental helped Golf Canada launch the brand new National Golf League to help connect golfers across the country.
Unsurprisingly, Elemental has grown its headcount to do so. Over the last eight months, the agency added eight new staff to its current roster of 26, including an influencer and media team, as well as high-level accounts staff. And all of them collaborate on campaigns. The agency’s process brings together marketing, creative, social, and other departments together so every aspect of a campaign, from initial insights to launch, flows together seamlessly.
Through its ‘Briefstorm’ process, Elemental staffers and a client sit together in the same room and hash out their hopes, dreams and ideas for a new project. Nothing is off-limits. “We believe that the best work comes from working collaboratively with our clients. It’s about being in the room with them, sharing and challenging ideas to get to great work.” says Dustin Brown, CSO and partner. “The traditional way of briefing a project and waiting for ideas doesn’t work anymore, we aim to break down the walls between us and our clients.”
Elemental used Baffin workers and fans to shoot a campaign about the passion and excitement of the CFL.
Over the past 20 years, Elemental has worked with top-tier clients from rewards program Scene+ (scooping up two gold and two silver medals at the Canadian Marketing Association’s awards in 2020) to Baffin Boots’ (a silver and bronze winner that same year).
This year’s big campaigns include a rebrand for long-time client Recycle BC, with a Ted Lasso-style character motivating people to properly dispose of their recycling rather than simply finger-wagging. Baffin’s new CFL partnership, meanwhile, highlighted through Elemental’s “Passion Unites Us” campaign, featured the unvarnished CFL fervor of the company’s Hamilton-area staff. An eight-year relationship with both brands certainly helped Elemental turn their ideas into impressive creative.
Rice Select partnered with celebrity Chef Jordan Andino to build a creative platform focused on helping people find their inner chef.
RiceSelect, by contrast, has only been a client since 2021, yet it also got Elemental’s human touch with a campaign featuring celebrity chef Jordan Andino. “We just wanted to speak to those foodies at heart – whether they’re making dinner for their kids, or they’re having a dinner party,” Brown says. “It was about people that are serious about finding the right product or ingredient for whatever it is they’re making.”
Drafting up complex campaigns with everyone in the room as part of Elemental’s Briefstorm process may seem like a time-consuming exercise but, to Elemental, the process is really valuable – and Wardrop says clients love it. Most marketers, he points out, love to create but don’t get to do it a lot in their day job. Bringing them into the process gets them more engaged, which leads to better insights all around.
Motivating recyclers, rather than disparaging littering, was the crux of Elemental’s campaign for Recycle BC.
“What we’ve found, over and over again, is that it’s an exciting moment,” Wardrop says of the Briefstorm process. “The truth is it makes it faster for all of us to get to market quicker, and [clients] have knowledge that is so important to the success of any campaign.”
And it doesn’t necessarily require a significant pre-existing relationship. The Briefstorm process is, ultimately, about creating the space for a client and Elemental to have an open dialogue in a welcoming environment.
“We believe our approach has played a huge role in our success when it comes to winning new clients and growing existing partnerships.” concludes Dustin Brown. “Our future is in collaborating with our clients to help them make real human connections with their customers.”
CONTACT:
Dustin Brown
Partner, head of strategy
Dustin.Brown@elementalinc.com
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