Kicking Horse Coffee’s wild-eyed donkey kickstarted the sleepy coffee category in the BC coffee brand’s first-ever advertising campaign
It’s no wonder that an agency called Lifelong Crush aims to spark long-term brand devotion. That stands in “sharp contrast to much of what’s happening in the market,” says Lifelong Crush (LLC) EVP and managing director Caroline Kilgour. A lot of the work she sees “feels like a one-off,” she says, “with less of a strategically coherent long-term brand building effort – which is what this team is very bullish about.” LLC holds a long-term, results-oriented view about their work “regardless of whether they’re working as an AOR or on a project basis,” Kilgour says. The agency also distinguishes itself with a creative ethos built on Unconstrained Ideas: “These are ideas that are unshackled from traditional media plans, defy category norms and are designed to subvert monocultural trends,” explains SVP of strategy, Geoff Gingerich.
For OK Tire the agency used humour to emphasize that the brands full range of speciality services goes well beyond Tires. Using the tagline, “If it has wheels, it’s gonna be OK” the hero spot playfully demonstrates its expertise with vehicles of all sizes.
That’s what Lifelong Crush did for Cashmere UltraLuxe bathroom tissue by stepping into restaurant bathrooms to reinvent a category norm. While food has been the primary focus in setting the standard for restaurant excellence, LLC and their clients, Kruger Products Inc., saw an opportunity to set a new standard for the overlooked yet most visited (and judged) room – the bathroom. Recognizing not all bathrooms are created equally, as the authority on bathroom luxury, they launched the Cashmere UltraLuxe Bathroom Guide – the first-ever ranking of Canada’s top restaurant bathrooms. LLC developed a one-to-three “Fleur,” rating system, based on the unique embossed pattern on the bathroom tissue. The campaign generated significant earned impressions, a boost in sales volume and increased engagement in website visits and product mentions.
For Scarborough Health Network Foundation, Lifelong Crush developed an integrated campaign including a TV spot, OOH, print, radio and social highlighting the communities’ grit, tenacity and passion to highlight the greatness that can be achieved with donor support.
For Kicking Horse Coffee, a BC-based coffee brand with a loyal following but one which had never done any traditional advertising, the agency conceived of a campaign featuring a wild-eyed donkey that eschewed the category’s traditional celebrities or sip and smile tropes.
Lifelong Crush created the Cashmere UltraLuxe Bathroom Guide for Cashmere UltraLuxe bathroom tissue. Expert judges from the design and restaurant worlds selected Toronto’s most luxurious restaurant bathrooms.
The mandate was to bring the feeling of Kicking Horse Coffee to life and not get mired in the category tropes of their big coffee competitors. Aimed at kickstarting a sleepy category, the campaign garnered more than 365 million impressions and led to a significant increase in Kicking Horse direct to consumer sales. In fact, kilograms sold increased while those for the competition fell. “They had one of the best performing years ever, in direct-to-consumer as well as growing share, in a year where the whole category declined amid price increases. They are now one of the fastest growing premium coffee brands in Canada,” Gingerich adds.
Kilgour says LLC has a host of creative, “multi-hyphenate talents,” with big toolboxes and wide production capabilities. “They’re thinking from an initial ideation standpoint right through to the creative execution and the production phase of a project. The dreamers and the do’ers are one in the same at LLC,” she explains.
Those capabilities came to the fore with the expansive new “100%” campaign for Destination Toronto that had its soft launch in January. The effort aims to embrace stakeholders ranging from the business community to tourists with a rallying cry that Torontonians are 100% all-in on accepting new ideas and people’s ambitions, big and small.
The Kick Start Your Heart campaign for Kicking Horse Coffee led to a dramatic increase in the brand’s direct to consumer sales.
Many traditional agencies with much more siloed departments would have brought in a third-party production partner, driving costs up for the four-day shoot. But in this case, CCO Christina Yu developed the creative and spearheaded production as the Director.
“Our north star for production has always been craft, but we have challenged ourselves to conceive of the people, processes and tools required to make the production process as time and cost-efficient as possible,” Kilgour says. “Our production-first mindset reflects today’s world order, namely marketing teams who are being asked to do more with less. Unencumbered by legacy structures, we have been able to build an agency team that reflects what marketers are looking for from an agency partnership.”
Working with The Peace Collective, Lifelong developed the ‘Elbow’s Up’ collection, was supported by three online videos.
For Lifelong Crush, staying bold, nimble and unconstrained isn’t just an ethos – it’s the foundation of how the agency helps their clients’ brands break through in the attention economy and spark long-term brand devotion with their audience.
CONTACT:
Caroline Kilgour
EVP, managing director
caroline@lifelongcrush.com
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