For Tangerine, PHD Canada illustrated its no fee guarantee by reimbursing clients who booked flights using their chequing account the money back for a new baggage claim charge. Clients redeemed all 7,500 rebates in the first two weeks of the campaign.
PHD Canada is embracing a new era – one reshaped by leadership, redefined by strategy and refocused on intelligent growth. Under the global PHD banner –“Intelligence. Connected.” – the Omnicom agency is shifting from a traditional media shop to a full orchestration partner, helping clients navigate complexity by connecting data, talent and technology.
President Erica Kokiw, who joined the agency in fall 2024, is the one leading that transformation. “My mandate has been to turn the business around and build our position as a strategic partner, retaining great clients and attracting new ones who push us to be better.” That renewed focus has quickly borne fruit, with PHD winning Tim Hortons’ media business within her first three months.
Central to the agency’s offering is access to Omnicom’s Omni platform – an end-to-end marketing orchestration system that powers smarter planning and faster activation. Within Omni, tools like Audience Explorer, Investment and Channel Planner, and Q-Cultural Intelligence enable teams to create, optimize and scale campaigns across every channel with always-on data.
“Omni incorporates a wide range of data sets and AI agents, so our teams can access insights and drive outcomes at speed,” says Kokiw. “It’s evolving constantly, and it’s built to give our strategists and planners a creative edge.”
To get Gen Z talking about rental insurance in Montreal for Belairdirect, PHD Canada launched a ‘mystery fridge’ stunt on Quebec moving day that became the most talked-about campaign in the brand’s history.
To accelerate the shift, PHD Canada recently hired Cory Peters as its chief media officer. His role is to ensure the agency’s strategy, planning and activation are fully aligned with its ‘Intelligence. Connected.’ positioning. Peters is working to deliver an unprecedented client experience alongside a leadership group that also includes Matt Devlin, managing director of marketing science, Angie Genovese, managing director, client business partner and Christina Laczka, managing director, transformation.
That focused combination of creativity, data and smart orchestration is already showing up in PHD Canada’s work. When Belairdirect wanted to engage Gen Z with a rental insurance campaign, for example, PHD Canada created the “Mystery Fridge” stunt: a fridge crashing through a car roof on Montreal’s busy July 1 moving day. The staged scene, left unbranded, sparked viral interest and speculation, with many assuming it was a real accident. The activation helped deliver a 9% month-over-month increase in brand consideration, and a YOY 20% jump in quotes and 16% sales growth in Quebec.
In another example of responsive marketing, PHD Canada worked with Tangerine Bank and Rethink to turn a timely pain point into an opportunity. To help their clients with the rise of new and unexpected fees, Tangerine offered to help pay for baggage “checking fees” on any airline by providing a $40 rebate. The campaign helped 7,500 clients keep more money in their pockets, and it also helped the brand earn its highest-ever organic video views, with over one million plays. Paid media amplified the effort, reaching more than three million Canadians.
When Grupo Bimbo’s Bon Matin bread faced a decline in revenue and brand consideration in Quebec, PHD Canada sparked a province-wide debate around how Quebecers greet each other in the morning. The campaign led to a deeper connection with a declining audience segment of younger Gen Z and Millennials.
For Grupo Bimbo’s Bon Matin bread brand, the agency leaned into local cultural relevance around the different ways people greet each other in the morning. The campaign posed a playful question: Do you say “Bon Matin” or “Bonjour? The question sparked conversation across radio and social channels, particularly among younger Quebecers. The result was a 134% increase in website traffic from under-35s and a 47.5% jump in engagement across platforms.
According to VP of strategy Emma Matthews, PHD Canada’s approach reflects the new media reality. “No matter how big you are, the changing landscape means every brand needs to think like a challenger,” she says. That mindset influences how the agency views performance, innovation and creativity across campaigns.
For Kokiw, this challenger thinking is tied directly to the agency’s evolving identity. “When we think about ‘Intelligence. Connected.’ one of the principles is to outthink and outpace the competition so our clients can outgrow theirs,” she says. “We live by those principles every day.”
With leadership in place, platforms at their fingertips and campaign proof in hand, PHD Canada is redefining what a media agency can be – an orchestration partner for brands ready to grow smarter and faster in a fragmented world.
CONTACT:
Erica Kokiw
President
erica.kokiw@phdmedia.com
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