Bryant Fulton & Shee may not be the biggest agency in Vancouver, but it is certainly respected as one of the best. Two of the reasons for this may well be its cocreative directors, Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk. As a creative team, art director Francilia and copywriter Scherk have won a mantelful of awards in their five years together. Ruling over the BFS creative roost with humor and a strict work ethic, the two epitomize the notion of a creative team.

Francilia got her start in the advertising business as an art director at Scali McCabe Sloves, Vancouver, which was purchased by Bob Bryant, Gary Fulton and Darrel Shee in 1995. She stayed on for awhile, helping the new owners settle in, then moved to the Vancouver office of BBDO. There she met Scherk, who had landed at the agency a year earlier because ‘I had to get a job and advertising seemed like something I could really do.’ The two were teamed up and a winning partnership was born.

Scherk says the two clicked immediately and the union got off to a smooth start.

‘You have to work out the ego stuff right from the beginning; fighting for my idea, your idea, I want credit, you want credit, that sort of thing. It’s important that you both know going in that this is a partnership and you are going to succeed or fail together, and then sort of take that responsibility on.’

Before hooking up with Scherk, Francilia had teamed with half a dozen or so other writers, but none worked out.

‘There was no one I really clicked with’ she admits. ‘It’s just interesting that when I started working with Dan he had similar kinds of ideas and a similar kind of work ethic. We usually don’t get in until 10, but we end up working until midnight. And Dan will always stay behind when the work starts mounting up. It’s not like, ‘You’re the art director, you have to do that.’ He’ll stay to help if he can and vice versa. It’s always been a collaborative effort.’

Francilia and Scherk take particular pride in their work for the Vancouver International Film Festival. They started working on VIFF while still at BBDO and ended up bringing the client with them to BFS. Granted, VIFF is a small account compared to Labatt, Telus, HSBC and some others on the BFS client list, but the festival did provide the first real boost in their careers.

‘It has a special place in our hearts because it is probably what helped us accelerate so quickly,’ says Francilia. ‘We won a lot of international awards with that.’

The early VIFF work also landed the team the best in show prize at the 1995 Lotus Awards. They admit awards are a big part of the business, but not the only thing that motivates them.

‘It is kind of a game of awards and stuff, so consistency is sort of key,’ says Francilia. ‘We try to do the best work we can for as many accounts as we can, but some provide better opportunities than others.’

Scherk and Francilia say they don’t have a definitive strategy to wow clients during those all-important first meetings. They have developed a pattern, though, where Francilia sets ’em up and Scherk knocks ’em down.

‘Everybody has their good days and bad days,’ says Francilia. ‘There will be times when I’ll lose my train of thought and Dan will jump right in. Someone has to set it up, so that’s usually me, and then Dan just takes it through the creative business. He’s a good presenter.’

‘We don’t have any real selling strategy though,’ says Scherk. ‘We show the work to the clients and treat them like they are regular people.’

Francilia adds anything less than Grade A creative is left at the office. ‘What we try and do is never show them anything we wouldn’t want to produce so there is never any weak work going in and you can’t end up failing,’ she says.

Now in their fifth year together and content with their jobs as cocreative directors, Scherk and Francilia are loving life at the top of BFS.

‘The best thing about our job now is to really move things in certain directions, which is a little different from when you are a creative team and you struggle to fight against the system, so to speak,’ says Scherk.

‘The most fulfilling part is being able to make the changes you see fit to make, to direct the work in the way you want it to be. The worst thing is probably the same thing though, because you have to take responsibility for things as well. You’re like captaining the boat, but you still have to be careful not to run into the reef.’

Francilia attributes her success, in part, to her partner.

‘If Dan wasn’t here and such a good partner, I probably wouldn’t be a creative director, so it is nice to share that burden,’ says Francilia. ‘The best part is doing the work, and every time we get to sit down and do the work we suddenly remember why we’re here in the first place.’

They agree, too, that Vancouver is a nice place to play the game, given the quality of the creative work coming out of agencies like BFS, Palmer Jarvis DDB, Rethink and others.

‘It’s great to work out here,’ says Scherk. ‘I think it is the most interesting market creatively in the country right now. It makes it fun to compete.’

Adds Francilia: ‘It’s easy in a small city to just move away and make it big, make more money, but everyone has kind of stuck around Vancouver. It’s kind of nice because it keeps everyone motivated.’ *

-www.bfs.ca