These days the Quebec advertising market seems plagued by conservative choices and more translation from English than a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Yet that’s not the impression one gets looking at the work of Diesel Marketing’s Daniel Andreani and Philippe Comeau, one of the province’s top creative pairs.

Case in point is a current crop of TV ads for Guelph, ON-based Sleeman Breweries that evolved from a highly successful radio campaign the Diesel team was looking to build on.

‘As a relatively young company we don’t do as much TV in general,’ says Diesel art director Andreani. ‘We were looking for a way to boost the campaign and decided that it was a good idea to change mediums.’

The spots feature Sleeman president and CEO John Sleeman speaking in a broken French-Canadian slang and reaching a highly charmed audience while doing so.

‘We thought, people here really like Sleeman and they have responded well to the idea of a guy from Ontario speaking in broken French. So we scripted it, scouted a traditional looking house that a guy like him would probably own in Montreal, had him hold the camera (in one hand) and a beer in the other and let him tell the story,’ adds Andreani.

Eric Vincent, brand manager, Sleeman, Quebec, says, ‘We had a very strong and positive exchange between us. They work very well together. They came up with the idea to switch the campaign to TV and the result was a great evolution for us as a brand. It was the talk of the town last year.’

After studying in Florida at the Ringling School of Art and Design, Andreani landed in Toronto at Taxi Advertising where he spent five years. When he received an offer from Diesel to return to his native Montreal, he took the opportunity. He cites his experience at Taxi with giving him a great start in the business, especially working on what was then the Clearnet (now Telus Mobility) campaign.

For his part, Comeau went to Montreal via Quebec City where he studied graphics communications at Laval University. He turned out to be a writer. After two years at Marketel, where he won awards for his work on Nautilus Plus – a Quebec chain of fitness centers – he was approached by a number of agencies and had no intention of joining what was then a boutique firm like Diesel.

‘I met Philippe Meunier [Deisel creative director] and was really inspired. I really trusted the guy and he made me feel like I was going in the right direction. He promised me the Sleeman’s account, and as I was a big fan of the campaign, this made my choice easy. It was clearly the most effective radio campaign in the Quebec market.’

Comeau says that Sleeman is very different from what’s being done in the Quebec market, which, according to him, is bogged down in a sea of ads that are quickly becoming too cautious for his taste. ‘We [take] a very strong stand against it,’ he says. ‘It is a very fragile market and directors are choosing to shoot very well-framed and well-lit spots that don’t really break any boundaries.’

At Diesel, both agree creative runs in the blood. ‘The agency is only 10 years old. No one is over 40. That can be felt. There are no boundaries to what influences us. It’s very important for us to have input from the German market or what’s going on in South America.’

Clearly, this team doesn’t want to be regionalized and they try to steer themselves outside of whatever mold seems to exist for advertising in Quebec.

‘We brainstorm together,’ says Andreani. ‘Other times we go our separate ways then compare and figure out ideas. There is a lot of overlap for us between writing and graphics. We think a lot about our ideas and sometimes people think we are stubborn and like to control things. But we don’t like our ideas to be watered down.’

‘It takes a very generous art director to work with me,’ says Comeau. ‘I’ve always got something to say about art. The reverse is true with Daniel. It really comes as a whole, that’s one thing that really characterizes what we do. Dan has great outside influences from his experiences in Florida [at school] and with Taxi.’

Apart from Sleeman, Comeau and Andreani have worked on a continuing series of 15-second commercials for drugstore chain Uniprix.

The spots feature the latest retail offers from the stores. All tie in nicely to the product on sale that week. A kid finishes his food and leaves his plate for the family dog to lick. The tag: this week at Uniprix, dishwasher detergent is on sale. In another, a youngster fidgits impatiently at the bathroom door waiting to relieve himself: this week at Uniprix, two-liter Pepsi is on sale.

One campaign where their talents really shine through is for the Quebec Literacy Foundation. The three spots are compelling communications of the disability. In one, a man drives along a Quebec freeway and the road signs are completely blank. In another, a man sits with a bank manager who hands him a contract that appears blank. In the third, a young woman is at some sort of protest or rally and the picket signs are all blank.

‘We wanted people to think of the consequences if words weren’t there in these and other situations,’ says Andreani. ‘We really tried to put ourselves in the shoes of those who can’t read and what difficulty it would present in day-to-day life.’

Sophie Labrec, president and executive manager of La fondation Quebecoise pour l’alphibetization (Quebec Literacy Foundation), was very impressed with the team. ‘Their work was a real victory for us. It is very tough to create a campaign that really demonstrates the difficulties that illiteracy has on people and at the same time directs those people to us where they can get help,’ she says.

‘It served us very well in that it clearly demonstrated the problems with being unable to read. They really identified with the situation, were sympathetic to it and our cause, and the result has been an ongoing campaign that has been very effective.

‘I was very impressed with the direction that Daniel and Philippe took. They listened very carefully to what we were looking for and were then very effective in providing us with a highly creative concept that remained simple.’

-www.dieselmarketing.com