The focus of this regular section is on agencies in Canada. Looking for agency business strategies and creative teams’ secret weapons? We tell all in Ad Missions.

When David Crichton left his vp, associate creative director job at Roche Macaulay & Partners to open his own agency, he had envisioned working in a place just like the one he has created. Emerging from behind a wall of boxes that had rendered him invisible until this point, Crichton proudly shows off the new offices of the Crichton Kim-Kirkland Company, an agency he cofounded in 1998 with partner Susan Kim-Kirkland. The new address is one floor up from their old digs on John Street in downtown Toronto, and boasts 4,500 square feet, almost double the space.

‘It’s a little more than we need but it gives us the luxury of expanding and also of spreading things out and having a bit of fun with it,’ says Crichton.

Sitting at a table, which he says will soon be surrounded by walls and thus made into a boardroom (the company’s first), creative director Crichton recalls how he and Kim-Kirkland (ckkc’s strategic planner) fostered their partnership.

‘Susan was the director of strategic planning over at Roche,’ says Crichton. ‘[Starting my own agency] was something I wanted to try and I think that Susan is definitely entrepreneurial. It didn’t take a lot of convincing to get her to come aboard.’ After a single meeting at Starbucks, they were partners.

With a number of clients on board immediately out of the gate, ckkc picked up business from Toronto alternative radio station The Edge (owned by Corus Entertainment) and coined a popular line heard around Toronto: ‘Everyone has some Edge in them.’

The agency’s goal with the ad campaign was to develop mass appeal for The Edge without alienating the station’s core audience. ckkc launched a poster and transit campaign featuring a number of ‘edgy’ and humorous ads. Probably the most well-known of these is a series of ads featuring authentic childhood photos of new music icons like Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan. This ad and others like it became so popular the posters were actually being stolen. The possibility of giving away posters of the ads was considered and then dismissed.

‘We decided to just post them up and let people rip them off,’ says Crichton. ‘Once you start giving them out, it goes against what The Edge is all about. It’s better for people to say, ‘I ripped off this poster,’ than to say, ‘I got a free poster.’ It trivializes it, it commercializes it, and you don’t want to do that.’

ckkc called for overruns of the ad by as much as 35%, demonstrating one of the more interesting facets of ckkc: the company is used for marketing and strategic planning guidance almost as much as it is for advertising.

The Edge campaign also included a television spot known as ‘Diaper Boy,’ which features a grown man on the street wearing a diaper trying to get passers-by to change him. The success of ckkc’s work for The Edge led to work for another Corus station, Energy Radio, which spawned another successful campaign under the tag line ‘Leave it on.’

Other names on the ckkc client list include Caffrey’s Irish Ale, Shirriff, Melanie Lyne and the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency, among others. The company picked up the business of restaurant chains Kelsey’s and Montana’s just before the holidays and is currently in the strategic planning phase for the eateries.

Crichton says he gets a lot of positive feedback from clients based on the lengths ckkc will go to build a company’s or brand’s image. Crichton and Kim-Kirkland make sure their package is complete, every time. Their marketing packs could include such things as sales kits, business cards, templates, letterheads, sales brochures or whatever is needed. In the case of ckkc client New Ad, the company even put together its Christmas cards.

‘They provide great opportunities for you to show how much you care about the account,’ says Crichton. ‘Most agencies will look at that and go, ‘Oh god, we can’t get involved in that,’ or worse yet, the senior people at the agencies will pawn it off on the juniors. As a result you get c-level work because nobody cares about it. But they are great opportunities.’

This ties in with just what ckkc will do to get the attention of a client and keep its business. Crichton says the writers and art directors at his company routinely come up with as many as a dozen campaigns to present to clients, something he believes is unheard of at other agencies.

‘Most agencies do their safe one, the one in the middle and the extreme one. We do a ton of work, but it shows that you’ve thought it out and explored every possible angle. When the client feels you’ve explored every possible angle it also involves them. They never feel as though they are having something rammed down their throat [that] is [already] all thought through.’

Crichton is also big on rewarding loyalty and repaying favors. A good example of this is his relationship with spot director Jean-Marc Piche (currently on the Industry Films roster). According to the creative director, Piche did some favors for him earlier on in his career, and as a result, Crichton rewarded him with the opportunity to direct ckkc’s ‘Eggs’ spots.

He also feels agencies don’t stick with Canada’s directing talent enough. He isn’t sure why. Although he admits to having used u.s.-based directors to shoot some of his ads in the past, he feels there is more than enough talent in Canada to keep the production scene moving. Interestingly, Crichton says in many cases the Canadian directors are as much at fault as agencies.

‘I’ve only known one director, ever, that has come to me directly, called me up and said, ‘Do you want to get together and take a look at my reel?’ ‘ says Crichton. ‘The only other time is when a producer from the agency, or a rep from a film house comes to me and says, ‘I’ve got a bunch of reels,’ but they are selling Americans and Canadians. They don’t care who you use. They just want to get the business. It is up to the directors to pound the pavement, but a lot of directors feel they are above it.’

Now in the new ckkc facility, Crichton is more relaxed than in meetings past. With a skylight above his creative department illuminating the space, Crichton foretells of new business on the horizon and some openings for new creatives to help out with the growing business.

‘When you are pressed for time and running by the skin of your teeth, I don’t think you do as good work just because you are trying to pump it out,’ he says. ‘I’d like to keep bringing in people so the clients we have are well-serviced and the work that keeps going out is good. I have cause to say that with the stuff we do, the worst ad we do is still better than 90% of the stuff being done out there. I know it.’ •

-www.ckkc.com