Financial services company Desjardins has selected Glassroom (BBR’s dedicated media unit) and Dialekta to manage its national digital, social media and search engine marketing (SEM). The account is handled by a one-team collaborative model that involves specialists from the two agencies being embedded with Desjardins’ in-house media team.

Sylvain Marcoux, senior manager of marketing, donations, sponsorships and brand at Desjardins, says having two deeply specialized teams “maximizes our ability to reach our clients [and] members with the right message at the right time and to strengthen the performance of our initiatives.”

Glassroom has worked with Desjardins previously, having teamed up with its sister creative shop BBR since the latter won the bank’s creative business in early 2019.

Charles Beaulieu, partner and general manager at Glassroom, says, “We are keen on the one-team hybrid model. It’s something we want to do more because we see true performance and true innovation. And this was exactly what Desjardins asked for in the initial RFP last year. We save so much time. We’re not ping-ponging back and forth. We get feedback in real time, which means when we do more formal presentations, there are no surprises. Everyone is working together rather one at a time.”

Rather than breaking the media group into teams to handle insurance or credit union programs, Beaulieu says the teams are structured by core target group, not product. For example, the unit always has the same team working on youth initiatives. A different team handles the retirement segment.

Dialekta is an independent digital marketing agency based in Montreal and Paris.