Toronto HQ’d Leo Burnett Canada and its Starcom Mediavest Group hit two homers out of the marketing ballpark last week. First up, in what Leo prexy/CEO David Moore calls ‘a dream assignment for any agency,’ they beat out all the other biggies for the plum consolidated Tourism Toronto account.
‘We threw ourselves into trying to understand what’s best in class in the world in terms of destination marketing – who’s doing it right and why – and how to bring some of that thinking to Toronto,’ Moore tells Media in Canada. ‘We brought a point of view to them on what makes good destination marketing and on where we think Toronto needs to go.’ And, adds SMG CEO Lauren Richards, ‘from the get-go, there was really good chemistry between their team and ours.’
Explaining how things looked from the other side of the table, Tourism Toronto’s chief marketing officer Joel Peters, says ‘We recognized (Burnett’s and Starcom’s) strong record of carrying big ideas through a wide range of executions – print and broadcast advertising, online and events.’
Hot on the heels of that win, Leo B and Starcom nabbed the portions of the Moosehead Breweries account it wasn’t already handling. Since 2003, Moosehead Lager and Moosehead Light have been in their portfolio; now the remainder of brands for Canada’s oldest and largest independent brewery are also theirs.
Richards says everyone in the agency is looking forward to ‘having some fun’ with Moosehead, ‘who have always tended to zig when everyone else was zagging.’ Moore adds that, ‘like Tourism Toronto, Moosehead was also ‘looking to bring everything – creative, digital, promotions and media – under one roof instead of dealing with three or four different agencies.’
Moosehead sales and marketing VP Jim Eagles confirmed this, saying that ‘The decision to consolidate the business was made to further the development of innovative media thinking in conjunction with the creative development process.’
Even though his people ‘are getting right to work’ on both new accounts, Moore says it will probably be spring – ‘the start of both tourism and beer season’ – before the top-secret creative and media innovations that clobbered the competition are visible.
