[Top Agency Series] Navigating Advertising Evolution With Al Scornaienchi of Agency59

Al Scornaienchi is the President and CEO of Agency59, an independent advertising agency based in Toronto specializing in creative solutions for its clients. Under his leadership, Agency59 has maintained its relevance and competitiveness against larger multinational firms, serving prominent clients like Mercedes-Benz and Labatt. Al began his career at J. Walter Thompson, famously working on the Pepsi account during its Michael Jackson era, and he later helped establish the Vancouver office of Chiat/Day. In his tenure at Agency 59, Al has focused on fostering a strong company culture and planning for succession, ensuring the agency remains innovative and adaptable in a rapidly changing industry.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:56] Agency59’s secrets to competing with large multinational competitors
• [08:22] The evolution of Agency59’s services 
• [11:27] How traditional and digital advertising worlds blend
• [15:15] Al Scornaienchi explains how saying “no” to some projects can safeguard relationships
• [22:32] Insights on valuable training practices from large agencies
• [27:28] How flexibility helps in retaining top talent
• [31:49] Al’s take on succession planning and leadership transitions in an ad agency
• [39:59] How hybrid work models reshape productivity and recruitment
• [42:19] Agency59’s creative campaigns and client work

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered what it takes to run a successful advertising agency in a world dominated by large corporations with deep pockets? What makes a mid-sized independent agency nimble enough to stand out amidst industry titans? How does such a company adapt to the rapid changes and trends within the advertising world?

Al Scornaienchi is a seasoned professional who has witnessed the evolution of advertising from the age of Pepsi campaigns through digital transformation. He explains how his agency has navigated the competitive landscape of the advertising world, embracing change by integrating technology, digital marketing, and a forward-thinking approach to creative direction and succession planning. By sticking to what Agency59 does best and cultivating a culture of flexibility and open communication, the agency retains talent and keeps clients satisfied.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Al Scornaienchi, President and CEO of Agency59, about thriving as an independent agency in a competitive market. Al discusses how Agency59 thrives amid advertising giants, the evolution of its services, how saying “no” to some projects can safeguard relationships, and tips for productivity, recruitment, and retaining top talent.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Al Scornaienchi on LinkedIn
• Agency59

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Brian Howlett on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments: 

• “The power of ideas is still crucial, but the technology side has also entered the fray.” 
• “If you have a willingness to figure out and learn, you can do anything.”
• “We need people with the willingness to roll up their sleeves and learn.”
• “Training and mentoring are crucial to navigate the constantly evolving marketing landscape.”
• “Staying focused on strengths and staying true to what we do is a good business lesson.”

Action Steps:

1. Embrace continuous learning and versatility: By encouraging staff to constantly learn and adapt, you create a versatile team capable of handling diverse challenges.
2. Foster a balanced work environment: Maintaining a healthy work-life balance helps retain talent and nurtures a positive workplace culture.
3. Build strategic partnerships: This strategy is effective in creating a network of mutual referrals and broadening the agency’s capabilities, allowing them to meet client needs comprehensively.
4. Encourage open communication and training: Providing a platform for open dialogue and ongoing training nurtures an environment of continuous improvement and collaboration.
5. Develop a long-term succession plan: Prepare both outgoing and incoming leaders for a seamless transition, maintaining client confidence and preserving organizational knowledge.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Al Scornaienchi, and he is the president and CEO of Agency59. Al, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out now. Al has this person beat in experience, but there was a really good one with Kevin Hourigan, who started his agency in 1995 and we talked about the evolution of the Internet Business agency, the agency world back then. So it was a very interesting conversation. So check that one out. Also, I had Todd Taskey. He will talk about some succession on the podcast today. Todd Taskey was a really good one. He basically pairs agencies with private equity and helps sell agencies. And he has a Second Bite Podcast because he finds like the agency will sell the private equity. Then they roll some equity in private equity sales again. Sometimes those founders make more on the second bite than they do on the first so it was also an interesting conversation about the agency, space, valuations, succession, everything like that. So people can check that out as well.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Al, we call ourselves the kind of magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the company and the host so they can create amazing content and amazing relationships, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I have found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should, if you have questions, go to rise25.com, or you can email us at [email protected].

And I’m excited to introduce Al Scornaienchi is the President, CEO of Agency59, very amazing background. He started his career in 1984 at J Walter Thompson Toronto, working on the Pepsi account. And maybe we’ll get into that a little bit Al, is the year Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire at the Pepsi shoot, and you had to end up one of your first tasks to call 300 radio stations in Canada to explain why the campaign has been delayed. In the 90s, you also worked at was it Chiat/Day? That’s right, where you open their Vancouver office. And eventually you moved to an independent agency, Agency59 which you’ve helped run for the past 30 years. And Agency59 is an independent Toronto ad agency, and obviously 59 stands where they were founded in 1959 but they also say their secret sauce is to stay curious, stay nimble, stay new. Al, thanks for joining me.

Al Scornaienchi 3:37 

Thank you.

Jeremy Weisz 3:39 

Just start off and tell people about Agency59 and what you do. And there is a video component. People are listening. They can check out the video piece. They have a very cool layout of their website, which I’m going to show in a second. But talk to people and tell them about Agency59.

Al Scornaienchi 3:56 

Yeah, sure. I think in every major country around the world, you’re going to find that the large, multinational advertising agencies have an office there. So the BBDOs, the Leo Burnetts, the J Walter Thompsons of the world, Sachi and Saatchi, those kinds of names. But in every country around the world, there are always smaller, independent ad agencies who also flourish and who compete against these large multinationals. Our agency, Jeremy, as you mentioned, was founded in 1959 and it’s gone through a couple of successions between then and now, obviously, but we’ve always been able to stay relevant as just a mid-size, Canadian, fully owner-operated agency, and we have a good mix of clients. Even though we’re a small agency, we’ve always tended to have larger clients. We might not have the entire handle — the client’s entire business, but we’ll handle a portion of their business. So, yeah, we’ve been able to stay competitive through the decades.

Jeremy Weisz 5:04 

Tell people about competing with companies with deep resources. We were talking before you record, you’re like, we have 30 people, but you’re competing as really large companies. And how you compete?

Al Scornaienchi 5:19 

Yeah, I’ll tell you how it changed when we were, say we’re doing a new business pitch, and it was the 1990s and we’re pitching against one of the large multinationals, typically. Then it was really all about, who’s going to have the right creative idea for us, right? It was about the power of ideas, and it still is that hasn’t gone away, but what has entered the fray now is the technology side of things. So it’s really difficult for an agency, because we maybe don’t have the financial resources to invest in new technology, and in a way, it just forces us to almost be more inventive. Like at a smaller agency, what happens is people in the creative area have to wear more hats. So whereas maybe back in the day, an art director handled art direction in traditional advertising, which is like television, radio, newspaper, magazines, well now that same art director has to be able to help update websites, help create logos, know a little bit about SEM search engine marketing.

So you just need to be more, I guess, diversified now, in terms of the skills and at a small agency, that’s really important. We’re always very careful when we hire people. And probably, this probably relevant for small businesses in any sector, whether it’s advertising, marketing or whatever business area you’re in, is that you need people who have the willingness to roll up their sleeves and learn. So if you go to somebody and you said, for example, if you went to it like a traditional art director, and you said, listen, we need help creating brand identity and some logo work. If that person says, Well, I don’t really do that, a designer does that. That’s not the right kind of a person for a small agency. And it’s amazing how the one, I guess, resource that we all have at our fingertips is Google. Like so no matter what it is that we need to create, it’s amazing. If you want to, like, I don’t know if you want to, actually, you were just talking about a podcast. If somebody wants to see, I want to enter this fray. They can find your site. They can do some research online. It’s amazing.

Jeremy Weisz 7:36 

Yeah, we have a ton of free resources for people to explore.

Al Scornaienchi 7:40 

Absolutely, even YouTube, right? If you want to see videos to that will literally take you step by step how to do something. So at a small agency, it’s important that the staff that we have, they’re talented, and usually we do want people who are talented in a specific area. So the copywriters are really great at writing, and the art directors just have an incredible visual eye. But you also want people who have the willingness to help figure out and learn and do whatever it is that you need them to do. Right?

Jeremy Weisz 8:13 

Talk about the services you provide. And if it’s evolved also over the years, right?

Al Scornaienchi 8:23 

Yeah, it’s interesting, actually, because, let’s say, if I go back a couple of decades, if you think about in the marketing space, there were advertising agencies, and that’s what we were so a traditional ad agency, again, did advertising work in all of the major media that they mentioned, like television, radio, newspaper, magazines, outdoor, then you had PR firms, right? So public relations firms did things like, crisis management, helping get positive, earned media on behalf of companies, those sorts of things. So now something like social media emerges. Who’s going to take over that space? Well, PR firms were like, social media is art turf, and advertising agencies were like, no, social media is art turf. And it’s amazing how those lines have blurred. So now you have people in ad agencies who are community managers and help maintain and provide content, deliver content for large social media clients, and you have PR firms who, really, for the first time in history, started hiring creative people.

So typically, a PR firm would not have had art director or a copywriter or a creative director, but now the large PR firms actually have those roles because they are doing more creative. So in the same way that those two worlds have now blended and overlapped, the same thing was happening with what originally started as digital firms. Like way back, ad agencies weren’t so much building big websites. There was digital agencies who are building websites. Well now ad agencies also had to move into that area so that the whole marketing landscape has really become kind of integrated. There are still specialty firms, and I think our ad agency is very proud to still be considered a traditional ad agency, because television is still hugely important, even though some of the other media, like, say, newspapers, has definitely weakened with, once everybody figured out that it’s really easy to check the news on your computer every single morning when you wake up, there was less requirement to buy a daily newspaper every day. So newspapers have been hit hard.

Magazines have been hit hard. Radio has probably been hit by streaming and satellite radio, like traditional radio has been hit hard. But television is still super, super strong. Even though we have these streaming services on television, it’s still a really important media. So our agency is still rooted in traditional advertising, but obviously we had to embrace digital, or we would not have survived.

Jeremy Weisz 11:11 

So when I think of traditional correct me, if I’m wrong, I’m thinking the first thing comes to mind is what you mentioned TV, and we’re going to bring up some examples of this, newspaper, billboards, direct mail, magazines, radio is that accurate?

Al Scornaienchi 11:27 

Yes, direct mail typically was considered its own space, but yes, all of those are correct. And in Canada, media that’s really important is also outdoor, I think, in the US, outdoor suffered from, perhaps it felt it doesn’t have the prestige like billboards. Billboards, yeah, absolutely. Well, billboards. But also, for example, in urban cities, there’s transit shelters, right? So there are shelters where people are waiting for the bus to arrive. There’s interior transit. So for example, in Toronto and obviously Chicago has a robust subway system, there’s all the ads that run in the subway system. So that’s considered…

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