Jeremy Weisz 12:12
The bench outdoor advertising. Give you the side of a building and someone…
Al Scornaienchi 12:17
Absolutely right. And in Canada, I think outdoor advertising, or some people call it out of home. It’s also sometimes called out of home, but out of home is a really well-used media in Canada, more so than in the US. In the US, I think it just wasn’t regarded as highly. So a lot of say big, like, say, a car company like our agency, for decades work with Mercedes-Benz, we were happy to do tons of outdoor advertising in Canada, but in other larger American cities, high-end brand like Mercedes might not have wanted to do billboards, right? Because maybe it felt like it just wasn’t prestigious enough for them. But in Canada, outdoor is actually a great media.
Jeremy Weisz 13:07
Very interesting. You were mentioning, you know, obviously there’s different staff that helps with a variety of things with these campaigns, whether it’s copywriting art department. Can you talk about, how do you categorize the different kind of departments of the company?
Al Scornaienchi 13:25
Right. So our agency, which is full service, also offers media buying and planning. Some agencies don’t, but in a traditional advertising agency, there’s kind of three major departments, the creative department, which is, as you said, is kind of art and copy, but also production falls under creative so the studio, like Mac artists, who are literally building the physical ads that need to get shipped out to the media. So you’ve got the creative department. That’s one really big department, obviously account management or account services, and within that department resides strategy. So even before we begin coming up with creative ideas, we got to work really closely with the client. We might do a bunch of research. Figure out strategically, who should we be talking to? Like, what should we be telling them? Right? Like, who are our prime prospects? All those kinds of things.
So there’s strategy, which happens in the Account Management Department, and then there’s the media department, which handles media planning and media buying. And earlier I was referencing how there’s now sort of an overlap between advertising agencies and PR firms. Interesting, there’s a lot of overlap now between the creative department of an ad agency and the media department, and media can come up with a media idea that’s different and revolutionary. And so it’s amazing how even between those two departments, there can be, kind of integration or collaboration or even in some instances, it’s competition, believe it or not.
Jeremy Weisz 15:03
What have you over the years, I’m sure you get requests to do a lot of different things, because you have these trusted clients that have been with you for a long time. What have you had to be disciplined about and just say no?
Al Scornaienchi 15:15
Right. It’s a really good question, what I have always felt is when clients come to us and say, can you help me with this? And it’s something that the agency doesn’t really have direct experience in, but I know if I help them, I can make money in this area, right? So here’s a couple examples of that. One is sometimes clients will come to us and say, listen, we have a whole bunch of factories across the country. We want to redo the signage on the exterior of all these factories. You guys are an ad agency. You did our brand identity like you did our logo work. You created the logo. Can you help us figure out how this logo should live on all these factories across the country. Creating that kind of physical signage is its own thing. So rather than saying, even though I’m sometimes tempted to say, hey, listen, I can charge decent fees for this, why don’t I go and do it?
The reason I don’t is, if that project doesn’t go well, it can sour the entire client-agency relationship. So here you’ve had a really good relationship with this client. You’re doing all their television ads, you’re doing their print ads, you’re doing the radio and now you’re going to blow it because you messed up on creating signage for these big factories, right? So I’ve always been good or our agency and myself, my business partner, Brian Hallet, we’ve been good about not being too selfish and not promising that we can do something that’s not really in our wheelhouse, right? Another example of that is sometimes clients came to us and they said, can you manage our research like not just participate in the research, where you’re learning from it, but can you actually run the research? And we’re not a research firm, right? So in those instances, rather than saying, yeah, we’ll, I think, be a good, the right kind of a partner, where we say, you know what, we probably could pull it off, but this isn’t our area of strength. So we suggest together, let’s find a supplier to work with and then I’m not on the hook. If the research doesn’t go well, doesn’t work well, they’re not happy with how it turned out, it’s not on me, right?
So I think we’ve been good about that and the same again, I think as we have this conversation, there’s going to be some people listening to the podcast, obviously, who work in the marketing, advertising area. But sometimes it’s nice to see things for small businesses that just apply to any regardless of what discipline you’re in. And that kind of a lesson, which is for a small business to stay focused on their strengths, and stay true to what they do. I think that’s a good business lesson, because I think there are some companies out there who try to move into different spaces where they don’t quite have the expertise, and then it ends up hurting the mothership.
Jeremy Weisz 18:15
Thanks for sharing those examples, that really helps. And I do find that that also, at least in my experience, creates partnerships with companies that refer back. And that is a multiplier I find, even though, at first it seems like someone you know turning down business, potential business by fine, okay, you partner with the company, and that’s what they’re sticking to, and they’ll refer for the things that they don’t do. Going back to Michael Jackson for a second, you really cut your teeth on this big, big campaign with Pepsi. Take me back to what it was like when you were calling those radio stations and what you were saying.
Al Scornaienchi 19:02
Yeah. I mean, so this was 1984 I mean, the first thing is, it was just a different era in business, right? So I was working at the time with J Walter Thompson, which was the largest advertising agency in Canada. We had 325 staff at our Toronto office. So it was a huge ad agency. In the US, the business was handled by an agency called BBDO. So BBDO and J Walter Thompson partnered on North America, but in Canada, and this was it still is very, very common, is that for large clients, for large advertisers, Canada will take the US creative and simply adapt it for the Canadian market, especially because in the US, if there’s millions of dollars invested in these productions, why wouldn’t Canada take advantage of that, right? So BBDO was handling the business in the US, and obviously they had signed Michael Jackson, I think Pepsi, as you can appreciate, was always trying to play, well, I don’t know play ketchup is the right word, but Pepsi was always trying to knock Coke out of that top position, right? And so Pepsi strategy at that time was, let’s hire the absolute biggest stars on planet Earth. And it will sort of position us as being as big and as relevant as Coke.
So anyway, so Pepsi had, I guess, did a deal with Michael Jackson, and in Canada, we were kind of waiting like, oh, the creative will be ready in March, or whenever it was going to be ready. And so we’re sort of just kind of waiting in the wings. I was brand new to the agency, so I was like, entry-level, the most junior person on the team, kind of thing. And then we find out, oh my gosh, there’s been a big problem at the shoot. The entire campaign is going to be delayed. Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire. So in that world, which was a world before email, I had to, yeah, spend a few weeks just phoning radio station after radio station after radio station asking them to delay the campaign. And the reason we decided to tell them that, like normally when you’re delaying a radio campaign. The sales rep on the other side isn’t always that flexible, right? Like they might say, sorry, but like, you booked, you’re locked in. Like, no, we’re not pushing back this radio campaign. So we decided to tell them the truth, which was Michael Jackson’s hair kind of fire, just because it was such an extra and it was all over the news at that time.
It was such an extraordinary story that they would hopefully say, okay, okay, well, based on these remarkable, based on what happened, yes, we will bend over backwards to help you on this one. So, and of course, every radio station wanted to find out, for me, a little bit more about what the latest was and what was happening. Not that I really had much more information than what was on the news, but yeah, I spent a few weeks calling a bunch of radio stations explaining what happened.
Jeremy Weisz 20:22
Al, what did you learn working for the larger company that maybe you took to Agency59 or maybe some of the things that you learned that you knew you would not take to Agency59?
Al Scornaienchi 22:33
Yeah. I think one of the good things about working for a larger company, especially again in that era, which was the 1980s is that there was a real premium on training. So for example, the first year that I worked at J Walter Thompson, every Tuesday morning, from nine o’clock until noon, we had training. It was formal. Actually, there’s another agency, Ogilvie and Mather. They had the exact same training system. So a half a day a week was spent on training. And to me, it seems like companies don’t do that anymore. And even, for example, on the marketing side, so not ad agencies, but on the client side, Procter and Gamble, P&G did enormous training.
Unilever did enormous training. Like a lot of the companies at that time really invested in their employees, nowadays, it sort of seems like, Listen, you’re throwing in there. You got to sink or swim, right? Like whatever training you do, you gotta do it on your own. But it always stayed with me, the importance of training and maybe making sure that you’re spending time with your staff, explaining things, sit sitting in the boardroom without necessarily working specifically on a client’s business, but just trying to get the agency into a better place and make sure that people have a mentor, those sorts of things. So that’s one thing that I think…
Jeremy Weisz 24:05
What kind of training? What was valuable during that time? What did you learn?
Al Scornaienchi 24:09
Yeah, so, I mean, the way they worked it was, I was in the Account Management Department at that point, and so, we would maybe one session was all about research. Here are all of the different ways that you can do research. And here’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative. And for something to be statistically significant, these are the sample sizes that you need, like things that you might not know coming out of university or college. And then, a week later, it may be about something else. It may be about a specific media like, here’s the latest in terms of what’s happening with interior transit or whatever, right? Just helping people get learning the kind of the foundation that you need to be good in marketing, right?
So each week was, I mean, now it’s a long time ago, so can’t remember some of the specifics, but it’s each week was, like, different topic, and we would even have like little exams, or little tests at the end of the session, you know, which I think was probably just done to keep people honest, to make sure that they weren’t daydreaming in there, that you know you’re gonna have to write some sort of a test so it forces you to pay attention. But as far as I’m aware, that kind of more formalized training does not happen at any multinational agency today. I don’t think it does. I mean, perhaps, in some ways, it does, and I’m just not unaware. But I don’t believe that that takes place anymore. And I don’t believe even on the marketing like with companies like P&G, I don’t think they can afford to have the training that they once did.
Jeremy Weisz 25:46
What kind of training is valuable that you use at your company? I’m wondering if there’s any resources or books that you like or recommend the staff.
Al Scornaienchi 25:56
Yeah. I mean, not so much, nothing that I can really point to. I think the key is for management in any organization, whether large organization or a small agency like ours, is for management to send a signal that they are always available to help explain things and work through things. I think sending that message is critically important. One of our business partners here, Mark Cooper, once a month, he does a town hall, which is also good. And sometimes when we do the town hall, he’ll show really good campaigns for not just he’ll show, but he’ll actually get some of the staff to show really good campaigns from around the world, really new things like new developments and things that are happening out in the marketplace.
And so sometimes, on those days, we’ll have lunch brought in for the staff. The town hall might be from noon until one o’clock. So it’s like, normally when people would be kind of taking lunch anyway, and they can learn a little bit, and it just fosters the right kind of an environment for people not to feel shy about going and asking somebody else how something is done, or what their point of view is.
Jeremy Weisz 27:14
I know we were talking a little bit about finding talent and keeping talent. That’s stuff that you’re thinking about, what else helps from like a culture perspective and fostering like keeping talent?
Al Scornaienchi 27:28
So one thing that I’m proud of in terms of our agency is that we have never been a sweatshop or the kind of agency that expects the staff to be here till seven or eight o’clock at night and three weekends out of four. It’s very different from when I worked at Chiat/Day. A shy day at the time, actually, was, they were Apple’s agency, so shy day did the famous Apple commercial where the guy throws the thing at the screen and everything so shy day at that time, we used to have an expression, which is, if you’re not going to work on Sunday, don’t bother coming in on Saturday. It was kind of expected that at seven o’clock at night, you felt guilty leaving because everybody was still behind you. And we were on most weekends. And that almost became part of our culture, which is, we live advertising. This is the most important thing to us. We’re going to be the greatest agency ever. So let’s all get in the habit of working 70 hours a week. I’ve never done that at this agency, and I’m not sure that it would that kind of a, that that kind of a, be all and end all.
The agency is the most important thing. I’m not sure it would really fly today, anywhere anyway, the world has changed, right? And work-life balance is something people didn’t talk about then, but talk about a lot now. So I think one thing we’ve always been good at in terms of retaining staff is making sure that we recognize that we love what we do, and we do it to the best of our ability. But if we can’t run an agency where people can work, like, say, 35 to 40 hours a week, as opposed to 60 to 70 hours a week, then we’re doing something wrong, and we should probably go do something else. So that has, I think, served us well, and even just being flexible with staff, I remember I had an employee who’d been with us for more than 10 years, and she came to me once and she said, I want to take, like, the whole summer off. And in the end, she was off from, like May until she said, I want to be paid. She’s like, I don’t expect you to pay me for this, like, five month period, but I just need to take a break in life. And so we found a way to work it right.
I said, okay, listen, let’s get a temp employee, almost like you would do. If you’re hiring somebody to replace a person who’s on maternity, let’s get a temp employee, and maybe we can do a two, three week overlap at the beginning so that you can bring this person up to speed. And then, go and have five or six months where you don’t have to think about work at all. And then, I think we were good to her financially as well. We helped her bridge that gap. I made sure that the staff knew, you know what, as much as humanly possible, unless it’s something absolutely urgent, leave her alone. Like, let’s not start, calling her or emailing her every time we have a question, if she’s taking a break, let’s let her take a break. So that kind of flexibility, I think is important to keep your staff content longer term. Maybe some of the larger agencies don’t have the flexibility to do that, or maybe they just don’t have the willingness to do it. But as a smaller agency, if you have an employee that’s really valuable to you, you got to make sure that you’re doing what you need to do to keep them in the game for the long haul, right?
Jeremy Weisz 31:10
So it seems like one: just having an openness, from like a training or question perspective, is big, also just having a balance, so it’s not like a crazy work culture, and then just having flexibility with the individual cases that people may have in their lives. And succession. Talk about it. I find it interesting of how you went up the ranks at Agency59, so talk about succession as far as Agency59 of you starting there, and we can kind of get to your thoughts around succession.
Al Scornaienchi 31:49
Right. So at that time, which was now, I started at this agency. So I worked at J Walter Thompson. Then I worked at Chiat/Day, and then in 1992 I came to work here in 93 the person who’s now my business partner here, Brian Howlett, joined. So, I was in account management, he was in creative and I think at that time, the agency was owned by three people. They saw in us the potential to be the next generation. In fact, I’ll go off in a small, little tangent. I think with succession planning, the age gap between the partners who are going to be checking out and the partners who are going to be taking, the perfect age gap is about 15 years.
You need there to be an age gap, by the way, because otherwise, if somebody’s checking out at age 60, and the person coming in is also age 60, doesn’t really work. Like, at some point, there needs to be a gap. And I think if the gap is like, 25 years is too big. If the gap needs to be about 15 years. So the agency partners were all three of them were about 15 years older than me and Brian. That was perfect. So at that time we were in our early 30s, they were like in their mid to late 40s, kind of a thing, they saw in us, the potential to take over the agency. So what we did, which is a really good way to do the succession planning, is we had like a 15, 20-year period where that succession happened. So in the very beginning, we ended up becoming partners, and that meant for us also coming to the table with some money. We did a very reasonable valuation of the ad agency. I think the partners selling shares can’t be too greedy. The partners buying shares can’t expect to get it for free. So there needs to be a fair valuation. The other thing that was really good was we used the valuation that they used when they became partners, which was, like,15 years before that.
So that was really cool. But we started, you know, fairly small, like in the early years, Brian and I assumed 10% of the agency. But with this idea that over 15 or 20 years, eventually we are going to be the owners. And so now Brian and I with the ad agency, Agency59 and I, we own 50% each so, but it started small, right? And then I think the next kind of share acquisition was maybe three years after the original purchase, and then we bought another, whatever the percentage was, so slowly along the way, we accumulated more of the agency.
Jeremy Weisz 34:38
It’s a very interesting way. I don’t know if I hear of that being too common nowadays, but so there’s like, a valuation. Yeah, the owners own a percentage, and they simply go, listen, they give you the opportunity to, first of all, they want you as an owner, right first, and then they go, I think you’d be great. What percentage do you want? And then there’s a valuation, you pay a certain amount for that percentage, and that gets paid directly to the owners, and they’re taking money off the table. They’re creating a succession plan over time you buy in more and more to purchase the company, essentially, right.
Al Scornaienchi 35:20
Right. And what’s crazy about it is, when you have that kind of a system is, say, the agency is growing for the junior partners who are buying more, they now have to pay more, right? But you’re paying more for something that’s worth more. So it’s like, it’s a bit weird, actually, because in a company, there’s ebb and flows in terms of whether the company is, revenues are increasing or revenues are decreasing. But it all works out in the wash, like if you’re true business partners and you’re working together and you all want to grow the firm, you make it work, right. But yeah, as the agency was growing during that time. It meant that it was more expensive for myself and the other junior partner, Brian Hallet. It was more expensive for us to purchase the agency.
Jeremy Weisz 36:10
And then how do you think about the succession planning now that you’ve gone through this?
Al Scornaienchi 36:15
Yeah, so we’ve identified somebody who’s working here now who we think is a perfect person, where we’ve made this person know that we would like to see them, and I think he’s interested as well. So we just have not been in a rush. I think what happens is, and you and I talked about this earlier, I can’t remember if we were recording quite yet, but we always think, okay, listen, we, we’ve got to figure out the succession planning thing. But boy, we’re really busy with these three campaigns right now, so let’s do it in the spring, and then when the spring comes around, like, yeah, we’ve got to think about this. But we’re super busy with these two campaigns, so we just keep deferring the conversation. And frankly, I still like coming to work right? Like, I’m not quite yet at the point where, like, I want to check out. So, as you get older in your life, you know you want to make sure you’re doing the right amount of traveling and spending time with your kids and all those kinds of things. So, that’s a big priority for my wife and I. But beyond that, I still like coming to work.
The other weird thing that has happened in business, generally and advertising agencies are no exception, is COVID changed everything in terms of how we work, so our agency now only works in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we resisted it a little bit. To be honest with you, we were kind of hoping, in a post-COVID world that we would return to a kind of Monday to Friday, nine to five in the office sort of a thing. But it just has not happened. And it’s in some ways, you lose something because in an advertising agency, collaboration is key. There’s nothing like sitting around the boardroom together and jamming on ideas or discussing the pros and cons of different approaches and whatnot.
But on the other hand, there are days where, if we are in the office, everybody in their respective homes have to get up, shower, get changed, shave, get presentable, do whatever you need to do to make yourself feel like, okay, now I can go out into the real world, then fight traffic, get all the way down here, then park, then they come in, then they’re having a copy. By the time they’re actually working, it’s probably 9:30.
Jeremy Weisz 36:27
That could be some productivity with staying home.
Al Scornaienchi 38:21
There really can, because the days that we’re at home at, like, at 8:05 if I email somebody, even though we’re technically our office is even open till nine o’clock, and if I email somebody at 8:05 at 8:07 I get a reply like they may be wearing their pajamas, and that’s fine too, but they’re on their computer. They’re working, right? So they’re actually this new hybrid world, it has disadvantages, but it has advantages as well, but it has definitely changed how we work as an agency. And I think a lot of larger businesses suffered through the same, or our work, I shouldn’t say suffer, but a lot of larger businesses are also sorting out that this has become the new normal, and how do we make sure that we’re as productive as we can be in this new world.
Jeremy Weisz 39:42
In the post-COVID world, how has that affected you, recruiting and finding talent? Because now you’re not limited to a certain geographic area, or maybe you still want them in a certain geographic area.
Al Scornaienchi 39:59
Yes and no, we are trying to be much more open-minded about hiring, especially in certain roles like in, I think if we’re hiring an art director, we want that person to be living within the Toronto vicinity is enough to doesn’t mean that they necessarily need to be in Toronto proper. They could be out one of the suburbs or one of the communities surrounding Toronto, but like, we’re going to need them in key meetings, in person. But if you’re hiring like a web person, like a programmer, or even a Mac artist, they could actually work remote. Now, 100% because that job function is, there’s less requirement for that job function to be in-person, meetings with the clients, especially so we’re more open-minded than we were before, definitely about hiring people who live no they could live anywhere they could live in northern Canada. So we’re more open-minded about that.
Yeah. But the other weird thing is, if I’m interviewing now, I still want the interview to happen in person at the agency, like, I want whoever we’re interviewing to be sitting right across from me. And I still find it slightly odd doing interviews over zoom or over teams or whatever. So, yeah, it’s nice when the person’s here, because you can walk them around the agency. Even just seeing how they interact with the other staff is important, right?
Jeremy Weisz 41:36
I want to talk, I’m going to share my screen again. For people listening, we’ll talk through what we’re looking at. But I’m at the agency59.ca site, you could everyone could check it out there. And I want to walk through a little bit about you have some really fantastic creative here, and I know you work with anywhere from large organizations to public sector to insurance. So I’m going to pull this one up here, and if you want to just talk through a little bit about what I’m doing, I’ll mute it, just so it doesn’t distract me. I’m going to play this and we’re looking at, what is this that we’re looking at here?
Al Scornaienchi 42:19
Yes, it’s a television commercial for the insurance brokers, and it ends with a slogan, which is before the quote, because a lot of people, when they sign up to get their insurance policy, all they’re worried about is the cheapest quote, and boy, when something happens like your car gets banged up, like, this gentleman here is saying, oh, I got my insurance, like, without really thinking about it, and, like, now that I have a problem, now I’m going to regret not having the right insurance. So this campaign, is kind of tapping into that little bit of doubt that you have when something happens and you didn’t do your insurance properly, and if you’re working with an insurance broker, you would have the proper coverage. And that commercial ran in all of the major sports actually, we launched it a couple years ago.
So in Canada, one thing that’s a little bit different in terms of the NBA versus the US is that the Toronto Raptors, while based in Toronto, are Canada’s team. So you could live in Vancouver, you could live in Montreal, but like the raptors, are the only Canadian NBA team in the entire country literally rallies around the Raptors, as they do in baseball with the Blue Jays. So we ran that commercial in a lot of Raptors NBA games and NHL games and just big television specials. So I was in a meeting once with about 70 people, and I showed that commercial. And I said, How many people here saw this commercial? Literally, the entire room put up their hands. So it’s a fairly well-known commercial in the country.
Jeremy Weisz 43:58
Al, talk about the creative on this, yeah, and how you came up with that? Because, like, I can definitely resonate with we’re looking at a couple here, right? Like, at some point they look up at the dripping from the ceiling. I have had that happen. Oh god, there’s something internal. So, how do you come up with this creative?
Al Scornaienchi 44:19
Yeah, so my business partner, Brian, does the creative. And I remember with this commercial, he said casting is absolutely critical, like, the casting is important. Because we didn’t want to show these people in distress. It’s not like, you’re on the street, you get, in fact, if you notice the accident on the back of the guy’s car, it’s not horrible, right? Like, so we didn’t want to have one of those commercials where people are crying, or, oh my God, there’s been.
Jeremy Weisz 44:47
I just saw, like a Subaru commercial, actually, where it’s like a huge accident, or walking away, right? Just, you know, like, Oh, thank God we have the Subaru because of, right, right? Stay in this huge accident.
Al Scornaienchi 45:01
Yeah. So our approach was more to be humorous. So if you looked at that couple at the very beginning, even though they realize there’s some sort of a water leak in their home and water is dripping, they kind of have that deadpan look like it’s still all done. And even the voiceover, it’s all done with a little bit of tongue in cheek, and that moment of, oh, like, even here the guy saying, oh no, did I get the right insurance kind of thing? So humor is really important to us and our agency, even though we’ve always been a kind of small, mid-size agency, we’ve done disproportionately very well in the Canadian award shows. Historically, our agency has won a lot of awards, but just glancing here at the website like Gay Lee was a big client of ours, so in Canada, they are one of the biggest butter manufacturers, but they also make whipped cream, cod cheese, right here?
Jeremy Weisz 46:05
I’ve definitely done this before.
Al Scornaienchi 46:07
Yeah, that’s right, so haven’t we all, so it’s just, even though the individual in the commercial kind of looks like he’s a stuffy, a Brit, we’ve all done this thing where we just take the whipped cream and, you know, take a little taste, right? So, and I think this was not a TV ad, this was just a quick little digital ad, so rich who can resist? But actually our agency, it’s interesting, because packaged goods was always an area that we had been active in. So we want for Canada, the Pinnacle Foods account. And so, we were the advertising agency in Canada for Swanson TV dinners, Duncan Hines, plastic pickles, Aunt Jemima. Like, these are iconic North American brands, right? Like, I remember as a kid, when I was five years old, my mom would buy Duncan Heinz, right? So, and these are still brands that are relevant in the grocery store today. The only reason we’re not working with Pinnacle Foods anymore is that they were purchased by ConAgra.
And again, these are all North America-wide brands, right? So, once ConAgra took over Pinnacle Foods, ConAgra had other, you know, partners and suppliers, in fact, do a lot of creative work in-house. So we were not working with them anymore, but Gay Lee is a big brand. It’s in all the grocery stores in Canada. We were also an agency for Labatt for a long time. Labatt was, historically one of Canada’s two big brewers. There was Molson and Labatt. But globally, the entire beer world is now consolidated around like five major brewing companies, right? So I think Molson, in fact, hooked up with Coors So, and Labatt is now owned, globally by one of the multinationals that owns breweries all over the world. So that whole category changed, but we were a bad agency for many years.
Jeremy Weisz 48:13
This one looks intense, right here.
Al Scornaienchi 48:15
Yeah. So this was a commercial we did for Amnesty International. I’ll let it sort of play a little bit. Yeah, my business partner Brian was really good about getting people in the production community to become part of a project where we did not have a very big budget. Amnesty International can’t spend a ton of money on advertising production, but you can see the slogan there, or the copy says, if someone’s watching, the violence stops. So, Amnesty International is keeping an eye on a lot of areas in the country, and if they weren’t keeping an eye on those areas, things would be a lot worse than they are. Like, Amnesty’s kind of keen eye, keeps certain gangs around the world, including political entities, honest. So that was kind of the basis of that commercial. But it was really a very powerful ad, and it won some awards in Canada, which was really nice. But my business partner, Brian Hallet, was able to get people in the production community to participate in that production at almost no cost. And this one here that you’re playing now, this is a commercial that ran last year in 2023 we’re just revising it for 2024.
This is a commercial sponsored by the Government of Canada, and it’s for Remembrance Day. So we’re taking footage of this is actual, real war footage from the Canadian archives, and showing it up against keywords like, the quietest moment, the loudest moment the scariest moment, just making sure that Canadians don’t forget about Remembrance Day, which, again, is called, I think, Veterans Day in the US, the scariest day of the year, the loudest day of the year, the quietest, the darkest, the brightest, the bravest, right? So we’re taking those keywords and putting relevant footage over top of them. So remember Canada’s veterans? Yeah, I think just generally. I believe, anyway, you would know this better than me, but I think in the US, the states have a lot of power and perhaps the federal government there doesn’t have jurisdiction over certain areas.
In Canada, our federal government, perhaps is more active in key areas. So maybe something like Veterans Day, like, I’m not sure that the US federal government would ever do an ad campaign for that. But in Canada, those kinds of campaigns are quite common. Maybe in the US veteran say, would be promoted or celebrated more on a state-by-state basis, I’m not sure, or even a city-by-city basis, but in Canada, the federal government is an active advertiser in certain areas and so the way that works is they do, like an RFP, like a request for proposal every four or five years, all the agencies compete to be part of it, and some of the large multinational agencies are included in the government pool, as are we. So that allows.
Jeremy Weisz 51:36
Why do you think you want out?
Al Scornaienchi 51:38
I think with those and private sector clients do these RFPs all the time as well, right? So could be anything from Hewlett Packard to whoever wants to hire an ad agency or some kind of a marketing supplier, they’re going to issue some sort of an RFP. I think part of it is obviously having the right creative in your experience in your portfolio, but part of it also is just being really good at answering those questions. And sometimes there will be questions there, like, if you’re faced with this situation, what would your agency do? Or how do you develop strategies? So I think every company out there who has to compete for RFPs, and again, that’s in every — you could run a small business and you could, like a janitor company that cleans office buildings, you’re probably going to have to do an RFP at some point. If you run a landscaping building company and you’re planting trees, you’re probably gonna have to submit an RFP at some point.
So part of it is just getting really good at knowing how to answer those RFP questions, right? And I think we were, you know, obviously good enough to get in that pool. And then you know when you’re when you are in one of these pools, or if you are working with a client, to make sure that you’re keeping them happy enough so that when the next RFP comes around, they’re not going to push you out of the pool because you weren’t there for them when they needed you.
Jeremy Weisz 53:16
Al, first of all, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey, your story. This has been fascinating. I want to encourage people to check out agency59.ca too, they could poke around and see some of the work that you’ve done there, and people can check out more episodes of the podcast. But just want to thank you for sharing your journey and thank everyone for watching. We’ll see everyone next time. Thanks Al.
Al Scornaienchi 53:38
Thank you so much. Jeremy, thank you.
