Jeremy Weisz 20:52
So it sounds like I mean, you didn’t love the hierarchy that was going on in some of these agencies. And there was that disconnect. There is a misconception on CEOs in general sometimes where, well, what does that person even doing right? But what did you learn? What did you learn from some of those people that you worked for on being a better CEO after the fact?
Like, okay, you were actually doing things behind the scenes that I didn’t realize. What did you learn about being a better CEO?
Chad Hason 21:26
I learned about everything that goes into keeping a business open. So, you know, working with accountants, working with lawyers, working with landlords, working with cleaners. Like it’s really just an exercise in managing people and being a cheerleader for your team, which is the best CEOs, I think they recruit the best talent and they get the hell out of the way. I always viewed that as, oh, they’re making the most money and they’re getting someone else to do the work.
What I didn’t look at is the first few years of starting a business, there’s nobody super comfortable. Even if you’re getting some funding, you know, you owe those people either money or they get to influence your business. You know, hiring can be incredibly difficult. Letting people go again, every single person I’ve let go has been in the best interest of my team and my clients. Nobody has ever been surprised. And no team that I’ve had has ever cried. Once we’ve let somebody go, it’s usually okay, good. And then we try to do that quickly once we understand that, that there’s no fit.
Jeremy Weisz 22:35
On recruiting the best, you mentioned, I know culture is very important to you. Talk about the hiring process at Agency Atlas.
Chad Hason 22:49
Sure. So I’ve stopped hiring strangers straight up. I typically only hire people that I know or someone else knows and recommends to me. I’ve found that resumes are absolute bullshit. And I’ve learned to hire slow and fire fast.
And it’s not a, it’s not a reflection of their talent. It’s more of a reflection of their fit. We say two things here. We’ve got a sign up here. It says the two things you need to be successful at Atlas. You’ve got to be talented and you’ve got to give a shit. And if you can do those two things, you’ll be a wonderful fit at Agency Atlas.
But the reality is, the talent thing is easy. Here’s my portfolio. I’ve been doing this for ten years. Can I design a pretty picture? Yes. Can I write a wonderful story? Of course. Can I develop a website? Yes. But how you do it, what your approach is. How you view a call on Friday afternoon when you’ve got better things to do. But the client clearly has a need.
I don’t chain people to their desks, but I certainly chain them to our clients. We don’t work with unreasonable clients, so if something comes up, we expect people to jump. We take all those things very seriously. So that’s the fit that you’ll find here. Everyone’s pretty talented and everyone genuinely cares about the success.
And again, that ties into the profit sharing model as well. If you see somebody slacking off or you take your sweet time on something, you will see the effect of that on the numbers and it will trickle down into what you get. So hiring the best people is just really about the fit. The best people aren’t necessarily the most talented. Although my team is very talented, it’s about fitting in the room.
Jeremy Weisz 24:28
Talk about culture for a second. And what are some of the things you do as a company that helps maintain culture?
Chad Hason 24:36
Okay, well, I’ll be pretty blunt here. So we don’t have a dress code. I think that’s standard. We don’t.
Jeremy Weisz 24:42
You should make everyone wear a pin every day.
Chad Hason 24:44
I know, but then I wouldn’t be unique. This is a 45 year old man trying to expand his personality in some way because my wardrobe is otherwise quite boring. But our culture is around, what I really try to create is a comfortable, advantageous atmosphere for truly talented people to succeed.
Now, how do truly talented artists and I don’t have anyone out there that isn’t an artist succeed? Well, it’s not by working 60 hours a week. It’s not even by working 40 hours a week back to back to back to back to back. When you come to our office, there’s a bar, there’s couches, there’s TVs, there’s video games, you know, ping pong and foosball and all this stuff. Not because we want people to come here and party, but because I force people to take breaks.
We have a rule here. If you’re not spinning around, staring at the sky every once in a while in a day. What are you even doing here? You’re clearly not really thinking about anything. So that culture of giving them what they need to be successful, but then not micromanaging them and letting the results speak for themselves.
We also allow people to work anytime from anywhere. Me personally, I’m first thing in the morning. I’ve got young kids I like to take to hockey and pick up from school. So I’m here at 5 a.m. but I leave at 3 p.m. I have some people that come at seven, eight, nine, ten. I have people that work evenings.
Obviously I have a development team outside of Canada. They typically make themselves available, but they work different hours. What I’m saying is I try to let people be talented the way that they’re talented, in a way that makes them more comfortable, and then just judge them on the results. You want to have a drink, we’ve got cannabis clients, you want to go out and have a hoot and then come back in perfectly legal. And I know that some of the best creativity, some of my best, I’m going to say all of the best artists are typically influenced by some kind of substance at some point in time in their life. I don’t fight that. You know, not only do we not have drug tests or anything, but you do whatever the heck you want as long as you don’t offend others, continue to put in the work and have a showcase of giving a shit. And I guess not offending others but falls under that. We allow a lot of flexibility for how you do stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 26:51
You have some interesting stories, and we’ll get into a little bit more about how it works to work with you in the company, but talk about S&P global.
Chad Hason 27:02
Oh, sure. Well, S&P global was really a reflection of our talent and efficiency and our process. So my partner Robbie Gilchrist, he’s our creative director and the gentleman that I’ve worked the longest with, he’s also part owner of the company. He had a relationship with somebody when he had a client, Halliburton, and this woman, Jenny, just a wonderful client to us, but but specifically to Robbie has kind of come with brought whoever she’s been working with at the time to Robbie and I, you know, for strategy, design, stuff like that. In the first few years of Agency Atlas, she was living in Houston but came into Calgary for a visit, looked up Robbie and they went out for a coffee. She explained her frustration with having multiple agencies of record, but they were just going through a merger of two other companies that they were bringing in in the commodity space.
They had a huge, about three huge teams coming together, and they needed to come under some sort of marketing banner. And they had for six months gone back and forth with two specific agencies. Where they sat was it was Thursday, and by that Monday they had to launch whatever it was they were going to do. And she said, you know, I don’t mind the two, but they’re not great. And we’ll probably just take what we like from both of them.
And so Robbie said very boldly, I might add, well, what if we could come up with a campaign for you? And she kind of laughed and she said, well, Robbie, I should have come to you from the beginning, but I need it by, you know, Saturday. I’d have to approve it on Sunday and launch it on Monday. I just don’t think there’s time. And he said, well, let us worry about that.
72 hours later we came up with the We’re All In campaign. It had several wins, obviously the sentiment makes sense, but it also allowed the IN prefix for us to to work with the top a bunch of things. We’re all in this together. We’re all innovated. We’re all interconnected.
Exactly. You can see it there on the screen. So it gave us a huge sandbox to play with and they liked it so much. They made us their internal agency of record for a ton of projects. We did a few hundred grand the first year and have built on that ever since.
So I just thought that was such a wonderful example of if you need us, we will put the evening and weekend, and not only are we willing, but we’re able to.
Jeremy Weisz 29:12
Talk about the process for a second. I mean, first of all, coming up with something like this is not easy. Coming up with something like this in 72 hours is not easy. Coming up with something in 72 hours that the client likes, that you like is difficult. What’s the process look like when you go into the room to come up with something?
Chad Hason 29:40
I can’t tell you my process. No, I’m just kidding. You know what my process is? Let’s review the brand documentation and then let’s come up with ideas that check every box. It’s as simple as that.
The problem is, a lot of people do not invest the time and effort into having brand guidelines that a marketer like me can work with. The reality is, I don’t have to throw my idea over the fence in the dark. All I have to do is understand who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish, and then make sure whatever I do checks all the boxes. Then we do some discovery on whether or not it’s original, and heaven forbid the URL is already taken or something like that, right? There’s some due diligence, but it’s as simple as me and my strategists or, you know, anyone from the team that I think has some experience.
Oh, so this mug. This is another. You can’t write if you can’t relate. I stole that from Beck. I think, Loser song. But it’s so true. If you don’t know anything about the client or the industry, or you haven’t had, you know, immersed experiences with what they do. How the heck are you going to represent them better than anybody? So we really try to pull from our team and from external. Anyone that I have that’s got experience.
We’ve got a tourism client. Well, I’m going to go to my school network and bring some tourism experts. You know, we’ve got beer or cannabis. Well, I’m going to go and talk to some of the people that I’ve met in that industry and make sure that we get their feed. If I can get the insight I need and I can get the brand guidelines that I want, and I already explained to you that we’re incredibly creative. It’s not tough. You know what’s tough? Building a house. But again, the people that build a house, if they’ve got a good process, would tell you that it’s not that hard.
Jeremy Weisz 31:13
And you also did, talk about the Taboo Show.
Chad Hason 31:17
Oh yeah. So I actually met Darryl, who runs the Taboo Show. So for those that don’t know, the Taboo Show is a national, I think it’s just in Canada, but it’s pretty much all the provinces and it’s just a sex show exhibitors.
Jeremy Weisz 31:32
I didn’t even know.
Chad Hason 31:34
Yeah, stuff like that. So one of the things I do when I hire people is I ask them to check the boxes of clients that they wouldn’t be willing to represent.
Jeremy Weisz 31:41
There’s only really this is it right here.
Chad Hason 31:44
That’s it right there. Yeah. There’s only a couple of things that I refuse to represent. Obviously, I’m not interested in ignorance or racism. And I’m not a big fan of cigarettes. So those are the two things that, because I own the company, I’ve just already checked those boxes off as no go.
But literally everything else, as long as they have a story to tell, is something that we’re willing to consider. So when these guys came to us, admittedly they had just handed their money over to like a general media bookers. I won’t throw them under the bus right now. But, you know, for the money that they were spending, naturally they were not getting the return that they wanted.
And frankly, all of their ads looked like, you know, the back of a magazine I’m sure you’ve never seen. But some of us saw in the 90s that we found in the woods, or our older brother showed us, you know, that that kind of 3D ad, the Craigslist deal and their attendance, we felt was suffering based on the message that they were sending. So what you’re showing right now is a website that we fine tuned but did not create from scratch. We’re actually creating a new one from scratch. What we’ve done is all of their advertising.
So we’ve got a multi hundred thousand dollar spend going across Canada, and we’ve tried to attract the the everyday freaks to this, you know, not just, you know, the people that are out partying at 3 a.m. and wear their INXS on their sleeve, but the moms and dads and couples and even like elderly folk or, you know, specific communities like LGBTQ that were kind of tapped on on the side but never really focused on. We managed to break their audience group instead of just saying people that want to have sex. We broke it down into several audiences and got real specific in the messaging, but we also had fun with it.
Again, we do a ton of cannabis, alcohol and, you know, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. If I can give these type of projects to my team, it brings a special joy to see somebody that’s got, you know, a dildo store and Grindr up on their screen because they’re really trying to nail the message. I’m just a big fan. So we’ve had a ton of fun with it. Sales, even in the first couple of months, have been wonderful to see, and I’m really looking forward to showcasing this as a case study at the end of the year, of what you can do when you genuinely give a shit about your messaging.
Jeremy Weisz 34:03
Yeah, when I’m looking at it, it kind of is like a Cirque du Soleil type of feel to it. Like almost like a Las Vegas show.
Chad Hason 34:11
It’s fun.
Jeremy Weisz 34:15
And you mentioned cannabis. Talk about Boxcar for a second and what you did there.
Chad Hason 34:23
Sure. So when I was a sole proprietor, I got big into cannabis in 2018. I joined a lobbying group that worked with the government and some of the rules. Really sorry — I worked with a lobbying group that said things to the government they should consider and they ignored. But either way, we were engaged.
Some of those recommendations are coming to fruition now after a few years have failed. But yeah, Canada. I did a lot of cannabis. I started with retail. I opened, you know, upwards of 35 stores, sold New Leaf Cannabis or worked with the team that sold New Leaf Cannabis to Meta, which is the biggest retailer in Canada anyways, and probably coming over there to the states as your legalization trickles in.
And I named a bunch of products and worked with a bunch of LPs. I had a blast for a few years, but it wasn’t the most fun as things got kind of stringent, laws were difficult, and even getting your products in was really difficult. So people didn’t have money. And guess who doesn’t get paid when there’s not a lot of money? So when we started, we basically said we weren’t going to do cannabis.
Having said that, this group came to me through a good friend of mine and his mentor, who I know quite well, and they just don’t fail. They asked if I would be willing to make an exception and I said sure. At the time, they were named Armstrong Cannabis. They’re out of Armstrong, British Columbia. Armstrong, British Columbia is known for being the first city or town, I guess, to introduce a railroad boxcar.
Again, when we found that out in the history and started working with them to tell their story, we really saw the connection with the boxcar. You know, it traveled, it kept things fresh. It was innovative. It had interesting look. So we steered them in the direction, also BC boxcar, BC cannabis, it checked a lot of those boxes I was telling you about.
So we came back to them with a proposal to change their name to Boxcar Cannabis. And then the big win on this one was we would do what graffiti artists do to boxcars as a way of doing a train car. So our strain cards were really train cars. And anyone that’s been by a railroad, that’s got cars that have been there for a while knows this theme, so we expanded on it.
These are a little bit simplified, but the point of sale in the store, the reason they’re simplified is if you know anything about the cannabis industry, once you get a product approved, there’s general guidelines it has to meet. But then once you actually get the batch to store, it’s very specific measurements that you communicate at the point of sale.
So our point of sale boxcars are actually incredibly detailed, very colorful, very unique, and tell the story of everything from the flavors to the origins to the differentiators, terpenes, cannabinoids, etc. So I thought it was a super fun project, as did my team. So we did take this one on.
Jeremy Weisz 37:16
No, I love hearing your thought process because it seems obvious now, but coming up with those ideas and really digging deep into kind of the origin and what that city is known for, kind of. I could see how everything kind of gets extrapolated from there. What are you know, you’re in your company, really, and you mentioned this before, help these companies tell great stories and obviously get the word out on what they do.
What are some of the mistakes you see companies making on telling their stories when they’re coming to you? You’re dealing with, okay, maybe they just named it after the city, right. And they haven’t thought beyond that. What are some of the mistakes you see that you have to fix or improve on?
Chad Hason 38:07
The short-sightedness, I think, is the biggest one. A lot of people really enjoy marketing. It’s fun. It’s pretty pictures. It’s, you know, the realization of everything that’s been in my head. And now it’s something I can proudly wear on my shirt or jacket or badge and everyone knows what we are and that we exist.
But what they don’t typically do is look into the next five years of challenges that they’re going to face. So I touched on it earlier. It starts as simple as, is this unique? Or are we going to get down the path and find out that our name is actually taken by someone else?
I’ll give you a wonderful example. Peloton is one of our clients, but it’s Peloton Energy Services, not the Peloton bike brand. And the reality is, Peloton Energy Services have been around 20 years longer than the Peloton bike brand. Now, I’m not going to say that our Peloton is more recognizable than their Peloton, but I can tell you that their Peloton brand had to make a ton of submissions. They were not able to get the URL.
In fact, they’ve offered, I think, upwards to $1 million to get Peloton.com, but they can’t get it. There’s some messaging and trademarking situations that they have come up against that they can’t deal with. So again, it’s as simple as understanding what’s already out there and making sure that you have a path to success.
The second one is people just not investing in a proper strategy. Now, one of the ways that we make that easy is we don’t charge a ton for that original strategy. If you’re willing to come in and get engaged, that’s part of the relationship build. If you see how we did that process that I just walked through and you like it, you’re going to be sold. And my money comes from a long term relationship, not from the hey, pay me to see how I think. So that’s typically what I see is agencies are like they come in and say, well, we have 50 grand. We don’t want to spend any of it on strategy. And you’re not doing strategy for free. So let’s just dive in. And then six months later they’re backtracking.
So that’s the biggest challenge. I don’t like to crap on other people’s work. I find if somebody really, truly takes time to figure out their brand, regardless of who they work with, it’s probably going to be pretty good. The people that come to me that aren’t doing well are ones that completely skip that process.
Jeremy Weisz 40:08
Yeah, I could see here I’m looking, Chad on Peloton.com and didn’t realize yeah this is an oil and gas energy., there’s data management stuff that owns this.
Chad Hason 40:22
Yeah, they’re a great company too. We just got started with them a little while ago. We did their, I did an internal staff onboarding document for a friend. They saw it. They liked it. It kind of had a humorous and fun approach. So we did that for them. And then they saw how we worked in a year later they approached us and said, let’s, let’s give you a ton more business. So that’s a really exciting one for us this year into next year.
Jeremy Weisz 40:42
I love it. You know, first of all, Chad, I just want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing the journey, the lessons and the stories behind it. I want to encourage everyone to check out AgencyAtlas.ca to learn more and more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. And Chad, thanks so much.
Chad Hason 41:01
Thank you so much.
Jeremy Weisz 41:01
Thanks everyone.
