Ronna Chisholm is the Business Director and Co-founder of Dossier Creative, a brand design studio in Vancouver specializing in food, beverage, health, wellness, and professional service rebranding. With over 30 years of experience, she has led her studio to create and reposition some of Canada’s most iconic brands, including Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Naked Grape Wines. Ronna is also the Founder of Railyard Lab, an internship-powered design studio focusing on strengthening the business-design connection and serving social impact organizations. A visionary entrepreneur, she leverages her passion for embracing differences and love within her company’s culture to inspire innovation and foster long-standing client and team relationships.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [3:55] Ronna Chisholm discusses how Dossier Creative help create iconic brands
- [11:30] The specific services that Dossier provides and where they draw the line
- [15:48] How Ronna navigated partnerships and the acquisition process with larger agencies
- [22:49] The crucial factors that prompted the consideration of selling to ZGM
- [28:10] The story of developing a collaborative model that embraces different thinking styles
- [39:38] The innovative concept of Railyard Lab and how it empowers social impact through design
- [41:24] Tips for fostering a great culture and retention in a creative company
- [47:27] Crucial life and business lessons from mentors who have influenced Ronna’s career trajectory
In this episode…
How can one build an iconic brand that resonates with a generation — navigating the dynamic landscape of the design industry? Sometimes, all it takes is a single, focused idea.
Ronna Chisholm, the guru behind some of the most recognizable brands, dives into the branding, innovation, and design world. Ronna recounts her journey with Dossier Creative, shedding light on her strategies for developing and positioning brands that stand the test of time. She explains how critical details like naming can ignite a brand’s legacy, revealing the intricate balance of art and commerce and what it takes to maintain a creative team for over three decades. Ronna details the challenges of mergers and acquisitions and how personal values can shape business decisions.
In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Ronna Chisholm, Co-founder and Business Director of Dossier Creative, about design thinking, managing creative teams, and driving social impact. Ronna discusses how Dossier Creative helps create iconic brands, navigating partnerships and the acquisition process with larger agencies, and the innovative concept of Railyard Lab and how it empowers social impact through design.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
- ZGM Modern Marketing Partners
- Ethical Food Group
- Spark: The Inspiring Life and Legacy of Milton K. Wong
Related episode(s):
- “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
- “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
Quotable Moments:
- “Building a brand is not just about the visual identity, it’s about creating a legacy.”
- “We’re in the business of creating the unseen, taking an idea from nothing to a market sensation.”
- “The intersection of art and commerce is where the magic happens in brand design.”
- “My core values are love and embracing differences, which are vital factors in sustaining our team.”
- “Helping influence a young person early in their career is something that stays with you.”
Action Steps:
- Create a compelling brand origin story that resonates with your target audience: It reinforces brand identity and forms a deep connection with customers.
- Embed core company values into everyday practices to foster a positive workplace culture: Shared values and practices and giving love can significantly increase team cohesion and retention.
- Continuously learn from industry leaders and adapt to new market trends: Keeping up with evolving industries drives innovation and ensures relevance.
- Embrace the blend of art and commerce to master the intricacies of a creative business: Balancing creativity with business strategy is critical for running a successful design firm while retaining artistic integrity.
- Use mentorship and community-focused projects to develop talent and give back: Engaging in programs enriches the organization, the community, and empowers the next generation of professionals.
Sponsor for this episode
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Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:15
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 Ronna Chisholm of Dossier Creative and Railyard Lab and Ronna, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. There’s a really good one with Adi Klevit. Adi Klevit has an agency, and she specializes in helping companies create SOPs. So she does, she comes in, helps streamline, it could be onboarding of clients, onboarding of staff. And so we geeked out on our favorite productivity tools and just streamlining things in general. So that was a favorite episode of mine.
Also, I had Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech. Kevin’s had an agency since 1995 so Ronna, I’m not going to date you or anything, but like Ronna started hers back in 1987 actually. So Kevin, Ronna beat you in that regard, but it’s interesting because Kevin shared just kind of the landscape of the internet, the agency world, business in general, over the different decades. It’s pretty fascinating. So I’m sure we’ll have a pretty interesting conversation here. And just check out many more episodes on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We actually 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 Ronna, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host so they can create amazing content, create amazing relationships, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I’ve found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you definitely should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
I’m excited to introduce today’s guest, Ronna Chisholm, and for the last over 30 years, she served as founder and Business Director for Dossier, one of Vancouver’s top brand design studios. And Dossier has had a hand in many, many iconic brands, Canada’s most iconic brands, but overall iconic brands. So we’re talking Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Coca Cola, Kraft Foods, Vega, Naked Grape Winery. I can go on and on. Also she wasn’t busy enough. She also founded a unique intern power design studio called Railyard Lab, and that is with the goal of strengthening ties between business and design while providing creative services to social impact organizations that are doing really important work in communities. So Ronna, thanks for joining me.
Ronna Chisholm 3:24
Thank you, Jeremy, and really honored to be here. And kind of took me down memory lane a little bit, talking about decades of the design industry firm. I went back there going, oh yeah, we have all that too.
Jeremy Weisz 3:39
We’ll dig into your background and how you got into this. But first, just talk about, start with Dossier, and I’m gonna share my screen so people are listening to the audio, there is a video version, and we’re gonna poke around the site. But talk about Dossier and what you do.
Ronna Chisholm 3:55
Yeah, Dossier is a brand, and innovation is how we describe our company, and so we have a real specialty in creating brands for food and beverage and health and wellness. And also we rebrand and reposition a lot of professional service companies. So that’s just a little on the side, but our love and what inspires us is something called Creating the unseen, and so that’s taking from like nothing. So we tend to focus on startups that are quite well financed. And as you mentioned, Mike’s Hard Lemonade is one of the kind of iconic ones that we did in the mid-90s. And so yeah, that’s an example, and I can get into that later if, if wanted.
Jeremy Weisz 4:52
Yeah, talk about Mike’s Hard Lemonade. How’d you meet them in the first place?
Ronna Chisholm 4:55
Yeah. We were working with Anthony von Mandel. So he owned Mission Hill Wines. We had created California cooler for him and some ciders and some wine projects. And we started working with him in the late 80s, early 90s, and then Anthony wanted to create a brand. He actually charged us with creating a brand new category, which is no small feat. And he had brought some inspirations from some lemonades from Australia. I think it was called hooch at the time. And so it was, right from the inception, the naming, the concept, kudos to Anthony.
He wanted a legacy. And that’s what we realized really early, okay, this is big, this is a big opportunity, and this is creating Anthony’s legacy. And so the first set of creatives that went to focus groups, they were great. They were really interesting. But nothing was like really hitting it out of the ballpark. And that’s where Anthony just said no, he was very comfortable with the creative process. And let’s go round two again. That was back to the drawing board. And even my Mike’s Hard Lemonade. We had a whole, you know, lineup of great concepts to go into focus groups. And it was a lot of people won’t know this story, like, literally, the day before my partner and co-founder, Don, was like, I feel like we need to put something more in. And they came up with this concept, Mike’s Hard Lemonade. And it really hit a nerve at that time in the marketplace of this sort of disgruntled kind of Gen X kind of individual. And so the client hadn’t even seen it.
The marketing folks, none of them, and Anthony had not seen it when it went into focus groups. And the focus group, in the focus groups, people just went crazy over right from the get go. So huge like success right out of the gates.
Jeremy Weisz 5:37
Was your job to come up with the name. Like, at this point, there’s no name, and there’s a concept of what it is. And you have to say, what are we naming this thing? Is that correct?
Ronna Chisholm 7:25
Exactly. Yeah, actually, how are we positioning it, the naming, the design, and in the first round, like it wasn’t even settled that it was going to be a lemonade, there was like thoughts from the client, like, hey, we could do an alcoholic cola. So we narrowed in on lemonade the second round. But it was like, yeah, there was no previous research.
Jeremy Weisz 7:49
Do you remember any of the bad names?
Ronna Chisholm 7:51
I don’t from that one, but I know…
Jeremy Weisz 7:57
Cola hooch…
Ronna Chisholm 8:00
Yeah, yeah. One of the really interesting insights, though, that we did have, was that at the time, a lot like this, is before the craft brew, whole trend, right? But a lot of men, young men, did not actually like beer and the taste of beer and beers at that time, in the mid-90s.
Jeremy Weisz 8:26
I’m definitely falling into that category.
Ronna Chisholm 8:29
They were too embarrassed to hold coolers.
Jeremy Weisz 8:31
I am not. I’m secure enough. But like 21, your stereotypical 21 year old female with like, I want fruity sparkle, and I’m totally secure with that. So anyway…
Ronna Chisholm 8:51
Well, a lot of guys younger probably aren’t as secure, Jeremy, and so got the wee head they were embarrassed to hold in their hand like a fruity and at the time, there weren’t a lot of coolers around. And so we took that and when this has to be something that guys are gonna like, not be embarrassed by, and cool. So we went more non gender at that time, which was really, like, novel. And it worked.
Jeremy Weisz 9:23
It’s interesting. It reminds me a lot of Liquid Death. You know about Liquid Death, the sparkling water, that basically same thing. It’s like, I’ll show it right here, where it’s a, it’s basically a sparkling water, but, like, it looks like really edgy and I don’t know the full story on it, but it’s basically a sparkling water with branding that looks like Megadeth.
Ronna Chisholm 9:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and mites, at the time was like, the obviously, it’s like many years later, decades later in the packaging is changed, and there’s not a story. But that story was a very riveting story of a disgruntled Gen X, or making this in his basement. And something that your listeners might not know, is that Anthony von Mandel, we went on to create White Wave as well. So Mike’s and White Wave like, he has his some gold in that area, too. But this was something he was so pleased with because he hadn’t seen the concepts. Hadn’t seen it. And it actually built his empire to become a world class winery by a lot of other wineries. So we worked with him for about 10 years and then we moved on to the largest wine company in Canada, Vintbor at the time, which is now called Arterra and was bought by Constellation Brands, which is a big US wine company, and so we worked for them for well over a decade as well.
Jeremy Weisz 11:11
Ronna, where does your work end and another agency begin? Like, what are the services that you’re like, we stick with this and other maybe agencies will handle different components of this.
Ronna Chisholm 11:30
That’s a great question, and also kind of we can get into later in our conversation, maybe is to why an agency in another province was interested in acquiring us, and so we always decided that we would stay small and boutique and just really specialize in the creating of brands. And we never actually went into digital early. And that was an intentional, I think lifestyle was important to us, and we just wanted to have a very boutique 2025 kind of person at the most kind of shop. But we realized a couple years ago that we were spilling off like a lot of services. So the client would come in the early stages, and then we would have to refer them. We’d have to bring in a digital firm, and we did a health and wellness men’s product for hair loss actually.
Jeremy Weisz 12:32
I need that. What is it?
Ronna Chisholm 12:34
It’s called Zyon.
Jeremy Weisz 12:35
I think I saw it.
Ronna Chisholm 12:40
Yeah, yeah. No, should be there. You know what, I have to apologize.
Jeremy Weisz 12:49
This will be my wife’s favorite episode. If you solve this problem.
Ronna Chisholm 12:53
You could probably go to our social.
Jeremy Weisz 12:57
I’ll find it. How do you spell it?
Ronna Chisholm 13:00
Yeah, Zyon, if you go online, we’re from a real design firm that doesn’t have our website up to date.
Jeremy Weisz 13:08
It looks pretty good, but you can’t, being this many years in business, you can’t put everything in there.
Ronna Chisholm 13:13
Oh, there it is. Sorry, it is there. What do I know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, naming, and this is all the product form factor we design as well, those inputs for a cardiologist that had a patent and technology for hair loss, and he had a big pharmaceutical company on the NASDAQ, and he with another doctor that was a world renowned hair transplant, guy in Vancouver that celebrities and, like football, like stars, like from all over, I think Bono supposedly even like travel to Vancouver for their hair transplants.
So they were partners, and so this was an example of one of those, well-funded startups, big vision to ignite this category and do something very different than the other kind of competitors in the category. Filling off. So for all of this, then they needed a whole digital site that had, like, referral from doctors. So, pretty complicated site. So, in a couple million dollars that we probably for digital that. And then performance marketing a firm in LA, and then, and so we started recognizing that someone might, maybe there’s someone that could be interested in how much we spill off.
Jeremy Weisz 14:47
Yeah, tons. It’s like, lots of opportunities, and you, from the beginning, have this relationship with them, so they trust you. And the next step is like, okay, like, fly away. Like, we don’t help the rest of the stuff.
Ronna Chisholm 15:02
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