i
virgins
no longer
Although a young agency, Juniper Park is gaining experience fast, using its unconventional
approach to land impressive accounts, court controversy (Virgin Mobile) and strive toward its goal to
“become the greatest story never told in Canada”
by Bruce Gillespie
Juniper Park is not your typical sort of agency, a fact that becomes apparent quickly to anyone who wants to work there. Potential hires are greeted
with an unusual sight during their job interviews—a small, clear, Tupperware bin with a white lid, on which “Frito-Lay R&D” is scrawled in black
marker. Inside the bin, unidentifiable bits of snack food fall out of a foil
package and rattle around. “A lot of people get freaked out by that,” says
Alan Madill, one of the three creative directors at the Toronto agency. “A lot
of people don’t want to get in on a project that early—they want someone
else to come up with all of the answers and then just do the creative work.
But if you don’t get excited about this, you aren’t for Juniper Park.”
Getting in early and helping to build brands from the ground up is a
strategy that has paid off for the three-year-old agency, which is part of
BBDO Worldwide. In that time, Juniper Park has created high-profile campaigns for a number of major clients, such as Frito-Lay, the
Chicago Tribune, Quaker Foods and Virgin Mobile Canada, and won
a slew of accolades from the likes of the Effie Awards, the Canadian
Marketing Association Awards, the Canadian Newspaper Association’s Extra Awards, Communication Arts and Applied Arts.
Madill and fellow creative directors Terry Drummond and Barry
Quinn, along with Juniper Park president and chief strategist Jill
Nykoliation, were working at Toronto’s Grip Limited when BBDO presented
them the opportunity to strike out on their own in 2007. According to
Quinn, it was a chance to work the way they liked to work: by focusing
on telling a story about a brand. “When we think of strategy and creative,
we find ways not to make them two separate disciplines. Strategy must
be creative and creative must be strategic,” says Quinn. “That’s how you
make the story feel real, the way to make the brand enduring.”
Many projects at Juniper Park begin with the creation of a brand narrative, a small book of images and phrases that tell the brand’s story in
a visceral, emotional way, which Quinn compares to the high-concept
prototypes automakers used to display at car shows. “Having a narrative
doesn’t mean the whole creative process is solved, but the basic story and
how you tell it, the tenets and the look and feel, are there,” says Quinn. “A
strong, enduring narrative will outlive the work, so the narrative isn’t the
campaign—it’s the idea that will outlive the campaign.”
As well as being the preferred way of working at Juniper Park, the process
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also makes sense to clients. “It gives them a certain amount of freedom—
to be part of the conversation without having to make a decision on a media
buy,” says Quinn. “By the time they have to pull the trigger and agree to
something the public will see, they’re familiar with the work.”
Because so many of their projects start from the ground up, Juniper
Park assembled a staff that can take on just about anything. The agency
employs about 70 people across a wide range of disciplines, including
writers, art directors, designers, as well as interactive specialists and strategists, and emphasizes the importance of collaboration across those different disciplines. That makes the agency nimble in an always-changing
industry and able to service a wider range of needs for clients than conventional agencies can. That’s been a big factor in the agency’s success
so far, particularly south of the border, where
most of its clients are based. “When we started,
we said, We’re not a Toronto agency, we’re an
Juniper Park, Toronto
www.juniperpark.com
agency with an office in Toronto, because New
jill.nykoliation@
York and Chicago are roughly the same distance
juniperpark.com
by plane as Montreal, and all of them are closer
416-413-7301
than Vancouver,” says Quinn. “We’re, like, the
greatest story never told in Canada.”
That changed last year, though, when controversy erupted over a
series of transit posters the agency created for Virgin Mobile Canada,
which depicted young, same-sex and opposite-sex couples locked in passionate clinches on office desks and in elevators, with the tagline “Hook
up fearlessly.” Complaints about their suitability public transit in Calgary
and Mississauga, Ont., made headlines across the country. “The Virgin
work has been great for us—it seemed to be everywhere,” says Quinn.
Adds Madill, “Now our mothers know what we do.”
Quinn says they look forward to adding more Canadian clients to their
roster in the future but are really just interested in working with clients
who have a problem to solve, which seems more and more common given
the pace of technological change in the industry. “The world of communications is changing so dramatically,” says Quinn. “It’s an exciting time to
be in the business, and I think a fluid office like ours is well prepared for the
challenges and opportunities to come.”
Bruce Gillespie is a Simcoe, Ont. writer ([email protected]).
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Child Safety Seat Coalition Toronto, 2009: This idea was inspired by a staff member who had witnessed an accident in which a child was killed because of an
improperly installed car seat, and pitched the creative directors on doing something about it. CD Terry Drummond says the clients took an immediately liking to
it. “They loved the fact that it was a gut punch, they didn’t shy away from that at all.” They liked the posters so much that they applied for government funding
to produce them and publicize the fact that 80 per cent of child safety seats are installed incorrectly.
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T h e P ow e r o f E m pt i n e s s
Melissa Mercier
Vancouver
www.melissamercier.com
[email protected]
For as long as I can remember,
great photographs have really
inspired me and commanded
my attention. My real interest
started in high school; I filled my
day planner with photographs
I cut out from magazines. Unfortunately, my guidance counsellor convinced me that photography was not a viable career choice, so I chose to attend fashion school in Montreal. When
I headed out to Toronto to learn English, the architecture of the city
inspired me to pick up the camera again. I was introduced to Anthony
Redpath, a renowned commercial photographer from Vancouver.
He mentored me for a year from across the country. Eventually he
offered me the position of studio manager. My formal training took
place at Langara College, in Vancouver, which was a perfect complement to my hands-on experience at Redpath Studios.
My early photography focused on architectural and industrial
subjects. At first I moonlighted between fine art and stock. Now
I’m completely focused on fine art. I’d describe my style as generally spacious and clean. Minimalism and monochromatism are
huge themes in my work. I am inspired by empty space and architecture. I like to think that the emptiness is often the subject matter itself. The work of Arthur Erikson and Santiago Calatrava fascinate me and inspire me deeply. Their architecture leaves enough
space to breathe, which I aspire to do with my images.
It’s amazing to see things change as technology develops. The
influx of microstock has definitely changed the landscape for larger
companies like Corbis and Getty. As more photos become available on the Web, prices inevitably go lower for stock images, which
drives quality to the forefront, and that’s positive. It has also encouraged photographers to embrace new media like never before. For anyone trying to break into the business, I have this advice:
Believe in yourself. Love what you do. Shoot what you’re passionate about and find or create a place for that work to live. And don’t
listen to your career counsellor.
Inspired by minimalism and architecture that leaves enough space to
breathe, photographer Melissa Mercier has embraced her inner fine artist
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At first glance this may look like ice or acylic, but these are in fact the calm waters of Lake Louise, Alberta, at the crack of dawn. I slept in the car that night to
catch the lake at the perfect time of day, before anyone could disturb the stillness.
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Teresa Leung
Age: 21. Months in biz: Seven. School: Alberta College of Art & Design.
Job description: Art director at MacLaren McCann Calgary.
Recent honours: Applied Arts Student Awards. Featured in Design Ignites Change.org. Inspired by: Public transit­—it’s a material gold mine. Twelveyear-olds with $500 cell phones sit next to old people with revoked driver’s licences and commuters that shake from caffeine withdrawal. I give them
fake names and back stories. It’s better than Jersey Shore. Brings to table: An overactive imagination and a sponge-like thirst to learn. “Marketing” as a
job description is constantly changing. That evolution is what gets me out of bed in the morning. ACAD taught me about design and art direction, After
Effects and video-editing skills, but those are just tools. I come to work every day determined to build something groundbreaking with them. Favourite
job to date: My current job as art director at MacLaren McCann Calgary. There’s a noose hanging from the ceiling in my office and an all-staff height
chart on the wall next to my desk. Good things happen when you get to hang around with people that don’t take themselves too seriously. Pet peeve
about business: “Approval by committee” are the scariest words in advertising. Watching great ideas be led to slaughter takes some getting used to.
Where you want to be in 10 years: In Cannes picking up a Gold Lion. Again. Anything else you want to say: Free Tibet. Teresa Leung, Calgary, www.
teresaleung.com, [email protected], 403-616-9083.
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1 Zara Spring Sale: This student project aims to showcase Zara’s philosophies of originality and independence.
By redefining the much-anticipated spring thaw, we were able to relate to our audience on two different levels.
2 Nike Free: Another student project. We were asked to create an ad to for a foot-strengthening runner. We wanted
to convey the strength that Nike promises while showcasing their demographic’s hardcore athlete personalities.
3 Clue: During the Christmas shopping season, we created seat covers that were set up in a local coffee shop to
promote the board-games store Games People Play.
4 Microevolution: The theme of this Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists event was “microevolution”—the
process that causes animals to change very slightly over hundreds of years to adapt and survive.
5 Fixodent: This student project for a denture adhesive claims that the user only needs to apply the product once
and they’ll not have to worry about their teeth for the rest of the day.
6 Canmore Community Cruisers: A fun, youthful, environmentally sensitive visual identity for a bike-share society devoted to protecting the environment by decreasing car emissions.
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