Spotting and Shaping Trends
We’ll put our intellectual capital to work for you.
That capital is big and goes deep. It comes from 30+ years' partnering with the world’s most sophisticated brands and their intellectual capital.
It’s one thing for us to say we’re good. Quite another for Clutch.com to rank us the Best PR Agency in Canada and the World -- for the past two years. By every standard, we are best in class in Canada’s two official languages, English and French.
Ranked among the world’s most creative communicators, we use cutting-edge research, analysis, and strategic thinking to create new ways to grow, and profit, and give back.
When you engage with us, you gain our insights learned from actual, earned experience — whether you're Perrier, Nespresso, Benjamin Moore, The Body Shop, Guinness, or Kia.
As for hot new ideas, perching on the leading edge of change is second-nature for us. We use research, acute listening, and soft-sounding to identify and maximize opportunities via mainstream tools, and new ones that dig deep where no one’s been before.
So yes, innovation is in our DNA.
We’re also purpose-driven by honesty and integrity. So you have a communications advisor who’s already ahead in helping build brand awareness, acceptance, sales – and most of all, authenticity, because if you don’t have that these days, the others can’t last.
Brand Marketing Always Needs a Strategy
Strategy is knowing where you’re going. Tactics is getting there. We are strong on both, but never confuse the two. This is why everything we do is rooted in strategy, and why it’s part of our name.
We are always eager to execute your brand strategy; but happier to collaborate with you to create a truly new and bullet-proof one. By definition, it must be multi-faceted, incorporating digital, social and mainstream media relations, one that will not only survive today’s tumultuous business environment, but thrive in it.
But how do you craft strategies that cut through the clutter to meet brand marketing objectives? Well, we conduct consumer discussions, sentiment surveys, and competitive analyses to discover and maximize your unique differences — and your lasting ones. We also leverage our own research and data, and closely monitor trends at the very edge of consumer thinking, and we also never forget that we live and work in the most diverse country on earth. Canada is our space, and while our market conditions may look like those in other places, they’re often not.
We capitalize on this knowledge to communicate your brand and business attributes in a different and memorable way.
Influencer Marketing that actually influences the world of influencers
Because we integrate digital, content and consumer marketing, and because they act in unison, not only do they each work better, they all do. This is especially relevant with influencer marketing, whose practitioners and follower counts demand meticulous research and analysis.
We are founding members of Canada's Ad Standards' Influencer Marketing Task Force, which ensures high industry standards, and verifies KPIs to measure the success of every influencer program. So we're absolute sticklers on these points.
Our reach extends far beyond lifestyle influencers to include expert key opinion leaders in a variety of fields ranging from government to medicine, with powerful reputations and clout in this country.
Our clients enjoy outsize success with social media takeovers, digital collaboration, surprise and delights, and long-term influencer ambassador partnerships. The medium works, if you work it.
Experiential and Special Event Management
The best events are the ones your clients, consumers, community, friends and family remember and talk about – for all the right reasons. In a world awash in live and online events, we create ones that grab media, influencer, and tastemaker attention. How? By being both creative and authentic in our ideas and execution to reinforce brand integrity, trust, and acceptance.
Until the pandemic, online events were occasional sideshows. Not anymore. In the past 18 months, our PR Team has created everything from large-scale, B2B and B2C online product launches, CSR programs and productions, to tradeshows and electrifying concerts for everyone from Kia, to the Cashmere Collection for Breast Cancer, and the launch of Green & Black's Organic NEW Intensity Scale – all in English and French.
Content Creation and Digital Marketing
For us, content is fresh, new and relevant information served up in a compelling way. Do it more often and more people will trust you, follow you and even rave about you. So whether it’s paid or earned, social, digital or traditional, our content is about quality first, last, always.
You can see this in…
- Our brand and product launches for Volkswagen, Kia Canada, SpongeTowels, Senokot, and Thermacell Repellents.
- Our strategy and content for Weber Grills and Groupe Marcelle beauty brands.
- Storytelling infographics, sizzle reels, award submissions, e-vites and giveaways for all kinds of clients.
Social Media
Three in four Canadians turn to social media to inform their purchasing decisions.
But ‘social’ isn’t just one media, it’s an entire portfolio full of options, and growing every day — YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch, SnapChat — we work with all of them already, and who knows what’s next?
They all attract different audiences, hold different opportunities, and demand different social media strategies.
These media are young, but we’ve built a deep understanding of what makes them tick, and what makes them change so fast too. Our job is to anticipate and stay ahead of this change on our clients' behalf.
This way, we can help your brand create not just relatable and human personality, but a constantly compelling one that draw large and loyal bands of followers and brand advocates.
Brand Reputation and Crises Management
Almost forever, consumers have been asking brands: “Can I trust you?”
Today, they’re more insistent, asking “What are you doing for me? Do you value what I value?”
So, because brand reputation is being held to much higher standards, ensuring it is unimpeachable takes much more work and awareness of external factors that can bring a company to its knees within hours.
There’s only one way to do this, and it goes way beyond playing defense. Today reputation demands a strong offensive strategy that can build on the much bigger relationship consumers insist on having — even if they’re just buying a cup of coffee. Boycotts, strikes, community backlash, and more are all part of the decision to buy that cup or not.
Reputation also demands instant response. Misinformation can spread at the speed of light, and detecting and countering it has to be just as fast. That’s why always-on reputation and issues management is one of our most valued services.
Corporate Social Responsibility
In just a few years, CSR has moved from the sidelines of a company’s purpose to a central player in it. Today, 90% of Canadians believe brands should support charitable activities, and 74% are more likely to support the brands that do.
This is not just a matter of aligning with some relevant charities to boost your brand. It’s about partnering with those organizations to give them a more central role in the communities where you do business. The new CSR is about not waiting to see social issues develop. It’s about stepping-up decisively, and with significant resources, to lead change rather than helping from the middle of the pack.
We work with our clients to create bold and meaningful CSR programs to build their reputation or change it for the better. In fact, we are the only Canadian PR Agency ever to receive the United Nations Grand Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Relations. We won it for our work with The Body Shop to STOP Violence Against Women.
What’s more, our work propelling social change has forged many community alliances including A&W Burgers to Beat MS, Kellogg’s Breakfasts for Better Days, the Cashmere Collection for Breast Cancer, which have won many national and international awards.
Of course, doing this in the midst of a pandemic presents once-in-a-lifetime challenges. We hope. Because we are nimble by nature, and pivoting is a skill we use every day, we didn’t change much about ourselves to help our clients change their work and worlds for the better. They trusted us to overcome, to make news, to build brands, and especially to build communities where they didn’t exist before.
Our ability to lead our clients, lead our industry and even lead the world in CSR is best trumpeted by others. In addition to our exclusive UN Award, we are the only all-Canadian agency to be named to the PR News Top 10 CSR Agency A-List.
In fact, Strategic Objectives was named Toronto PR Agency of the Year by the International Association of Business Communicators IABC/Toronto, for nine of the last 12 years; and is rated Best PR Agency in Canada, and Best PR Agency in the World 2020 and 2021 by Clutch.com.
Here are just a few of the CSR campaigns we created during COVID:
The Rise and Dominance of ESG
Ten years ago, environmental, social, and governance issues were on the margins. Two years ago, they’d become a business imperative. Today, they are the most central issue faced by organizations of all kinds and sizes.
Today, ESG issues drive sustainability and fuel the rush to a zero-carbon world, which is the biggest issue of all. Can the earth survive how we’ve been abusing it? Can a sector survive how technology is transforming it? Can a company survive how it treats its employees, its customers, community and society at large?
As Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, noted in his January letter to shareholders: “Every company and every industry will be transformed by the transition to a net zero world. The question is, will you lead, or will you be led?” Decision-makers everywhere agree with him: three in four of them consider ESG factors to be “very important’ to the enterprise value of their organization.
This massive shift has created new relevance for the role of public relations communicators, because a company’s relations with the public have never been so big, fraught, or consequential.
We are leaders in social justice. Our breakthrough campaign with the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking is saving lives every day. Our taboo-shattering work with The Body Shop Canada helped provoke actual legislative change.
Our work in sustainability includes:
- Award wins for Maple Leaf Foods
- Nestle Canada: Smarties, Häagen-Dazs x LOOP
- KEEN Footwear
