Making Great Brands even Better

Works in Progress

The most exciting work is always the stuff that's underway right now:

• TIFF: The Toronto International Film Festival are redefining their brand as they make the big leap from 11 days in September to a 365 centre for film at the new TIFF Bell Lightbox. I'm working with the amazing team at TAXI.
• The Toronto Public Library. In collaboration with team Trajectory - a comprehensive brand strategy for TPL just underway this summer.
• OCAD University. Having worked with OCAD on exploring their naming options I've now been invited to work with them and their selected designer on a new visual identity. Look for the new look by January 2011.
• Univeristy of Toronto Scarborough. This year-long high-involvement strategy project is now in the creative development and implementation phase. Scott Thornley is on the case doing tagline and creative development.
• State Street. A year-long collaboration with Jonathan Knowles from Type II Consulting has resulted in a comprehensive global brand strategy, values mapping and messaging framework for this mammoth global FI.
• ICCO: The Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario is redefining its role as the position of chambers of commerce evolves globally. Soon we'll move in to creative development with a team from the Institute without Boundaries at George Brown.
• Forrec is the world's leading designer of theme parks, water parks and other places where people spend their precious free time, and like so many Canadian success stories, they don't get much attention on home soil. With partners, q30 design, I've been advising Forrec on brand, messaging and marketing for over two years.
• Top secret: This one is not on the public record yet but is a major re-positioning for a truly iconic Canadian institution. Working with my pals at Ove on this and having a great time. Details as soon as we can go public!

Oxford Properties Group

Positioning the Richmond Adelaide Centre

One of OXFORD's premier real estate holdings is the block of buildings between Richmond and Adelaide at York Street in Toronto. But with intensive complex-to-complex competition in the A-space core market, OXFORD had to do more than just upgrade, it had to create an idea of the Centre that would help it compete with power-houses First Canadian Place, Bay Adelaide and others.

We listened hard to what brokers, tenants and ex-tenants had to say about the merits of the block and its potential. We also took the measure of the OXFORD brand and its strong reputation as a great service provider.

McCarthy Tétrault

Building a true legal services brand

McCarthy Tétrault is the top corporate law and litigation firm in Canada. It owns the unique position of being more than a collection of independently minded lawyers and has built a truly integrated firm with a uniquely collaborative culture.

In several years of work with the firm, ranging from brand strategy formulation to deep brand alignment and implementation, I have had the privilege of helping this group of brand sceptics become ardent brand evangelists.

What has made the success of this initiative possible has been the high-involvement process behind the work. We used a national workshopping approach and extensive online engagement to keep lawyers and staff engaged and involved at every step. By the time our brand blueprint was done, we had broad-based support across the partnership.

Sun Life Financial

Developing and implementing a powerful global brand

How does a global, integrated financial services provider stay relevant to a customer base that does not want to think about the future, and differentiated from a competitive field that all seem to occupy the same paternalistic territory? By going back to first principles to ask customers what matters to them and to change the game to adapt to real consumer needs.

University of Waterloo

Canada's Most innovative educational brand

Brand strategy is still a work in progress at the University of Waterloo, but then so is everything at UW. This is a place where change is the norm, risk is rewarded and there is a constant desire to stretch beyond the obvious.This paradoxical culture of valuing hard-driving performance and communitarian spirit has created a university at the top of its game; rated at the top of Canadian universities for innovation, and leading the world with the biggest cooperative education program for students across all faculties.

Canada Post

Positioning and Brand Strategy

Canada Post's mandate: to be Canada's mail provider, and to provide healthy returns to the shareholder through competitive services, has become more challenging with the emergence of super-competitors: FedEX, UPS and myriad physical and electronic communications alternatives.

Birch Hill Equity Partners

Positioning and Brand Strategy

In an industry where everyone pretty much says the same thing about what they do, Birch Hill (previously TD CPEP) has been doing things their own way, and creating Canada's largest mid-market buy-out firm in the process. We worked with Birch Hill on a brand strategy built on the idea that they can take people where others can't.

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Brand Strategy

The Stratford Festival was born in the imagination of a small group of fearless and resourceful Stratford residents who wanted to create a place where Shakespeare could be brought to life as it was meant to be. Over the decades, the Festival became a victim of its own success.

Washington DC's downtown

Brand Strategy

Downtown Washington DC has come back from a long history of decline to be one of the most vibrant downtowns in America. A wave of re-investment since the late 90's had focused on office development to satisfy the huge demand for space for professionals serving the needs of the capital.

The good news was the new activity and wealth that this brought to the core. The bad news was that the skyrocketing land values made it very difficult for residential, retail, entertainment and hospitality to establish there. Downtown DC had become an expensive office park.