Rafik Belmesk
Operations, AKOS
ihaveanidea

Two years ago, the mercurial ihaveanidea Towers were relocated from their Toronto birthplace to the city of Montreal, and yet, for some reason our interactions with the local ad community have been somewhat limited. After all, we’d already profiled Sid Lee, Bos and BBDO before moving here, so who else could we possibly visit?

That’s when Ignacio, in true presidential fashion, exclaimed: “Hey, we’ve never done TAXI here”

Wait, TAXI has an office in Montreal?

Yes

(I already knew that)

I wanted to see what the local office is about and put another notch on our belt in terms of TAXI agency profiles on ihaveanidea. So I booked a meeting with Stéphane Charier, the TAXI Montreal ECD who must share barbers with the network’s proverbial Godfather Paul Lavoie. Stéphane was the first copywriter hired at the Montreal office when it opened back in 1992. Lavoie recalls: “The final choice came down to him and a really hot girl with the best legs you’d ever seen. After long hard deliberation we decided to go for him since his portfolio was admittedly better. When he came back to my office the first thing I told him was to show me his legs!”

TAXI Montreal is housed in a building on St-Alexandre Street, a quaint avenue ripe with advertising history. In addition to TAXI, you’ll also find businesses like interactive agency Cloudraker and production company toxa. The building used to be home of Ogilvy Montreal, as well as the now defunct Republik. But no matter what other companies shared this building, once you enter TAXI’s office, you know you’re in a TAXI office, with all the the trademark black and white furnture you’ll find in all of their locales. The walls are full of catchy phrases that essentially tell you that if work your butt off, you might come up with something great that will be remembered in years to come, make your colleagues green with envy and may win you the odd gong or two if you’re lucky.

As is the case with most micro-networks, the TAXI Montreal is very involved with other members of the family. They don’t operate as distinct entity, but rather as one big pool of talent over many cities. This means it’s quite common for Montreal, New York or Toronto to join forces and tackle an important pitch. “The way the money is structured helps,” explains Stéphane, “ Budgets aren’t separated by department. It’s one bucket for everybody. It helps us be more collaborative. We don’t worry with problems like – oh New York is gonna have to pay Montreal or vice-versa. We let the GM figure it all out”.

So sure, you will get to work right across the network, but how often do you get to meet the people on the other end of the email address?

More often than not, the collaboration with the other offices is done over the phone or the web, but the Montreal office does travel to the Toronto and New York ones quite frequently. This is especially true when working on the national Telus account; the creatives from Montreal get to spend time in Toronto to nail a spot or 38. “It’s important to see people. If you don’t talk or have a beer you might not trust them.”

If you’ve been around the Canadian ad industry for all of five minutes, you will know that one thing the Toronto office is somewhat notorious for is working long, long, long hours. I was curious to see how that mentality adapted to Montreal’s famous joie de vivre and laid back attitude. “Sure, the Toronto office might work more hours, but it doesn’t mean they work harder,” says Stéphane. “We work extremely hard here, but in a different way. We like to mix business with pleasure more so than in Toronto. There’s nothing wrong with having glass of wine with lunch, for example”. That being said, the agency’s walls are scattered with phrases like “the best way to get great ideas is to have tons of ideas”, which suggest what sort of work load you’re in for if you’re lucky enough to score a spot on TAXI’s roster.

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Other than Telus, the cab drivers spend their days working on a myriad of other clients, such as Microsoft MSN, Dairy Farmers, Bombardier, Reitmans and Hydro Quebec. Recently, a shoot for Canadian transportation equipment giant Bombardier took them on quite the trek around the world. The commercials were shot in South Africa, Vietnam, China and Morocco, amongst other worldwide places, and showcase how Bombardier trains and planes were having a huge impact and being used far beyond the country’s frontiers. “It’s kind of hard to understand for people, especially since the government is helping these huge companies with their taxes. So we wanted to show them where the money was going, and how proud they should be.”

Having their own clients is something Stéphane is particularly proud of. Upon his return to TAXI (he briefly left for stints at Cossette and BBDO), the agency was still quite small and mostly doing English to French adaption for the Toronto office. He and his then partner took it from that somewhat modest state, to being able to compete with the heavyweights on a national level.

This quietly led us to another fascinating and very contentious debate: Is the local, predominately French market so distinctive that it needs its own agencies, producing campaigns for French speaking Quebec and Quebec only? According to Stéphane, this is sometimes the case. “Generally, it’s much better for a client to have one voice. When the idea is great and the insight is strong, it works for everybody”.

A good example of this is when TAXI recently completed the national rebranding of MSN in Canada after the client had originally approached them to pitch only for the French part of the business. The team thought their solution would work on a national level, and decided to pitch for the whole account, which they won. But, Stéphane notes that sometimes you need to do some smaller tactical things differently to show that you respect and understand the differences in English and French culrure. “But let’s not be naïve, lots of people and lots of agencies only say that to get the money!”

Wise words, and to be fair that trend is slowly starting to dissipate with agencies like Sid Lee and TAXI abandoning the small village mentality to go after the international accounts and recognition. “I am not looking at what’s happening in Montreal, or not even at what’s happening in the TAXI network. I’m looking at what’s happening worldwide. I want to compete at that level. We had a very good performance in Cannes one year, when we won two Gold Cyber Lions for Reversa. That client was fucking cool and allowed us to do crazy stuff, but that’s not an excuse. We just need to work harder.”

And I bet you they will, too.