[EO Toronto] Elevating Brand Love Through Strategic Marketing With Brent Wardrop of Elemental

Jeremy Weisz 14:35

Were you what was it? Were you sing you sounds like you were singer songwriter. Did you play an instrument? What was it?

Brent Wardrop 14:41

I play a little bit of keyboards but nothing anyone would want to hear? It’s not I’m not very good. I wrote with I grew up with Red Riding teams. So I would I would we would we would collaboratively work on stuff where I would I would sing melody lines or, or bass lines and then they would they would turn them. The music was Gothic pop I, I was reading a lot of Anne Rice at the time that I wrote my album, and that that that particular album, and, and it musically it’s very, very upbeat and Power Poppy. But the music is all about, you know, I don’t know if you know Ballhaus and you know, oh, it was pretty dark stuff was all about, you know.

Jeremy Weisz 15:24

So can we find the album? Is it online somewhere?

Brent Wardrop 15:26

Yeah, it’s, it’s. So I have the last name Wardrop. About as sexy as a tin can. Right. So. So I, and even my own company, you know, I didn’t put my name on the lights, because it’s always more than just you. Right? And but, yeah, so the band name is Valle V. I L, which was just me and a couple of great brothers who produced it with me. And it’s, the album is called the Savage Garden. It’s available on Spotify and Apple.

Jeremy Weisz 15:57

Nice. Awesome. So we should put it on the front of this interview, some you do whatever more or the back of this interview, and you do your thing. So milestones, you kept getting clients and reaching out, talk about the hiring milestones in the company. So it could be positions, it doesn’t have to be people specifically, but some key positions that you when you stop just being you.

Brent Wardrop 16:29

Okay, yeah. Yeah, cuz it has been me for a long, long time. And it’s, there’s a wonderful joy in that, honestly. Okay, so I think what was most noticeable was the first hire. So I had been working with a client, and at this time, I’m a designer, just a, you know, a print designer, and they had their own copywriter, copywriter botched the job, I didn’t QA it went to press big mistakes, lost the account. So my first hire was a writer, because I figured if, if I’m going to be responsible for it, then I better I better own the whole process. And, and it’s, it’s funny, because the reason I’ve started the company, you know, on one hand, it was out of money, but at a very quick, quickly after that initial experience, hiring, my first hire was really around, making sure that we provided a quality product, you know, to the client. And I’ve always been driven by that, you know, it’s because that engenders deeper relationships, and the money always kind of came later. And then, and then I think,

Jeremy Weisz 17:45

How did you find that writer?

Brent Wardrop 17:48

You know, I don’t know, I don’t remember. It’s like, 20 plus years ago. Yeah, cuz I never really socially was active in the community eight, because again, I didn’t even know this was a thing. Like, I didn’t even know there was, like, I knew nothing. I knew I didn’t know anything about ad agencies, marketing agencies, I knew zero, I just kind of got successful doing this and thought, oh, I can make money doing this and just did it. So yeah, the first the first writer. And then, you know, people come and go. And then and then there was a point where we’re getting too busy, where I had to hire other designers. And at first that was hard to take, because I really love the whole creative, like actually doing the production work. But for me to be able to, because because at that time I was I was out, representing the company, right? Wearing, you know, cool clothes and out meeting all day, and then I’d work all night. That was that was my schedule. Right? I like it was crazy. And then ultimately, I hired people to do the work so that I could actually function properly.

Jeremy Weisz 19:00

Talk about that schedule for a second. Yeah, so you wake up what you did and actually went to bed. You know, in those days, what did that what did that span look like? Oh, God, I don’t know if you remember those days, but like, Oh, I remember that. I can’t forget those days. Right?

Brent Wardrop 19:18

I don’t you know, it’s funny. I’ve never really talked about it much with anyone, you know, thanks for giving me the air that I it was it was it was delicious. It was exciting. Like, every day was a hug. And every night it was like, like, bring it home, bring it home. And, and it was I’m a very social person. I love people. I genuinely love people, and to go out and meet new people during the day. I mean, it wasn’t every day because I didn’t get meetings every day. But as it got busy, you know, I I’d be out hustling. And and then at night, you know, I mean, again, you know, I had come off a relationship. So I wasn’t really in a headspace to you know Like into anything else, and as probably repairing myself on a lot of different levels, you know, like the whole music thing, I didn’t talk about my music career for 10 years. I don’t write to anybody. And it’s a bit of a good story. But but the truth of it was, it was such a hard chapter and that I decided I was, you know, sealing that up and putting it away. And but back to your question, you know, there was, there was a time that we evolved into become what is now called a digital agency. So, so being active at the very beginning of user interface, web, we start getting web stuff. So I started buying web guys, because I couldn’t do the work. So that was actually probably the first key hires were people that had skill sets that I had no ability timewise, or interest in learning, you know, as far as coding and that sort of thing. And that’s never been my jam, not my thing. And so we, we took the business to the point where we were almost 30 people at that time just doing enterprise websites, and I hated it, I absolutely hated the because it was all technology, it was It wasn’t about making this,

Jeremy Weisz 21:16

Cause it wasn’t your thing, it wasn’t the design.

Brent Wardrop 21:19

Well, you know, like, so this is my personal thing. This isn’t a company ethic, but my personal thing is, you know, if you take money from someone, you know, back to that whole idea of that people put their, their, their self in your hands a little bit, as a client, I’ve always been sensitive to whatever I you know, whatever you hire me for, you got to make a definitive return on. Right. So I’ve been more interested in what is now called performance marketing, and always being able to show the efficacy and the wisdom in hiring my company, and, and with web at that time, this was the land of like, our largest site was like, you know, 12,000 pages in seven languages, like complex beasts. Did they support a company? For sure? Did they? Did they deliver on its larger? You know, company goals? Absolutely. But could they really sit down and go, you know, what, through that investment of x, we made this? Probably not, you know, and, and, and so, so in the end, you know, things were already starting to dive with, you know, the advent of companies overseas doing, you know, web for a dime on the dollar. So, literally, totally, we pivoted the agency, to an area that we’re much more interested in as a group. And that’s more, you know, b2c, you know, work that, that develops relationships between brands and their customers, which is what we do today. But I do want to point something out, you asked about pivotal hires, I have a partner now, Dustin Brown is terrific, amazing guy. And he came to the agency as a as a sales guys and new business guy. And he also came with experience from one of Canada’s larger agencies. And he’s a real creative guy that has a lot of drive. And in very soon in a relationship, I knew that if I didn’t make him an offer, to become part of the company in a real definitive way, he’d find his own path. And so he’s been with the agency now, it’s gonna be 13 or 14 years, he’s been an a partner for 10 of those. So this whole pivot into more of the public facing b2c was was a big part of him coming on board. So I saw the decline of business and in the pure digital space, as far as websites go, and pivoted. And it was risky at that time, that was another real dark time. You know, I had to leverage my house to keep things going, you know, because there’s a dip in income and it was tough, you know, and this was all 2012, the echo of 2008. And so, you know, riding that wave, I honestly don’t know if I even answered your question.

Jeremy Weisz 24:15

But, but if if Yeah, I mean, it sounds like the higher as we went from writer because you want to own the you’re responsible. You want to own the process. Yeah. And it went to getting a lot of work. Yeah, that you need to hire more people like you to get stuff out of that. And then you were getting demands for other stuff. So you brought on web people and then another one obviously was a partner, a sales partner and I’m curious on the partner front, yeah. You want to keep you saw this person, they’re gonna be amazing. You want to keep them? Yeah. People say partner and it means different things. What were your your thoughts on keeping this person? Did that look like and you don’t say nothing. burgers. But did it look like I’m gonna give them an equity stake? Does it look like you know, what did that? Yeah, they think components you want to include that means partner to.

Brent Wardrop 25:10

It was an equity stake. You know it was it was a scenario where he could earn in a way that benefited like as the whole company prospered. He would have a share of that prospering because he was so instrumental in its growth, which, which has proven to be true. You know, absolutely.

Jeremy Weisz 25:30

And, yeah, what advice did you get around setting up? Equity sake? Because here’s the thing. Yeah, but like you just said, Yeah, you look back. Yeah, we’re hustling. You’re working? Who knows? 20 hours a day? Yeah, leverage your house? And now you bring someone in? Yeah. It’s, it’s a big deal. Right? How did you think about, what advice did you get around? How do I structure this equity stake?

Brent Wardrop 26:02

I didn’t get enough. You know, I went to some lawyers talk to some lawyers. I, you know, at that time I was, at that time, I was still suffering, the view that it’s about me, and I’m gonna just figure it out. And I’ll do it. And I didn’t have the wherewithal to really seek out a number of opinions, a number of I didn’t, I didn’t see the value in it and understand it. No, I’m fortunate. It’s turned out terrific for us. But there’s some things I might have changed. But, you know, from a from a larger material fact, I’m very happy. It’s been a very good partnership. And, yeah, and it’s and it’s been, you know, he has been, I’ll say, we have been instrumental because we’re really good. We’re not the same. We’re very different people. And and, you know, I think what I knew was it wasn’t it wasn’t just his ability and new business, because he’s now he’s running all of our strategy. Now. He still contributes to new business, both he and I still go out and have to work to you know, but it was seeing all of the other character attributes that laddered up to this is this is the right guy.

Jeremy Weisz 27:24

How did you with the equity part? You don’t have to say numbers, but how did you set it up? Like? Did it vest over a year? Over a couple of years? How did you decide? Did you have to pay anything in or is just part of it? How did you think of setting up the equity piece?

Brent Wardrop 27:43

Okay, so I’m going to answer the question of how I did, I’m not going to say whether it was good or not, because I don’t know, because it’s the only experience I have. Because I’ve had this discussion with others. And I’ve, you know, they’ve been fairly fairly, you know, feeling that it should have been done a different way. But the way it was done was at the time he was new business. And so it seemed the most rational thing to do was to attach it to a vesting on revenue associated with new business over a period of time. And, and so as as each milestone was achieved, more equity was disbursed to him.

Jeremy Weisz 28:22

Yep, yep. So it was based off of revenue. It was based off revenue. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense. There’s kind of like a base of where the company is at. And then as we increase, you kind of give them equity based on these milestone increases.

Brent Wardrop 28:37

We know and I’m sure you’ve run into this with other people, you’ve talked to Jeremy, but one of the biggest challenges for a company that’s bootstrapped from zero is that, you know, I getting around the idea of KPIs and what are they what are measurable results, like, like, it’s so laborious to even figure out how to get granular and someone’s performance and still be out hustling and doing the work. Right. So so the the dollars was easy to measure.

Jeremy Weisz 29:08

What were people disagreeing with? And that when people when you’ve had conversations?

Brent Wardrop 29:14

I think the biggest thing that’s come out, and I don’t want to be too revealing, because, you know, there’s, you know, other people involved in this conversation, specifically, my partner. Sure. But I think I think the the biggest thing has been around me not requiring him to buy in. Hmm. You know, a lot of people have said that people that buy in Caremark maybe, maybe not I haven’t seen any any wavering on his caring for the company or his goals or so. So my experience has been, it’s, it’s been good.

Jeremy Weisz 29:49

Yeah, that’s it’s all your experience. Right. So I want to talk about some of the work you do. Yeah, um, and let me So I’m going to share my screen for a second. You can see here if you’re listening to the audio only there is a video and we’re on elementalinc.com. And if you look at this page, I’m gonna scroll down to the our work, they’ve done some amazing work I watched a bunch of these videos are really cool. I love the Oceana ones that drop in the ocean, I want to talk about the No Excuses Day. Um, because you were mentioning, measurable results, you’re you’re talking about human connection, and I feel like this one kind of encapsulates those things. Can you talk about what you did? With No Excuses?

Brent Wardrop 30:41

Yeah, so No Excuses Day was for an organization called Scene. Scene is a loyalty program that at the time was called by Scotiabank, one of the big five banks in Canada and and Cineplex which has a large theater called the largest hands down by far. Movie Theatre Company. And, and we’ve, we’ve been working with scene for 13 years now. And this was done in just before COVID, the year before. So 2019. And we had been building up with seen over these 13 years, on how to keep, you know, their members engaged. It’s like any other organization, it’s about getting new members in this case, versus consumers or customers, and, and getting engagement getting them to actively be a participant in the organization or in the event. And so what happened was, we were tasked by seeing to come up with a really big campaign, something that was really going to move the needle, we had already taken the brand from 1.8 million to over almost 13 million members, which, which is about a third of the population of Canada. And when you look at actually who’s who does the you know, who’s active in the loyalty program, it’s probably two thirds or maybe even higher of Canadian from a demographic perspective. But so this campaign, the idea of it was, as we as we went forward, and tried to figure out how we were going to deal with it, is we landed on the idea of creating a specific day, like an event. And, and making something of that event, and developing a campaign that would lead up and trickle into and accelerate, you know, excitement and desire to that day. And the Insight was found, really through truth, it was about the simple truth, that even though when people lash back up, just for our members outside Canada, seen as a really big deal here. Like it’s a really big deal. And and what it was, it’s changed now because they brought on other partners. But fundamentally, you would go to movies, earn points and go to free see free movies, and they widen that they have a number of other partners like restaurants and all sorts of like other event and entertainment. Now they’re tied into groceries, so so you can use your points a lot of places, but at the time, it was all about entertainment. So the Insight was about, people want to have fun, but they’ll make excuses not to have fun. You know, and to to to really vet the idea. We just went out on the street with a camcorder and a candidate still calm camp. It’s a phone, sorry, a phone,

Jeremy Weisz 33:26

 I know what you mean.

Brent Wardrop 33:28

And ask people, you know, ask people that, like, do you ever make excuses when your friends call you to go have fun? And overwhelmingly people on the street be like, yeah, yes, sometimes I do. And then we’d ask them, What did you say? It was everything like, Oh, I gotta take care of my cat. You know, I, I couldn’t do my hair, right? People would come up with all sorts of and they just want to sit in their house and watch TV. They just don’t want to go out. They don’t want to socialize. And it became the insight on it was, it’s all about knowing that people make excuses, and encouraging them. Let’s not make excuses. Let’s get together. And let’s let’s have fun. Let’s have a moment. And that moment is brought to you by scene. And it was a massive success. The pickup on it was huge. It was a national event. It was actually listed as a day like a national holiday. And it was called seen no excuses day. In fact, we got such pick up on it. It was even featured in a joke by Ellen DeGeneres on our TV show, which is quite something for a Canadian thing to be referenced on an American broadcast show, which was was was quite an endorsement for us. And to date, this is the biggest thing that scene has done. That was very successful. We saw we’re surprised at how much Pickup we had with new members that were stimulated to join. And but more so just the the actual activity that was measured over a six week cycle before the event. Was it out paste in outpaced every projection, to the point of where, for the agency, we won a number of meaningful goals for this work. And it’s work that as an agency, we’re very, very proud of.

Jeremy Weisz 35:13

Talk a little bit about the creative process in this right. I mean, there’s a lot of work that goes into this, what are some of the stages that you had to go through to get to them product?

Brent Wardrop 35:23

Hmm. Well, you know, it all starts with the brief of what the client wants. And what we try to. And again, this was easier with this client, because we have such a long standing relationship, we understand each other we know how to work together. It was really does distill down what they wanted to achieve from an organizational perspective, and not the thing. Right, so many times clients come in they, they have in their head already have what check.

Jeremy Weisz 35:49

Like I just want a video or something. Yeah. And they’re not talking about it talking about the features. Now the benefits.

Brent Wardrop 35:55

Yeah, and you know, what’s so funny is almost every time they’re wrong, almost every time that isn’t the the actual thing they need. That’d be like going to your doctor, right and prescribing the drug you need. Although I’m sure there’s people that talk about the OB all the time. Yeah. But yeah, the

Jeremy Weisz 36:12

But they could be wrong, that would not be good. Right. So,

Brent Wardrop 36:15

Exactly. But yeah, they basically identified that they wanted to see a lift in engagement, they wanted to be, you know, over over the over the 10 years were with them, it was a highly pragmatic relationship where it was very much, you know, trying to vary, drive work, like drive engagement through very direct communications. And what was delightful about the ask from the client is they wanted a pure brand move, they wanted to increase brand love, that’s where the whole thing started. They just wanted to, for people to love what they’re all about. And there was such a wonderful purity to it. So back to the creative process, sorry, I tend to go off the rails a little bit, forgive me. You know, we sat down, we looked at that, and we looked at a number of different potentials, like I think most agencies do, and we tackled it from three potential prospective ways we could go forward. And we gave them an idea that was kind of in line of the things they had done before, but with, you know, one or two steps away, and then one that was more adventurous and, and then the one they chose was was, you’ve never done anything like this. And they put their heart and their money behind it, you know, because the, the idea was just purely about this day, and then driving activity over a longer period into a day. So it’s almost like reversing a traditional model, where you’re going to run out a home for, you know, six weeks cycles, or 12 week cycles. So, so we’re in this case, we just backed it out, and started dripping, because the client has a lot of owned, right, they have 13 million members. So the ability to talk to these members was available through email, and through apps. And, and, and it’s in movie theater. So we ran, you know, like pseudo advertisements, you know, pre, pre pre pre show, right. So there was a lot of avenues for us to tap. And, and so the creative process really, in fact, the whole I would say the hardest thing was to stay pure to the idea of it just being a day about getting together and having fun. And staying simple and true to that idea of don’t make an excuse. Tomorrow, let’s go play.

Jeremy Weisz 38:34

It sounds like it took on a life of its own. And it’s pretty cool that it created a holiday.

Brent Wardrop 38:43

Well, you know, and I think I think I think you’re right, you know, and when we all look at work that we all admire, they all tend to start in our inner room somewhere in an agency, actually, I’d say that they start together with a client in a room somewhere. But, but then when they become something of their own, everybody, nobody owns it anymore. Everybody owns it. Right? And, and I would argue that’s what Brian loves all about is when it’s not just the brand that owns the brand anymore, the community is now a part of it. And I think besides the accolades that we received, endorsing the quality of our thinking, which is amazing, you know, especially when you consider, you know, whence I came. You look at that, and you see that the community really gets a lot of this is a there’s a real purity to the work of the value. It brings people. It was great.

Jeremy Weisz 39:38

Thanks for sharing that. Brent. I have one last question. Before I ask it. I want to point people to check out elementalinc.com to learn more about what Brent and their company are doing. Check I encourage you to check out their Our Work page they have some amazing videos, including I like the CFL one. It’s pretty cool. And they have some really amazing ones with Oceana as well check those out. My last question is, you know, early on, I find that there’s a lot of accidental agency owners, they just stumble into it, however, and there isn’t like a clear path. And we’re just kind of doing it. And then over time, we develop help and mentors. And I know, it’s funny, because we were actually at the same event a couple of days ago, and we didn’t bump into each other at Yale eccentric, and talk about some of your most influential mentors, and maybe a piece of advice. It could be, it could be from EO, I imagine there’s a number of people that have been influential to helping.

Brent Wardrop 40:48

There there have they’re definitely have, you know, it’s, it’s, I wish I had prepped for this a little bit before, you know, I think, I think that for me, I’ve learned so much from, from so many different people, it’s really hard to, to, like, I’ve never had a formal mentor. So if I had, that’d be easier to say, you know, this guy. But, you know, along the way, I, I’ve had some incredible clients actually, you know, that have been, have been sensitive to the fact of my knowledge in the industry and, and, and to even share what other people have done for them. You know, so that I could refine, you know, my personal approach and, and also, you know, influence the agency to, to better serve our clients in that respect. My dad, you know, my dad, I mean, this is probably so quite right, that I’m gonna say all my dad, but, you know, the truth of it is my dad, I had a very friction filled relationship. But he did leave me one thing that was been really helpful, a and he drilled into my head, as far as I can remember, he would always say, if you’re going to do something, do it right. Or don’t do it. And that, I don’t think I realized it until into my 30s that I had actually been living by that. For as long as I can remember, you know, like, so I’m not an athlete. I admire athletes immensely. I love it. I love watching various sports and what they go through, but I’m not that guy. And when I as soon as I knew I’m not that guy, I’m done. I’m done trying to be that guy. And all the way along, you know, finding things because you don’t really know what you’re good at. Like you remember in high school, you’d go to all these different clubs, you know, camera club or something club and then you turn on something it was really just turned you on. You’re good at. I think people I never stopped doing that. I’m still doing that. You know, I still trying to find new things that maybe I can noodle away with. And it doesn’t have to be professionally related. Just I’m curious. And it’s good. There’s a lot there’s a lot to explore.

Jeremy Weisz 43:02

Brent, I want to be the first one to thank you. I love that dude, writer. Don’t do it. And actually, you know, Magic Johnson, I know that we saw speak, pull the similar story with him and his dad when he was helping his dad pick up trash. And so it really resonated like similar concepts. So I just want to be the first one to thank you. Brent, thank you so much for sharing your journey story. And everyone check out elementalinc.com. And thanks, everyone.

Outro 43:03

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