Are you curious about how agency branding is evolving? On this episode of CMA Connect, the CEO of the CMA, Alison Simpson, welcomes the founder and CEO of FUSE Create, Stephen Brown. Stephen describes the rebranding process that transformed into Fuse Create, where creativity comes first. He strongly suggests that agencies prioritize building the brand they want to become and encourages professionals to build their brands alongside their agencies. Stephen also reveals how industry awards are crucial in agency branding, driving team motivation and attracting new clients. Stephen also highlights the importance of company culture in an agency's success. 

00:00:01 :18 - 00:00:22 :17
Presenter
Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast, where industry experts discuss how marketers must manage the tectonic shifts that will change how brands and businesses are built for tomorrow, while also delivering on today's business needs. With your host CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:22 :19 - 00:00:48 :07
Alison
In today's episode, we will explore the importance of agencies making their brands a priority and also discuss how agency branding is evolving. Similar to that old proverb that the cobbler's children have no shoes, agencies are often so focused on building their clients' brands that they don't take the time or invest the resources required to build their own. And just as it is for clients, this lack of focus on investment can be highly detrimental.

00:00:48 :08 - 00:01:15 :19
Alison
It's also an amazing opportunity for the agencies that do consistently make their agency brand a focus. Joining me today isStephen Brown, an agency CEO who attributes their focus and investment on their agency brand as one of the key reasons why they have been thriving for 22 years. That's an absolutely remarkable accomplishment in a highly competitive environment. After a successful career with large multinational agencies, Stephen Brown founded FUSE Create in 2003.

00:01:15 :21 - 00:01:44 :05
Alison
Tenacity, vision, commitment and passion for the business have been the driving force behind Stephen's marketing and advertising career. They're also clearly key to why he's thriving as an entrepreneur. With his extensive experience in brand, direct, interactive, database, promotional and exponential marketing, Stephen has the learning needed to create, strengthen and grow brands across a wide range of categories. Throughout our discussion, Stephen will share his experience on the role

00:01:44 :11 - 00:02:05 :09
Alison
agency, brand and culture have played in building his business, including what's worked well and some lessons that were learned the hard way. We're also going to talk about how agency branding is evolving and how it can be different for independents, multinationals and large agencies. The agency world, like every aspect of the marketing profession, is evolving quickly, and we're clearly at a pivotal time

00:02:05 :13 - 00:02:10 :01
Alison
with the latest merger announcement. So this is a very timely topic. Welcome, Stephen.

00:02:10 :03 - 00:02:14 :10
Stephen
Thank you very much. I appreciate, appreciate the opportunity to join you today.

00:02:14 :12 - 00:02:22 :15
Alison
Stephen, I'd like to start by hearing what led to you making your agency brand a priority when so many of your peers fall victim to the cobbler's children problem?

00:02:22 :20 - 00:02:43 :22
Stephen
Truthfully, it's been an amazing 22-year ride. This building, an agency from the ground up with my partners and my team. We did not always have the right view towards branding, especially, you know, if you think about any person who starts a business, your fixation to be at the beginning, this is natural, keep the client happy. Keep the client really is the goal.

00:02:44 :04 - 00:03:02 :16
Stephen
And so if I look in the early years of the business, we didn't have a strong enough grasp on what we really need to do from a branding perspective. So I attribute it to a couple things. One is perspective. When you start a business, you learn as you go. No one teaches you how to do these things. So I did see, I had a chance to see some things that worked and some things that didn't work.

00:03:02 :18 - 00:03:21 :05
Stephen
But I'd also say the agency world has dramatically changed, and much of it for the better. It's a great industry, but I don't know if we, I don't know, I don't remember as a youth in this business, the agency's brand, the name was important, but the actual amount of marketing we did, I don't remember it ever being to the level that

00:03:21 :07 - 00:03:47 :07
Stephen
I feel we need to do now. So it is partly, you know, partly tenure and partly just the changing landscape which has made FUSE Create, really reinvent itself, but also reinvent how we brand ourselves. In the, I can give you a bit of the journey that we've been on. I think the big mental shift is, is to separate your business and look at it like a client and give it the time and the resources that you do

00:03:47 :08 - 00:04:08 :07
Stephen
a client. Your cobbler shoe thing is absolutely true. When you're spending so much of your day looking at your client's business and building their websites and building their brands, building their campaigns, you're forgetting your own. So the only way to change that is we had to, like, remove ourselves almost from our own brand and look at our brand and do a deep dive on what's working, what's not.

00:04:08 :09 - 00:04:26 :19
Stephen
And so in 22 years, you know, this really started about seven years ago. And that was just like a client. We started with, you know, the strategic, the strategic planning phase, which was the deep dive on our business, and the deep dive on our business seven years ago is, we were in trouble. We had some problems with the business.

00:04:26 :21 - 00:04:54 :16
Stephen
We were a good, safe agency, and good and safe is not the space you want, in the competitive Canadian market in advertising and hyper competitiveness of Toronto. So we had to do that very cold, hard look at ourselves and say, okay, we've got some definite strengths, some good things, but we need to change dramatically. And so first step was build the brand house.

00:04:54 :16 - 00:05:12 :03
Stephen
So just like we would do for clients. And not build the brand out of who we were then, but build the brand house of who we want to become. And that in doing that and building that brand house of what you, what we wanted to become really then illustrated where the gaps were. And the gaps for us was our brand.

00:05:12 :04 - 00:05:40 :19
Stephen
What did we stand for? And what we did not stand for is a strong enough creative contender in this business. So that started a whole journey. I won't go through the whole journey. We talk about how that affects the brand, but the biggest, the biggest thing was, is a reshuffle of the whole business to being creative first, and being much more creative and how that positioning comes to life, both from internally but then externally to the world.

00:05:40 :21 - 00:06:04 :17
Stephen
So it started with some structural changes as far as we brought in Steve Miller or ECD, and he was amazing at coming in and, you know, really drawing the line in the sand. So here's a, here's a strategy. But now we take the strategy and make it happen. You know, first week in front of the whole company, the line was drawn clearly on a presentation, which is, we are a creative first agency starting today.

00:06:04 :19 - 00:06:29 :15
Stephen
And that, won't go into the shock and awe, the shock and awe, needed it, we needed it. But a third of the company just were like, "Yes. Finally." A third of the company was "I've heard big declarations before. I'm gonna hold back on my belief on this," and a third of the group was, "No, we're not, we're, this agency or that agency." But part of branding is have your conviction and stick with your story and stick with your plan.

00:06:29 :15 - 00:06:49 :05
Stephen
And so we stuck with the plan. And from there, Steve and the team that we built really started to rebuild the agency to the brand we wanted to be. Now, how that comes across is how we got to there and how we've gotten to where we are today. And it's been a lot of advancement is really there are some structural things behind that.

00:06:49 :05 - 00:07:18 :20
Stephen
So first and foremost, the name, we used to be called Fuse Marketing Group. There is no creative in the word Fuze, in the words Fuze Marketing Group, and also redirected to what we were in our origin. But that's not the company we're trying to be today. So Steve and Team really just rehauled the brand. Even like, Fuse was great, but FUSE Create, put it, declare it right in the name, and then from logo design to all, it really comes down to positioning about how we are setting ourselves up.

00:07:19 :00 - 00:07:40 :11
Stephen
And this all came across in our brand book. Our mantra internally is turn heads. It's, it's been working incredibly, really to just make sure, are we when we're looking at our client work, when we're when we're looking at our own work, are we able to make the consumer or the target of any sort turn their head and notice what we are communicating. And, you know, just pride behind that,

00:07:40 :11 - 00:07:58 :19
Stephen
a lot of energy behind that, the right type of, conviction we needed to, to do a significant change to the business. But then out of that. So, so now we have the brand