Chris Staples Rethinks Vancouver Advertising

Kevin Chong | Image: Andrew Zbihlyj | Published: June 03, 2009

Chris Staples helped reinvigorate a moribund Vancouver ad industry back in the 1990s with daring and engaging work. In this challenging new economy, with an evermore fragmented media universe, can he do it again?

THESE DAYS when someone mentions advertising, one of the first things to come to mind is the critically lauded TV drama Mad Men. The American Movie Classics series, set around the life of Don Draper – the handsome, hypnotically charming creative director of New York ad agency Sterling Cooper – delights and startles viewers with its early-’60s glamour and era-appropriate displays of cigarette-stuffed ashtrays, scotch swilling and casual sexism in the workplace.

Chris Staples, one of the leading figures in Vancouver’s advertising industry, looks at the show, which premiered in 2007, and sees a cautionary tale. “My whole career has been a reaction to Mad Men and that whole idea that it’s all about surface and wining and dining clients,” says the tall and broad-shouldered co-creative director of Rethink Communications with the ready smile and high cheekbones of an action-movie star. You should be judged on results, is his message, not on packaging.

With 60 employees and an estimated $10 million in annual revenues, Rethink has not only delivered the results but has helped elevate Vancouver’s advertising scene onto the worldwide stage. The company Staples founded in 1999 with fellow co-creative director Ian Grais and director of client services Tom Shepansky now has a client list that includes A&W, Mr. Lube and Playland. Among its scores of prizes, Rethink was honoured by Marketing magazine as its 2003 Agency of the Year and last year won 40 awards at the Advertising and Design Club of Canada Awards – more than any agency in the country – while cleaning up at the B.C. equivalent, the Lotus Awards, winning 49 prizes.

“They’re one of the most dynamic agencies in the country – not just Vancouver,” says Christopher Loudon, editor-in-chief of Marketing, an industry trade publication. “They’re having an impact nationally and internationally.”

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key to Rethink’s success has always been to make strengths out of perceived limitations. From small budgets (Staples says Rethink has made 30-second commercials for less than $30,000, a fraction of the industry average), the firm has helped create concept-driven commercials that have caught worldwide attention – including a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France. And from a region that’s far away from media centres and where the work/life balance is paramount, Rethink has created a working environment that’s sustainable, co-operative and socially conscious – the polar opposite of Mad Men.

Still, that show – set during a period when a shifting media landscape changed the very nature of advertising – is not without its contemporary echoes. Uncertainty abounds these days.

A report by marketing group ZenithOptimedia suggests that ad spending in North America might drop by 5.7 per cent in 2009, while Nielsen Co. Canada data show Vancouver advertising spending falling by 3.3 per cent in January from the year prior, exceeding the one per cent drop seen nationally. With the ongoing splintering of the media landscape, getting a big bang for your (shrinking) media buck becomes even harder.

In Mad Men, it’s Don Draper’s creative vision and personal charisma that help Sterling Cooper sail through tumultuous times. At Rethink, it’s Staples who’s the natural-born salesman arguing that daring, engaging creative work, combined with a value-oriented approach to clients, can turn this recession into another opportunity. The question is, Will the city’s other agencies follow his lead?

WATCHING A STRING of Rethink’s greatest hits, you see not only a singular approach, but also the cheeky personality of an agency that surprises you like a boutonniere squirting water in your face.

In a Coast Capital Savings commercial, a balding guy tells his wife outside a bank that his hair loss came from the stress of dealing with bank fees. Once inside Coast Capital Savings, which offers a free ­chequing account, he notices customers and staff alike have long, flowing locks similar to a crowd at a Peter Frampton concert (in his heyday). The couple approaches a long-haired teller who recites the financial institution’s catchphrase: “How can we help you?”

Or take, for example, a clip for Earls Restaurants Ltd. A dog climbs up a kitchen counter to lick an unattended roast as its owners greet their dinner-party guests; the announcer asks, “You could eat at home, but why?” before the scene changes to a table at the local dining chain.

And for a promotion for Science World called Walk on Water, a makeshift swimming pool is filled with four tonnes of corn starch and water, and passersby are invited to step in the pool without sinking in – the trick is to tread quickly.

“Nobody likes ads, and nobody cares,” says Staples, 47, dressed in dark jeans and a grey cashmere cardigan, from one of Rethink’s boardrooms. “People see 3,500 ads a day; they’re just inundated. If you just talk about yourself without any entertainment value, you’re going to get ignored.”

The child of two teachers, Staples grew up in an Edmonton suburb and remembers creating elaborate magazine ads for imaginary lines of cars. After taking a journalism degree at Carleton University that taught him how to write to deadlines, he returned west to Edmonton in 1983, where in only a few years he moved from an entry-level copywriting job to the position of creative director at Francis, Williams & Johnson Ltd. and worked on Premier Don Getty’s leadership campaign. “The agency was really in bed with the politicians,” Staples recalls. “It turned my stomach.” Staples eventually moved on to Intergroup Advertising, where, at age 25, he was making $75,000 a year.

“In Edmonton there weren’t too many choices,” he says modestly. “I still didn’t know anything about advertising.” Recalling one “cheesy” national campaign for Esso that he created in which a “magic” pen revealed prizes, Staples says the ads back then may have pleased his clients, but they didn’t pass what Staples terms the “cocktail party test.” When ads become conversational fodder at gatherings, Staples explains, “you’ve really won.”

His early, mediocre work left him with a weak CV when he decided to move to Vancouver in 1990 with his life partner, elementary-school teacher Steve Rosell, and he needed a new job. The only work he could find, at half his previous pay, was as a copywriter at Palmer Jarvis. At the time, the independent shop found itself in a strange position: it was Vancouver’s most profitable agency but also the least creatively successful. In 1992 industry magazine Strategy ranked Palmer Jarvis the 69th-best creative agency in Canada. As Staples tells it, Palmer Jarvis staff would attend the Lotus Awards and watch, bolted to their seats, as their crosstown rivals, the Vancouver office of New York-based BBDO, stepped onstage to accept one award after another.

“The fact was, we weren’t winning the awards we thought we should and could be winning, and we wanted to dial it up,” acknowledges agency founder Frank Palmer, who in 1992 enlisted straight-talking industry veteran Ron Woodall, the creative director of Expo 86, to help revamp his firm.

“Frank Palmer’s agency was considered to be a purveyor of garbage,” observes Woodall bluntly. After observing Palmer Jarvis for several months, Woodall recommended an overhaul in the office culture and suggested Staples as creative director. “I thought of Chris as a leader,” says Woodall, now retired and dividing his time between Bowen Island and Mexico. “He energized his other creative people with his enthusiasm. He’s so good at selling the product, the brand of work we were turning out.”

Adds Palmer, “Chris can not only do the creative work, but he’s also a very good strategist who can sell the work.” On the account service side of the business, it was decided Palmer Jarvis needed people who wanted to fight for good ads and not just to please the client. Tom Shepansky, whom Staples had worked with at two Edmonton agencies, was brought in as an account director.