Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

This last spring saw the team at Engine Digital launch another successful quarterly digital campaign for TELUS. Since I was involved with most of the preparation that went into our pitch, I decided to document some of the key moments along the way by using the camera on my phone.

What follows are some images from the initial briefing at TELUS headquarters on Seymour Street in Vancouver, to our brainstorming sessions with TAXI (the agency handling the offline strategy), and our final presentation of a 52 page deck outlining our strategy for TELUS online that quarter.

Ok, there’s mostly a lot of images of us, looking kind of cool and really attractive, but we can’t help it we’re kind of cool, and really attractive.

After we’re briefed by TELUS as to the direction and focus of the campaign for the coming quarter, we meet with TAXI to ensure that both online and offline work together to best meet the objectives set out by TELUS at the briefing. Here’s myself, and Sr. Art Director Dave Smith, with our super serious poker faces on, getting ready to brainstorm with TAXI at their studio in Vancouver.

Once we get into the process of roughing out concepts, we’re always making adjustments to creative and/or copy throughout the entire process. Dave and I are on the phone here with Mark Sissons, one of our contract copywriters, to ensure our lines are tight with the creative we’ve put together. This was in the spring, before our island vacation. We’re super tanned now, I swear.

So once the deck is built with all of our efforts and amazing-ness in it, off we go to TELUS to show it off. It’s always a bit of a panic. Just before we go there’s always a few little tweaks needed here and there to make everything perfect. Our Project Manager, Rachel, is putting last minute requests from the creative team into the deck just before heading out the door.

We always like to arrive at TELUS in our usual fleet of black Cadillacs. It just adds a tone of officiality to our presentation. Unfortunately though, the Caddies were getting outfitted with those chrome rims that spin even if you’re at a stand still, so we had to take a cab instead. No worries we still got there a-ok, all full of anticipation and adrenaline before getting to reveal what we’d been working on all week

The only one allowed to carry the briefcase with the creative and strategy inside of it is James, our Director of Operations. He’s trained in 16 kinds of self defense and is very intimidating. We couldn’t show you his picture here because we sort of have to keep his identity a secret.

And finally, safe inside the TELUS fortress, it’s go time! Richard Gallagher, Partner and Creative Director is ready to put on a show and lead the team at TELUS through our strategy for the upcoming quarter. He’s just about to fill the TELUS board room with fog and begin the laser show, which is always my favorite part of his presentation.

The pitch is what we live for at Engine Digital. It’s that moment where possibilities are at their highest level. The opportunity to get out of the office, meet our clients on their turf, and unleash the power of the Internet is definitely one of best parts about the process of pitching. The campaign that arrived out of the strategy that I documented here was one of the best yet and I’m glad that I was able to share with you some of the fun, and of course, show you how attractive the team at Engine Digital is.

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