Toronto agency Bob’s Your Uncle has named Cora Brady president, filling a position that had been vacant since Aziz Memon departed the shop in 2016. Brady also joins CEO Bob Froese and creative director Dorothy McMillan as a partner in the agency.
Brady returned to BYU (where she spent five years as managing director in its former incarnation as The BrainStorm Group) in 2017, and had previously shared the president’s role with Froese. Her appointment enables Froese to focus on higher-level client relationships and future growth opportunities.
“Cora cares passionately about people, and I think that shows through in the reactions we get from our creative and account team and some of our clients,” he said. “Obviously she’s got all the talent, the skillset and the drive, but I think the difference is how much she cares about people.”
Brady’s appointment caps a year that saw BYU grow its full-time staff from 20 to 25 people, and sign a new lease for a 5,000 square-foot office in Toronto’s theatre district. In addition to its longtime client Popeyes (for which it handled this year’s Canadian launch of its chicken sandwich), BYU has also added new assignments from Ice River Sustainable Solutions and Pelmen Foods, and expanded its purview with Sofina brands to include the Janes, Lilydale, Mastro and San Daniele brands.
Brady played an instrumental role in the agency’s growth, said Froese, while also adding depth to its social media and influencer capabilities. The agency plans to introduce what it calls a “collaboration hub” that builds on its existing influencer content creation platform, in which it shares client briefs with creators and invites them to pitch creative ideas.
“What we saw in using them was that we were getting some fantastic content—stuff that we would have been happy to create,” said Froese. “We thought that there could be a way that we could be more deliberate about this.”
The agency now utilizes this approach in most of its campaigns, said Froese, and the next iteration—which is set to debut in February—will make the process more public. “Rather than us having to go out and invite influencers to this platform, we’re going to make it more findable and broaden our reach,” he said. “What we’re also finding is that you get a beautiful diversity of creative and thought.
“It’s so important that we’re not looking at everything through the lens of a handful of creative teams.”
