After increasing demands for creative services from its clients, PR agency Enterprise has formally launched its standalone creative agency brand, Creative Currency.
The new agency and content studio was announced in July, and has now opened its metaphorical doors with 19 staff—led by Dennis Matthews as president, and Jeff Blay as creative director—and plans to add talent including graphic designers and a digital strategist.
“Our clients were coming to us for increasingly creative solutions to their problems,” said Matthews. In response, Enterprise had been adding creative expertise to amplify the messages being developed and managed for clients with traditional PR mandates.
“We built up this really awesome young team of creative types who were looking to do more than simply support or be an integral part of a corporate communications, government relations, or public affairs file,” he said. “They wanted to go out and play more in the consumer marketing world.”
Creative Currency will operate alongside Enterprise locations in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Edmonton and Halifax, and has already produced work for Labatt Breweries, McCain Foods, Beer Canada, Addictions and Mental Health Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and others.
While the agency has produced traditional advertising, the focus will be on digital and social-led creative that complements the agency’s unique positioning, said Matthews.
While PR shops have been adding traditional creative talent, and many of the top creative agencies are turning out ideas that are more about earned media than paid media, Creative Currency will be a stand-alone creative agency with deep PR roots and the quick-response orientation that defines most PR agencies.
“We built this team that has different talents to play in this creative sphere, but doesn’t have a lot of the legacy issues or processes that I think have slowed down bigger [creative] firms over the years,” said Matthews. It also means a deep understanding of how to respond and react to the many fast-moving political and social issues that marketers have to contend with today.
“Brands, whether they like it or not, are forced into that arena,” said Matthews. “How do you have people who understand how public opinion is made and shaped, and how do you have them fit into your creative process, so that you seize the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls.”
“We understand the forces out there moving public opinion, and we’re able to come up with great creative ideas, execute great creative content, and actually find a way to punch through.”
