Into the Library with Dhaval Bhatt and Joel Holtby

Dhaval> Sapporo was the first big project that I had a chance to put out into the world. At the time, I was working at Dentsu and my partner was David Glen, under the legendary Glen Hunt. This was at a time when the briefs were, 'Hey, can you make a viral video?'. So, we had this idea to create a fantastical version of the brewing process that incorporated everything that was cool about Japanese culture. Once we sold the clients on the idea of ‘Legendary Biru’, the job was then to just make something beautiful, awe inspiring and stunning. Something that real people would actually want to watch and share. I remember when this video first launched, it literally had no paid support online. It blew up the old school way, with regular people sharing it with their friends. 

Another funny part of the project was how it led to the creation of the iconic Sapporo tap handle. If you’ve been to a bar that serves Sapporo, you probably know what I’m talking about - all its tap handles look like katanas. That was an idea David and I had over lunch. He literally drew it on a napkin, and we both laughed thinking, 'There's no way the client is gonna buy that’, because weapons and alcohol don't mix well. Despite that fact, we showed our creative director who also laughed and thought the clients would never buy it, but showed it to them anyway. And so it just went on until someone said, 'Well, who's stopping us from making it?'. And so they did. It just goes to show that you never know - sometimes you just have to put it out there in the universe and see what comes back. 

As a final note, the thing I’m most proud of, to this day, is that any time I tell someone I’m in advertising and they ask if they might have seen anything I’ve made, I mention the Sapporo work. And almost always they respond with, ‘No way you did that!”. 

Joel> At the time this project came about, I was working at an agency called Grip Limited here in Toronto, and Kokanee was this beloved beer brand that was deeply ingrained in West Coast culture; if you were from British Columbia, that was your beer. It literally was called 'The Beer Out Here'. 

Kokanee had an interesting culture and cast of characters around it, and previously had done this really long-running, famous ranger campaign that was beloved by the West Coast. However, the brand wanted something new, so the big question was, 'How do we get consumers’ participation in beer advertising?'. I remember being in the briefing room and there were a couple teams working on it. We had some ideas, but the notion of 'What if we took all of the cast and we made a movie?' was really interesting. Immediately, we were also like, 'Cool, now how do we make a movie?'. 

The result was one of the first crowdsourced fully-fledged movies. Because we wanted to involve the fans, we actually created one of the largest existing social platforms at the time which allowed us to do just that - crowdsourcing everything right down to the locations, soundtrack, and the even props.

Of course, that wasn’t all there was to it. We had to learn how to write a script for a movie - it's quite different from writing a 30-second commercial - and more than that, we had to go and pitch the movie to Alliance Atlantis. Both were tricky, but it led to something that really kind of changed what branded content was. At that time, it was a fairly new thing, and this wasn’t just a digital campaign, but lived everywhere. We released the movie at the Vancouver Film Festival, and then ran it in movie theatres across Canada. Anyway, at the time of its release, it was actually at the top of the charts, which is pretty funny for a beer film. 

Dhaval> This idea was basically born from Cheerios looking to find a purpose to align itself with (all brands were looking to do that those days... I think some still are). And full credit to the strategy team led by Jay Chaney [of Broken Heart Love Affair now] who uncovered a real gem and went to Cheerios and said, 'Hey, you’re looking for a purpose, and there's one right in front of us on the box' - the bee. After all, it's an iconic mascot that’s been part of the brand for decades. Additionally, honey is a key ingredient in the product, and seeing as the bee population was in decline at the time (along with all food sources tied to that), helping bring back the bees was as worthy a cause as it was obvious for Honey Nut Cheerios. 

The creative execution of the idea was to take the bee off the box for the first time in the brand’s history. Of course, that was easier said than done. ‘Bring Back the Bees’ literally took two years to do because of the time it took to change things like packaging, etc. In fact, I think the idea died about 12 times in that period. But, it just speaks to the notion of sticking with something. There'll always be reasons why you should walk away from an idea - it’s taking too long, it’s too hard, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze… but sometimes you just have to see it through. And we’re glad we did. Because this was the most successful campaign in the brand’s history that ran for several years to come. 

Joel> I swear I work on more things than just beer! But, ‘Beer Fridge’ was a really special project. Not only was it the first job I ever shot overseas, but getting to work on Molson Canadian, one of the most beloved and iconic beer brands in Canada, was incredible. That brand has done work that is ingrained in the culture of what it meant to be Canadian. You step up to the plate, and that's the bar. It's the opportunity to do something that's not only great in advertising, but really galvanises Canadian culture. 

Anyway, this brief had us all talking about what it meant to be Canadian, and all the common things like May 24 weekend and jumping off the dock were coming to the table. But, the one insight that was really funny - something I think a lot of Canadians have experienced - is that the moment you cross the border or leave Canada, you suddenly become way more Canadian. You're aware of your accent. You see things that are Canadian and you're like 'heck yeah!'. And you sew a patch on your backpack and you're really proud of it. It's this funny thing that unites us. So, naturally, we pitched the idea… even though, truth be told, it was written on a single piece of paper and had this really bad drawing of what the fridge looked like in our minds. 

Thinking about it, with an idea like this, trying to sell that to the client - I imagine it didn’t make any sense. It was like, 'Hey, we want to go to a country that doesn't sell your product, that doesn't have Canadians, to do an ad about being Canadian'. But Molson saw the potential in it. Yes, it died a whole bunch of times getting there - all the logistics around trying to get the product into the UK where it's not sold were a real struggle. However, it was such an awesome experience for me because I've always been a big fan of design, and that project combined design and communication into one. We had to make something iconic that would stick out in the landscape, and it became an icon for Canadians. To take Dhaval's analogy, if I got in the back of the cab and I had to tell somebody what I'd done, they would know the beer fridge. In fact, I was playing Trivial Pursuit with my family, and one of the questions was 'How did Team Canada open their fridge at the Olympics?'... and they were talking about the beer fridge. That's my claim to fame. My work is in Trivial Pursuit, and it's probably the only time my dad has known what I do! 

Dhaval> For this one, the client sent us this brief to create a sex education video for some local schools. Literally, that was it. There wasn’t really a budget, and it was supposed to be this very functional thing because there was a big problem going on with sextortion of minors (specifically teen boys). Obviously, it’s a very serious issue, so The Canadian Centre for Child Protection wanted to create something to help kids get ahead of it. But when we looked at the problem deeper, we realised that the real issue was the lack of conversation around these topics due to their sexual nature. Teens don’t want to talk to their parents or teachers about anything to do with sex, because it’s embarrassing. So we had to find a way to de-shame the sexual nature of the problem. To do this, we turned to humour and came up with the idea of 'Don't Get Sextorted, Send a Naked Mole Rat'. After all, if you've seen a mole rat... anyway, it was this really funny idea, which really landed well with the young boys. 

Perhaps the coolest thing about this idea was that it got adopted by more than half of the secondary schools in Canada. I don't know if they still use it, but at that time, this video was part of the sex ed programmes in schools across the nation. And the craziest thing is, there was a 28% rise in kids actually calling in and asking for help following the campaign’s release! Weird work, but I’m super proud of it. 

Joel> For this, I got to work with a really smart creative team (Zach Bautista and Geoff Baille), and they had this thought that if you ask someone to draw ketchup, they'll probably draw Heinz. It was this little idea at that time, but I remember seeing it and thinking, 'Holy shit, this could be awesome!'. 

There wasn't a lot of money for production, but since it was during the pandemic, we were all on Zoom which allowed us to take this from being a Canadian-only production to a global insight, because you could hop on a call with someone in Australia and ask them that question. So, this big thing was shot in a little, crappy basement with real people that we brought in, alongside one camera, a DP and the producer, where we'd ask 'Hey, can you just draw Ketchup?'... and most people drew Heinz! (Except for one guy who drew mustard... He was a really weird dude, but that's fine. Maybe he missed the question?)

After making the video, we took all of the content - all these weird and wonderful drawings - and actually crafted them into this really fun OOH campaign that we ran everywhere. And the thing that I love about that work - and it's something we always try to find in a lot of work that we do - is that it just comes out of a simple truth about the brand. When you are as iconic as Heinz, you are the category. So, as a creative, you can play with that in a really fun and cultural way, across media forms. 

Joel> So, this was the first thing Dhaval and I worked on together. He had just come to the agency, and even though I had worked on IKEA before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. However, the brief was sustainability, and that was when he and I clicked. Yes, it was the first project out of the gate for an iconic brand, yes, the previous work that had been done was pretty great (and there was a lot of pressure riding on it), but I loved getting to sit down across from Dhaval on that. What we did there is something we still do to this day - we took the pressure off and just considered, 'What is work that's true, would be really fun for us to make, and that people would enjoy?'. 

From this process, I learned a lot about Dhaval. Specifically, he has a speciality for finding human truths in work and pushing clients to do things that take quite a bit of courage. We went to IKEA and were like, 'Hey, you know your product? The thing you love the most? We want to turn that into a monster, because that's the thing that people are really stressed about, and we're going to actually make that into a point of the story, to show a solution around sustainability'. Again, it was one of those projects where it was work that hadn't been done for the brand; creating a completely fabricated CGI character that you had to have an emotional relationship with. And we really wanted to dramatise that feeling through the character. So, I think this is one of the things we’re most proud of - it really changed a lot of the work that followed. Before, there was some imagination with IKEA work, but it never went to a world involving highly imaginative, creative pieces. 

The production was awesome too! We worked with Mark Zibert to shoot that - one of the best directors out there - and then a52 out of LA to do all the post work (Jesse Monsour is amazing!). But really, it was one of those galvanising processes for the brand, and also for us as a creative partnership. There was a lot of trust and a lot of fun. 

Dhaval> 'Jars' was our first project that we worked on as a new agency. We had just started Courage, and we were so incredibly lucky to have Nescafé as a client straight out of the gate. I always thank our lucky stars. So, for many reasons, this was close to our hearts. 

A big reason, however - it's one of those ideas that was born from a universal truth. As someone who didn't grow up in North America, I’ve built my career on universal human truths; insights that everyone can relate to, because they're not culturally nuanced. And that’s the great thing about 'Jars' - it’s truly universal. My family has this funny saying, 'No Nescafé jar that ever entered the Bhatt household ever left'. My mom had a whole collection of them. And as I was talking and sharing this with my co-workers, I realised everyone had the same story. Joel said the exact same thing, and so did many others on the team. That's when we knew there was something special here.

What I also love about this is we got one of the biggest CPG brands in the world to do a spot that literally starts with people rubbing the label off the jar. Throughout, you're just watching 60 seconds of empty jars, but they're being used in wonderful and beautiful ways. There's no one drinking coffee, no beautiful pours and stirs, but as a viewer you know exactly what it's about. 

Funnily enough, 'Jars' was actually the best testing spot that Nescafé has done in the history of Nestle, which is crazy - the fact that something lacking all the traditional ‘best practices’ when it comes to driving brand attribution, managed to become so well-tested. Can’t help but wonder what that says about all the pre-testing that we sometimes have to do. 

All in all, ‘Jars’ really set our agency on the right trajectory. Right out of the gate it was noticed and appreciated, and we're really grateful for that opportunity. 

Dhaval> What we love about this idea is that it honestly set the tone for how we work with KFC. We had just landed the business (we were still basically onboarding them - I think it was four weeks in), but it started with a simple conversation on a Thursday where Azim Ahktar, our KFC client, mentioned, 'Hey, McDonald's is launching its ‘Chicken Big Mac’, and just announced it on Twitter. Is there something we can do?'. We were like 'Yeah, we should definitely do something with that!', and about four or five hours later, we had the idea. We called the client, told them what the idea was, and the team simply said, 'That's amazing, let's go'. So, we just went ahead and made it. It took all of four days and there were no crazy presentations, no big decks, none of that. That's not to say we don't do big decks and presentations, but sometimes you have to move at the speed of culture. And what ‘Fixed It’ did was it set this amazing tone and incredible trust between KFC and us, which, frankly, opened the floodgates for so much more. 

What we also love about this work is that it just goes to show that great ideas aren't encumbered by budgets. I think we spent, including media, a total of $10,000 on this idea, which is absolutely insane when you consider the amount of impact it had, not just in driving brand love but actual sales.