We could say we chose the distinctive wooden posts around the office to represent our staff because it is their dedication and strong ideas that keep a roof over this place. Or we could go with the whole “dumb as a…” thing.

Really, it’s because we ran out of architectural features to use for graphics. Nonetheless, the people who work here are great (and gorgeous, no less!)

 

Meet the team

Chief Idea Officer

Career Highlights

• Successfully launched the world’s best selling beer, Bud and Bud Light, to the Newfoundland and Labrador marketplace
• Launched a national brand strategy from coast to coast for Persona Communications (at the time the largest privately held cable company in Canada) which earned The Idea Factory Progress Magazine’s “Marketer of the Year” Award
• Played a key advisory role in significant merger and acquisition transactions for several regional and national brands
• In an industry where ‘you win clients and lose clients’ I am proud that our first client win on Day One of The Idea Factory is still a valued client on Day 2920 of our agency!

VP Marketing

Career Highlights

• Cut my teeth on soup cans for a year with Campbell’s Soup… M’mm, M’mm the best experience you can ask for!
• Three years stickhandling as the Director of Marketing for the OHL franchise, the Brampton Battalion.
• Gave into my alter ego (a.k.a. The serious side) for five years as a Chief of Staff at Queen’s Park.
• Agency life where no day (thankfully) is the same.

Favourite Factory Campaign
Make Your Mark shows anything is possible and I like the empowerment of takeCHARGE.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
The new Nike campaign — Force Fate. It reflects how I choose to live.

Account Manager

Career Highlights

• BA (Honours, English) BBA (Honours), Memorial University.
• Most defining moments? The first time I started a sentence with “but”, and all the other rules of grammar I’ve learned to let go of…

Favourite Factory Campaign

• Join the Bowel Movement (brave!)
• The Toy Factory (for bringing warm and fuzzies at Christmas)

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Sony Bravia’s Bouncy Balls. Magical and hypnotizing. (Watch)

Controller

Career Highlights

• 4 years behind a test tube becoming a Biochemist.
• 1 year realizing that I didn’t want to be a Biochemist.
• 2 years learning the world of business in the MBA program.
• 6 years working at the Factory trying to keep everyone moving in the same direction and keeping the books straight.

Favourite Factory Campaign
RMM Make the Call. Unique to the industry and puts a face to the name.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Mac vs PC. Great casting and hits all the key points… however I still use a PC!

Production Manager

Career Highlights

• Started as a designer with The Idea Factory (when it was still located in Ed’s basement) and in 2007 I started as Production Manager.

Favourite Factory Campaign
A finished one… I mean, all of them.

Favourite Campaign of All time
The IKEA lamp ad. It made me realize that people will talk about advertising like a movie or TV show. (Watch)

Senior Production Artist

Career Highlights

• I started my design career at Oland Brewery. From there I went on to work as a Production Artist with Extreme Group, then followed my better half to St. John’s and landed a position with The Idea Factory.

Favourite Factory Campaign
I would have to say anything NLC, because I like booze.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
A well executed ambient or guerilla form of advertising. Anything that makes you say “WOW!”

Senior Art Director

Career Highlights

• Walked the “Green Mile” at M5 for 8 years. I told you not to smoke but gamble instead… drink your milk and buy a doz box… drive a Toyota, no wait a Chev. Good times and good people.
• Rejoined the ad biz with two old cell mates from the “Mile” and joined the Factory team. I have enjoyed the pool, booze and digital cable… and that’s just my client base.

Favourite Factory Campaign
There have been many projects that I’ve been proud to work on or witness.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
O’Henry’s “A Big Chunk of Fudge”. It reminds me of my Dad saying it hourly for months.

Associate Creative Director

Career Highlights

• Did the art school, goatee-growing, big-question-pondering thing at NSCAD for four years.
• Gave up on art for art’s sake, flew to BC, hopped on a bike, and spent nine weeks on the road home, raising money for the Canadian Cancer Society.
• Found a job stacking wood, till The Idea Factory brushed off the sawdust. Seven years later, he still misses the smell of drywall in the morning.

Favourite Factory Campaign
takeCHARGE, especially the TV commercials.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
It hasn’t been created yet…

Copywriter

Career Highlights

• Getting a job at The Idea Factory, evidently. Prior to that lies a pile of spectacular failures.

Favourite Factory Campaign
All of the Factory’s campaigns are works of beauty and finesse. My co-workers possess a peculiar, humble genius.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Diamond Shreddies. Deadpan brilliance. (Watch)

Account Manager

Career Highlights

• Getting this job in 2004 after the worst interview of all time… Good thing I knew Kevin from our Labatt days… I don’t think Ed was quite so sure.
• Awarded iAward for best Ball Handler in 2009

Favourite Factory Campaign
“I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens.”

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Mac vs. PC. The best part: they focus on a SINGLE message in each of their ads.

Art Director

Career Highlights

• Winning the National Skills Canada competition in Graphic Design and not getting to go to the World finals in Japan because I was too old.
• Getting to go to the Middle East as a consolation prize.

Favourite Factory Campaign
Central Health’s Join the Bowel Movement and the Perinatal Program’s Strange Things. We love fearless clients!

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Anything that makes me say “I wish I came up with that!”

Account Manager

Career Highlights

• Bachelor degree double whammy in 2007: B.Comm and B.A. all in one go
• Learning the ad business right out of university, and then taking a break from the insanity
• Putting a record amount of “bums in seats” at the 20th Annual St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival
• Causing a Ruckus (on the Edge) with the 2010 JUNO Awards Host Committee

Favourite Factory Campaign
NLC’s Avoid This Reaction. The faces say it all!

Favourite Campaign of All Time
LG’s Give It A Ponder with James Lipton. A message texters of all ages should heed.

Copywriter

Career Highlights

• As a child, being fired from a bakery, a landscaping business, and night-shift at a grocery store
• Giving spooky night-time tours of burying grounds
  in Boston as Headless Jed the cockney ghost
• B.A. in Theatre (2003), M.A. in Folklore (2008),
  PhD in Being Totally Rad (expected 2013)

Favourite Factory Campaign
TBD

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Everything by Old Spice

Junior Art Director

Career Highlights

• 2 years in Clarenville, ending up 3rd in my class (with a $1000 scholarship too haha).
• 2 years at Prince Phillip Drive learning the sorcery behind Graphic Design. Won an award from ICE and one from Skills Canada while I was at it.
• Out of the frying pan and into the fire as they say. From school to The Idea Factory.  Just finished my 2nd year of service.

Favourite Factory Campaign
Sundance’s Weekend Detox was quite spectacular, if I do say so myself.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Hands down, Dos Equis’s Most Interesting Man in the World. (Watch)

Creative Director

Career Highlights

• Navigated my way through the booze-soaked sandbox of art school escaping with a BA in Graphic Design from Notre Dame College (New Hampshire).
• Burned through the next decade at a trio of ad agencies banging out campaigns for trucks, lottery tickets, 12-packs and cell phones.
• In the winter of 2000, I scraped together a little dough and a PowerMacG3, cleared out a corner of the rec room and called it The Idea Factory.

Favourite Factory Campaign
The Toy Factory. It shows what can happen when we get together to solve problems, which is what we’re really all about.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Apple’s 1984 one-time 60 sec. spot introducing the Mac (Watch)

Production Artist

Career Highlights

• Graduate of the College of the North Atlantic in both Design and Printing Technology.
• Began with Vortext Publishing in 1997.
• Also did part-time work with Bristol Communications.
• Hired on at Bristol, worked on campaigns for IOC, Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, Aliant, and Toyota.

Favourite Factory Campaign
In the short time I’ve been at The Idea Factory there have been a lot of campaigns I’ve liked, but I think anything NLC has to be high on the list.

Favourite Campaign of All Time
Apple’s “Think Different” and “Mac vs. PC”, simple yet effective.