Operatic Agency
Year: 2019–2021
Firm: Operatic Agency
Role: Creative director
Involvement: Brand strategy/platform, employee experience, brand identity design, copywriting, interior design, website design/build, photography/art direction, collateral
Backstory
I was first introduced to the folks at what would later become Operatic by an industry peer, Tyler who founded what was one of Hamilton’s premier design studios, Factor[e]. I had recently left an agency after working for a few years to build it up from a merger of two independent firms into one. Tyler knew I was onto my next chapter and reached out to see if I’d be interested in taking on a Creative Director role at his old firm, which had since rebranded to Parallel. This firm was in the process of merging into one entity in with 4 others, altogether spanning the disciplines of design, development, experimental technology, video production, search marketing, advertising and the like.
I was completely disinterested in working full-time at an agency again, but agreed to take a coffee with his old partner who would hiring for the position. Over this meeting I found myself sipping my coffee a little slower as I listened to him share his vision for the company and for our city; though I resisted, I sense an immediate kinship as we shared many similar sentiments, hopes, and dreams.
Fast forward a few weeks and I’ve spent time meeting with various people in the company, from design to development, ops to client service, and eventually the CEO. I met some really great people who were building something significant. After having gone through my previous agency experience merging two companies, building the team and living through the messy world of agency M&A, I realized I was uniquely suited for the role and dove in.
My Work
I would then spend the next few years doing some of my favourite life’s work. From branding a chocolatier to medtech companies fighting cancer; from crafting brand narratives that deal with self-care to organizations tackling Indigenous reconciliation through immersive technologies; from branding local shops to working on campaigns for global pharmaceutical companies, it was a profound experience. It brought me into rooms where I was able to dance toe-to-toe with CEOs of immense net worth and persuade them of the value that good design and creative would add to their business.
My mandate in this role was to lead the creative vision for the company, build up our creative team (both in skillset and size), and bring this amalgamation of 5 firms under one brand. Talk about a walk in the park.
Over my time there, I worked with the team to help develop the creative practice at the agency, instating regular 1:1s and creative jams to propel the team’s inspiration and progress, and participated heavily in our monthly day-long town hall with the whole company. I took advantage of these moments to infuse design thinking into all facets of the organization, doing talks around creative collaboration, inspiration, and process in hopes of influencing the agency at large to think about their work more cohesively as part of a greater whole. Throughout my time, I conducted countless interviews with some extremely talented designers, writers, and other creatives, looking to bolster our creative horsepower. As this continued, I watched the culture of the place begin to form as our momentum grow.
As you can imagine, there was a lot to consider when bringing 5 companies together from a process standpoint. Ie. there was barely a process that was consistent throughout. As a leadership team, and bringing in key voices from throughout the agency, we worked diligently to build processes, policies, and procedures to see this organization run effectively and efficiently. Though no organization is ever running perfectly, the loose screws in our process we had to tighten over time became less and less.
Strategy
The process began with a lot of listening. Interviewing people from all over the company to ascertain what different people from varying disciplines believes about the company we were building. This provided context around the different kinds of value we drive for our clients and the values our people wanted to see this place live out. Setting up a war room, I began to paste these insights, company documents, along with images and designs all over the walls. This became one of the first practices of creative exploration to invite the creative team into, ensuring it was more than just my mind working through what we would become.
The team at large was also brought into the process, workshopping things like mission, vision, values, attributes, personality, and the like, evening naming exercises during our day-long town halls. Watching the entire company get involved in forming the agency was a high like no other and helped to bring unity where it may have been lacking prior.
What emerged was a narrative depicting how we come together to produce one unified composition, as if bringing together various instruments to play a song, with a singer in the spotlight. A metaphor of an orchestra began to emerge as I considered it, and at the center, in the spotlight was not one of us, but our client. It’s actually the client’s song to sing as the star of this opera, with us supporting and bringing forth the music that supports them to be their best. Thus the name Operatic was born. Fun fact, the names of the five firms that came together form the acronym O.P.E.R.A.—what are the odds?).
Coming to agree on this name was no easy feat, presenting to the board of directors numerous rounds of naming and providing airtight rationales for every inkling of an idea. Eventually, I received the blessing to move forward with Operatic and the rest was history in the making.
To reveal the new name to the team at large, I produced this video, the script of which began in my mind as I was trying to sleep one Friday night; my psyche would not let go. So I began writing, threw together a voiceover, and started animating what I saw in my mind’s eye that night (though I’m not really much of an animator). I worked with my friend Greg to produce the underlying track and rerecorded my voiceover, and I would soon thereafter introduce this video to the team at our next town hall. To my elated surprise, people would come up to me after with tears in their eyes. This was a little (though not insignificant) crowning moment in my professional life.
Identity
Though a common verbal trope in this space, we recognized that the approach to our work that appealed to our clients revolved around our ability to merge “art and science”; utilizing our deep data capabilities to uncover insights and develop creative expressions that would resonate with exactly the right people, in the right place, at the right time. To visualize this convergence of data and humanity, the visual language was formed around the use of rigid digital forms amidst more organic, textured backdrops.
Inspired by the name, the logo icon represents a theatre, but it’s more than that. It reflects the Operatic process: always starting with data, which informs our strategy, which directs our actions, which provides us with results, which comes back around and informs our actions. This reverberation of data, throughout every aspect of the business creates the melody of Operatic’s business concerto.
Space
One of my favourite parts of this process was devising how the brand would come to life in a physical space. We had been working out of two offices and actively hunting down a place to call home, bringing everyone under one roof, literally. Spencer, our director of business operations, and I would visit numerous office spaces, furniture show rooms, and interiors stores to begin to formulate what home would be like for us. We landed on a space in an adaptive reuse building at the heart of our downtown core and began to plan out what this might be.
Through a collaborative process of moodboarding things like textures, finishes, furniture, and features, we began to see it all come to life. The builders were tremendously skilled at bringing my renderings to fruition, even when I suggested something as laborious as the slats on the curved, infinity loop front desk or my design of an amphitheatre staircase, a space I envisaged as the heart of our group events. They would eventually copy this staircase over to the other floors to create a nice cohesion throughout the building.
It's been a privilege to watch the team continue to grow and the agency become increasingly proficient at and awarded for what they do. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to play my part in their success.
That was one heck of a ride!
