| Your name and title | |
|---|---|
| Tracey Bochner | |
| How many total employees does Paradigm currently have? How has this changed over the last 2 years? | |
| 21 + fractional accounting team. We have been 21-25 for many years. | |
| What are the total revenues for the firm (substitute & indicate billings if this is the only available number): | |
| $4.8MM | |
| List your clients for the past 2 years (please group by industry category and indicate past/current clients). Cut and paste from another document if this helps. | |
| CPG Current: Edgewell Personal Care (Schick, Banana Boat, Bulldog, Cremo, Carefree, o.b. Hawaiian Tropic, Billie, Wilkinson Sword) GAMING Current: Rush Street Interactive (Bet Rivers) ASSOCIATION Current: Insurance Bureau of Canada CONSUMER PRODUCTS Current: Under Armour Current: Helen of Troy (Braun thermometers, Vicks humidifiers, Honeywell air purifiers) Current: Timex Current: Dorel Juvenile Past: Unilock RETAIL Current: Putman Investments (Toys “R” Us Canada, Rooms & Spaces) FINANCIAL SERVICES Current: RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) Current: Tarion Past: Ecclesiastical Insurance Past: Lawpro NOT FOR PROFIT Current: Ovarian Cancer Canada Sporadic: In Good Company Past: Plan International Canada EDUCATION Past: Centennial College DENTAL SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS Past: 123 Dentist PRO BONO Current: Pride and Remembrance Run | |
| For your client-side decision-makers, what are their roles/titles? | |
| The majority of our clients are VP/director marketing. For RBC, we report to public relations people (e.g. director communications, manager communications). For IBC, which is a trade association (in the US it would be referred to as a lobby group, but that term isn't used in Canada), we report to VP Communications, VP Strategy, VP Government Relations and related roles. | |
| Bullet point the services you offer your clients: | |
| Public relations: corporate communications, media relations, issues and crisis management, advocacy communications, brand repositioning, reputation management Digital marketing: influencer marketing, digital content, community management, media buying, social listening, web design, contests and promotions Experiential Marketing and Events: sampling, consumer and media/influencer events, trade shows, event production Creative: TV, OOH, digital, radio, print strategy design and copywriting Shopper Marketing: retail strategy, retail promotions, retail creative, display production | |
| List the agencies/consultancies/marketing services/PR firms that you compete against most often for share of your clients' budgets or for new business. | |
| For public relations, we compete mainly with the independent agencies (such as Strategic Objectives, Proof, Craft, Pomp & Circumstance, Changemakers, Kaiser & Partners, APEX PR) and sometimes against the multinationals (Edelman, Weber Shandwick, Citizen Relations, Narrative etc. On the digital side, we can be competing against PR and digital agencies. We are not on anyone’s radar for advertising-only RFPs. Shopper marketing is a very new division for us. | |
| What percent of new revenue comes from the following sources: | |
| 71-80% | |
| Expanding on your answer above, how has most revenue growth come in? | |
| We haven't grown in years - we are really good at replacing clients that leave, but we have not been able to grow. This is an issue. Our new work mainly comes from either growing existing clients or from referrals. Our biggest source of new revenue has been from existing clients who have asked us to move into new areas - they liked the work we do for them in, say, PR or digital and ask us to them take on advertising or shopper marketing. | |
| How do you see these sources of revenue growth changing over the year ahead, if applicable? | |
| 1. At some point we are going to be in trouble if we are not bringing in net new business. 2. At the moment, all of the outside requests we are getting are really small - it's this weird trend where we get requests or RFPs for, say, $25K or $50K. It seems like companies are not spending at the moment. | |
| What strategic resources are available to your teams? For example, do you have any proprietary strategy, research, data, tools, or any services you subscribe to? | |
| New biz tools: We signed up for Magnolia following the Mirren session promoting it. Others: We use Lefty for influencer research, Meltwater for editorial media and social listening, MRP for Canadian media data. | |
| Are your client-facing team leaders held accountable for executing and monitoring the initiatives and activities for client Organic Revenue Growth plans? Please explain. | |
| No. We are bad at process. We will get started on a plan for everyone to, say, bring a new idea every quarter to each big client and then we drop that process as soon as things get busy. We meet with the senior team and talk about new business every week but there is no accountability - nothing happens if you don't get that done. | |
| How would you rate your client-facing teams’ effectiveness at driving Organic Revenue Growth — based on having documented plans, a methodical approach, and being assertive? Please explain. | |
| No formal plan. But some teams are good at continually looking at opportunities, exploring the potential with clients, proposing new ideas. Others are not. | |
| When you consider Organic Revenue Growth, specifically, where does the team most need to improve? Where is the greatest opportunity for the team? | |
| We don't do this in any kind of consistent, accountable, measurable way. And it's our (the partners) fault that we don't take any action when people let this drop off their to do list. We have several opportunities - we just started a shopper marketing division because one client asked if we could expand into this area. We are asking ourselves how we market this next. We have a great creative team - all clients love their work. How do we market this? We have more insurance and feminine product experience than anyone else out there (it's a weird combo, I realize). We are continually looking at how we grow in non-conflict areas. | |
| Is there a particular practice area or capability within Paradigm that you think is exceptionally strong or a competitive advantage? Alternatively, is there a practice area or capability you think is weak or needs improvement? | |
| We think that our competitive advantage is in being a full service marketing agency but we come to that using a PR lens - protecting brand reputation comes first. Practically, we deliver effective advertising campaigns faster and more cost-effectively than traditional ad agencies because we don't have the layers. Coming from PR, we are all used to doing everything ourselves - in the PR world, the person who talks to the client is often the same person who comes up with the idea and gets the results. We are wired to be efficient. | |
| What AI tools are being used and by whom? Which have been institutionalized vs. those being tested by individuals or departments? | |
| Our design team uses a variety of generative AI tools. The rest of the agency has been through AI training sessions - people routinely use ChatGPT and similar for background, research, thought starters. Magnolia is being used by just a couple of people right now - and just the new biz development reports. We are not taking enough advantage of what is available. | |
| Has any AI training been provided to Paradigm employees (whether internal or external training)? If so, what type of training and for which roles/departments? | |
| Everyone has been through 2 AI training sessions (as of May 7) - first session was on what tools are available, how to create a GPT, how to write good prompts. (Not sure what we are covering in the May 7 session) | |