Truth + Dare

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The company that I work for is the Chelsea Hotel, Toronto, and we’re a hotel in the heart of downtown Toronto that was established in 1975. I am the director of marketing and business at the hotel, so my responsibility is advertising the hotel across multiple levels like digital and print media and partnerships with the city and local businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Truth + Dare?

Truth + Dare started as our creative agency and has grown to perform a more strategic role for our advertising goals as well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve helped us with a variety of projects over the years. One of the first ones was countering a downward trend we had noticed in our March break bookings, and they were able to put together a digital ad implementation strategy that involved design and messaging they had created.

They’ve served a similar role for a lot of our needs relating to our marketing and public image. In addition, they helped conduct market research and build a media plan with creative aspects for brand refreshes and specific audience targeting.

What is the team composition?

We have one point of contact on their team who we can reach pretty much any time, which is wonderful. However, there are several other members of their team that work on our account and that we occasionally have contact with.

How did you come to work with Truth + Dare?

We sent out a request for proposals and shortlisted five agencies from there. We met with all of those teams and pretty much unanimously decided on our side that Truth + Dare was the most impressive, so we went with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2013 and have engaged on a variety of projects ever since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

In general, we have been completely satisfied with the quality of their work and the results they deliver. It has been a transformational partnership for us.

On a particular recent project, they helped us launch a social media ad campaign to target specific audiences from the months of September to December. As a result of those ads, we actually saw an increase in our visits by 763% and an increase in click-through rates of 798%, which is absolutely unbelievable.

How did Truth + Dare perform from a project management standpoint?

They are outstanding. Their team is always on time, whether they have a heavy workload or not. Our tasks are always prioritized and delivered on time. Once we submit briefs for content, they go back and forth with us on anything we need to clarify or any ideas they want to share with us that they think could lead to better results, so it is always clear how invested they are in our success.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I am always impressed by the extent to which they have our best interests at heart. They really want to see whatever they produced for us do well, and that’s really refreshing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

To be honest, I don’t have any improvements that I know of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Provide them with as much background information as possible and then give them the actual problem you are trying to solve. If you just give them a list of tasks, you might get some results, but with the leeway to come up with the best solution they will be able to deliver far more.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and executive director of a business improvement area. BIA is the short term used. It’s made up of all the businesses and professional offices in a designated area of a certain street in our city. The city collects a levy for my organization that is assigned to each of the members, and then the money is returned to us. That way, it isn't a tax that goes somewhere that you never hear of again. It's a levy that comes back to our BIA to promote the area.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Truth + Dare?

The area of the city we’re in—it's no better or worse than other areas, but no one had ever promoted it. So, when I reached out to about 40 people, 32 responded to see if there was any interest in forming a BIA. The whole premise was: let's work together and try and promote the area a bit. It was just as important to make the area look a little better and try to attract more customers and clients to come.

We did a marketing study that wasn't as helpful as it could have been, but it wasn't bad. Then we were working with the local government on some projects, but that government turned over and the next administration backtracked, so we were left with not much to show for all our hard work.  

So, our board decided we should have another marketing study done. We put out a request for proposals and Truth + Dare was the winning group, along with another marketing consultant. The nice part was that Truth + Dare also become the agency that handles our creative and artwork.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Because we’re not a destination area we decided that the story of our BIA was our members. Each year, we do a sort of an annual campaign that involves new banners and changes to our website. We also have this unique idea that they came up with, which was to profile nine of our members every year. No one else in our city does this, but it’s made up of photographs and interviews and all this stuff that they do. We put it out on our website, pamphlets, and banners hanging on the street, and it's just been a tremendous success.

This approach that they came up with has really just worked wonderfully, and it’s gotten our members involved. It's gotten them excited about what we're doing. We went from having not much to show our members after years of work to them saying that we’re doing a wonderful job. In terms of process, I look at who they're proposing to profile and promote. And most of the time, I approve it. I've had to do very little to make it any better.

Initially, we had no social media presence, but now we certainly do have one thanks to them. It supports the rest of what we do, so everything is tied to it and drives back to our website. They’ve created a really unified, year-round campaign. We’re using Twitter and Facebook, and they tell me they want to expand into other platforms, but we have a budget, and they’re doing a pretty good job now of getting good value for the dollars we spend.

They did the initial design of the website and all of the background software. The design is quite nice, and it’s still quite innovative. The primary focus of our website is promoting our members and profiling them. We’re not one of these groups that is organizing speaker meetings and festivals on the street, and all that stuff, which some groups like to do. We are more just straight helping to build awareness of our members and directing people, if we can, to whatever it is they're looking for if it's in our BIA.

What is the team composition?

I deal with the two partners, Jennifer (Founder and CEO, Truth + Dare), and Norm (Creative Director, Truth + Dare. I deal with Jennifer most of the time, and Norm is more on the creative side. They're very good about keeping everybody informed, including their own people. I don’t often deal with any of their other colleagues.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since 2013. The way our city has set up the BIAs, we have to renew our arrangement with Truth + Dare every year.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $100,000 CAD annually with them, and that’s been since 2013. If we were buying radio and television times then it'd be a lot higher, but it's money well spent.

Their quotes have been very reasonable and the service is good. And we always make time, at least twice a year, sometimes four times a year, to do a top-level look at what are we doing: how it’s going, what else we could possibly do to help the BI, and can we either expand the budget a little bit or spend the budget a little bit better.