Nicolas Quintal, Rethink Communications

Nicolas Quintal, Rethink Communications | BCBusiness

As the new creative director for Rethink Communications, Nicolas Quintal is getting clever with client seduction.

When the darling of the West Coast advertising industry opened its Toronto office last spring, it meant the creative core of the agency, founders Chris Staples and Ian Grais, would be heading east, at least part-time. But Vancouver’s loss has been Nicolas Quintal’s gain, as Staples and Grais travelling regularly to Toronto meant the need for another creative director in the Vancouver office.

Did you face a linguistic barrier when you came to Vancouver from Quebec five years ago to join Rethink?

My English was pretty bad five years ago. They put a lot of trust and faith in me to say, “Stay on board; we’re going to team you up with a good partner. Everything is going to be in English.” My mandate was 100 per cent English work, and I was pretty happy about that.


So they kind of took a risk on you, didn’t they?

Absolutely, and it’s still a risk. I’m happy here in Vancouver and to be part of this family, but it’s a risk to take a French-speaking guy and bring him into your culture to work on national accounts while he’s learning English. But people are very patient here. And what is helping is that the type of advertising that I like and that I do doesn’t have a language barrier. Yes, you have to explain your idea a little bit more often when you see the other person doesn’t understand. But now I think people know me well enough that when they don’t understand something, they’re not shy, so they will say, “OK, Nic, what you said doesn’t make sense. Do you mean this?”


Well, they must understand what you’re saying, because they made you creative director, right?

It’s a lot easier for an art director than a writer. Once you get the idea, after that it’s all about imagery and photography. It’s a lot easier for an art director to move; you can even go to Europe if you want if your images are simple enough. 


How did you land this promotion?

With the office in Toronto, we are a little bit smaller in 
Vancouver now, but growing fast. The pace of work is a lot quicker now, so there was a demand for another creative director. We are a 70-to-80-person agency with eight creative teams; there are a lot of creative people at this agency. And now we’ve switched a lot of our work online. Five years ago it was 60 per cent advertising, 30 per cent design and 10 per cent online, but now a third of our work is digital.


You’re up against smaller, hungrier 
agencies, and even though Rethink is a young agency, you’re a traditional full-service shop. How do you compete?

We will have one core team that works on a client’s account. If we have a digital mandate, it’s not a digital team that is going to work on it; it’s the same team that is going to do both the traditional and online work. We call those “core teams.” This helps us see the broader picture of a brand because we handle both the digital part of it and the traditional part of it.


Rethink has always had the image of 
the cool, upstart West Coast firm. 
Now the Vancouver office has shrunk 
and more than half of the staff are in 
the Toronto office. Is it still a 
Vancouver firm?

Yes. The thing is, we’re not a lot smaller than we were because the digital department here in Vancouver grew a lot. If you compare it to three years ago, we’re still the same size. But you’re right, Toronto is growing very fast. I think Vancouver wasn’t big enough. After 10 years Rethink was growing and very successful here, and it was time to move. I think in the short-term the Toronto office is going to be the locomotive of Rethink.


Is there a risk that Rethink will lose its West Coast character?

No, it’s an amazing thing. It’s a part of Vancouver that is now in Toronto. The partners have kept the vision, which is very important. That’s why they took 10 years to do it. They did the same thing with the design department here. They didn’t open a design department just to open one; they opened it when it was 
the right time. That’s what they did 
with Toronto, and that’s why it’s 
growing fast now. 


How do you compete against the social web, where consumers and companies are taking direct control of the brands they care about?

I think the future in advertising is very exciting, because you’re right, it’s going to change. We’re going back to advertising 101, where we have to seduce clients, not push stuff down their throats with media money. Now that people are in control, you need to be very clever. Our job just expanded so much with online because people want to be seduced and shown stuff that’s cool and simple. It’s cool because if you write a book today on digital marketing, when it gets to the shelf it’s outdated. That’s why it’s fun, because we’re adjusting our job almost every three months.