Making Business a VERB
An oral history of VERB, by Stephanie McGrath
The world’s most luxurious golf resorts. Balmy palmtree destinations. Huge hotel brands. Ferries and trains. Their connection? An agency found on a downtown street, just blocks from the ocean, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
VERB Interactive celebrates its fourteenth birthday this year and so we decided to mark the occasion with a little Q&A with founders Ed Dorey and Andy MacLellan. What got them started? What would they change? What can other business owners, leaders and marketers learn from their success? We hit “record” on our iPhone and let them go. Here’s what they had to say:
Where did the idea for VERB start, anyway?
Andy: It really stemmed from a conversation when we were working for another company, we were running a marketing division within a software development environment and it was growing and it was making them money. So I had gone to our employer, asking for some support to help with branding because people weren’t taking us seriously as advertisers. They said no, and that made us start thinking about going out on our own. It was really a tap on the shoulder. We had never talked about it before then.
Ed: You talked to your dad about it …
Andy: Yeah, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family so I talked to my dad a lot about the idea of doing my own thing, and he was actually the one that gave me the confidence to take the big leap. Anyway, I tapped Ed on the shoulder and said ‘hey let’s go do this’ (start a business).
What did you say, Ed?
Ed: It’s fourteen years ago! In my head … I was probably thinking about all the risk, but we went for it.
Andy: You were for sure thinking about the risk.
Ed: That’s what I do!
Andy: Excel spreadsheets came out … and ‘how are we going to pay rent?’.
Ed: Hey, I navigated the hell out of that.
Andy: We didn’t have a plan. We didn’t have a strategy. We just wanted to focus on the clients and do good work. It was never about ‘let’s make money’. It was just about how do we actually enjoy what we do and treat clients fairly? It’s a model that’s very different than how [most] agencies treat their clients. It’s not about scrutinizing the 15-minute increments you can bill somebody, but instead just focusing on building a cool product and understanding you’re going to be able to work with a client, forever, as long as you maintain a relationship. And we have. We have many accounts that are still with us today.
Did you want to stay in Halifax to work? Is that a big part of what you wanted to do?
Andy: Originally. I wouldn’t say we had aspirations of doing business around the world. We just wanted to work on cool stuff. As soon as you get a taste of what it’s like to do business outside of Atlantic Canada, it’s very easy to say ‘hey, that’s what we want to focus on’. So, because we focus on travel and hospitality, because we focused on the US market in particular, things like the exchange rate helped us grow in the beginning, and at that point in time the marketing clients in the US actually understood digital a bit more and actually had the budget to support doing cool things with campaigns, with websites, with ongoing marketing. It just made sense to follow that path. And it was just cool because we didn’t have to compete here, in Halifax. And even in the US, there wasn’t huge competition because we built a reputation for doing great work and treating people fairly. We just wanted to avoid the RFP rat race. Same principles apply today, with how we run the company.
Why were you excited to land Pebble Beach?
Background: In 2008/2009, they landed Pebble Beach Resorts in California. A flagship account, VERB has been working with Pebble Beach for years now. For both, Pebble marked a bit of a turning point in VERB’s story. When we conducted this interview, Ed was wearing his trusty Pebble Beach hoodie.
Ed: It was more just about the milestone of achieving that account.
Andy: That was really symbolic for the agency’s growth. We’d built a portfolio of great clients, but when we were invited to pitch Pebble Beach, it was cool that this iconic travel brand invited us to the competition, but we were also up against some of the top agencies in New York, San Francisco and LA. I remember the pitch like it was yesterday. The ocean was in the backdrop. We talked for three hours. They said at the end, unanimously, you, hands-down are the company we want to go with. Because they couldn’t lob a technical question at us, they couldn’t lob a marketing question at us that we didn’t have an answer to because we’re not sales people. That’s the other secret to our success. We actually do the work. We’re not just biz dev guys or absentee owners.
Ed: And I think they liked that we thought ahead of what others were thinking of. We had a bunch of ideas we brought to the table.
If you could give advice to your younger selves, what would you say, based on what you know now?
Andy: I would tell myself to be patient with people, because nobody is necessarily going to want to move as fast as you, work as hard as you, so manage your own expectations of other people. We’ve had really great people work at this company over the years and we do today. Where we are today is the strongest the agency has ever been — by far. So, I’d tell myself to just have patience. And also patience in the sense that you don’t have to get there today. It’ll come.
The other advice I’d give myself, a lesson that I’ve learned, is it’s not worth stressing. The stress from business, projects, and deadlines — I mean when has something over 14 years not worked out? It can only work in two different ways, it can only go good or bad. When staff are stressed out it’s about how can we alleviate it, how can we dodge the landmines, how can we help out? At the end of the day, it’s going to work out. That really applies to all aspects of life. Things can fail or succeed, but life is not over if something goes wrong.
At this point in the conversation, we get an email about a big, exciting piece of work. Some things about this work, in particular have gone very right, and some things have gone wrong. But we forged ahead. And it’s working out. We pause to celebrate, then resume the conversation. Expletives were deleted.
What about you, Ed?
Ed: Something I still struggle with, is that I’m not good at rolling with the punches. I worry too much about what’s going to go wrong. So if I were my younger self, I’d tell myself to find a way to deal with that better.
Andy: I love the drama. I love a good challenge.
What about advice for Atlantic Canadian businesses. What advice do you have for other businesses in the region based on your experience here?
Andy: I think the mentality that you have to build a base at home before you can go outside the borders of the province or country you live in is wrong. I think if you want something, you can go get it. You just have to want to get it. You have to have a winner’s attitude — not arrogance. If you have the skill there’s no reason why you can’t pick up the phone and call somebody and try to get your foot in the door. I think it’s a really poor excuse when people sit in Atlantic Canada and cry about the success of others. You’ve seen it locally here in Halifax where an RFP from here is awarded to a big agency out of the province and everybody cries about it, saying ‘it’s not fair,’. But people want to work with the best. The first project we did as an agency was SeeAmerica.org for the United States, to promote the entire United States.
What’s next for VERB?
Andy: We’re going to continue to grow. We’re going to work with the coolest clients in travel, continue to hire the brightest staff, and not lose focus of our core principles.
Ed: I agree. Everything we’re doing now, we’re going to take to the next level.
What would you say to potential hires about what you’re looking for in your employees?
Andy: We want people who share our passion, who are hungry to take it to the next level, who see beyond the paycheque, who want to travel the world, who want to grow, who don’t want to be constrained by a corporate environment. And people who realize the value of relationships because that’s the backbone of everything we do here, seeing our clients as partners.
Ed: I agree 100%. We like to look for people who really want to challenge the status quo, who aren’t complacent.
Anything else?
Ed: No. I don’t like interviews.
Happy anniversary, VERB. Cheers to 14 more years (at least).
Stephanie is the VP of Strategy at VERB Interactive — a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.
