5 Years in, No Fixed Address' Strategy Is Shaking Up the Independent Agency Model

Five years ago, not many outside of Toronto had heard of No Fixed Address. The upstart agency had just come on the scene with a few clients mostly based north of the border. Jump ahead to the present, and with the addition of New York-based Mischief @ No Fixed Address, the agency has vaulted to be one of the most buzzed about in the industry. No Fixed Address (NFA) keeps growing, but it isn’t the type of expansion one might see from a network that opens offices around the globe and targets specific markets. Rather, NFA seeks growth through the opportunities it creates by doing work that clients love and that gets recognized. That kind of location-agnostic growth seems apt for an agency that has its mantra baked into its name. “NFA, [it was] built into the name, there were no geographic boundaries ever in our head. We report to client problems, not offices. We don't care about opening up a city or an office, per se,” Dave Lafond, co-founder and CEO of No Fixed Address, told Adweek. Launching Its Agency During the Pandemic Shaped Mischief’s Office Plans and Priorities "What if we just liberated you?" Lafond and his former mentor at Publicis, Serge Rancourt, founded No Fixed Address in Toronto in 2016, opening with client Questrade, an online discount broker in Canada. From there, they quietly built a clientele and started a team with former agency folks on the promise that clients deserve better than what the typical agency model could deliver. In true entrepreneurial fashion, Lafond sold his house, cashed in his savings and went all-in on No Fixed Address. “The idea was to liberate the creativity, liberate the talent and then give everybody room and autonomy,” said Lafond. From there, the agency grew systematically, initially concentrating heavily on digital, launching the PR portion of the grid with now-president Mark Carpenter and continuing to diversify in Canada with a Montreal office in March 2020, right before the pandemic disrupted the industry. The team knew they needed a strong creative, however, to do the best work, and that spark came in the form of Greg Hahn, who was laid off at BBDO as part of its Covid-19 cost-cutting measures. Hahn looked for a new opportunity and saw one in No Fixed Address, which had been referred to as a looser, leaner kind of agency in an article. He sent Lafond a note on LinkedIn, reaching out to see if they would be a fit. Lafond said he asked Hahn, “What if we just liberated you? You get everything you want, you can launch the creative vision that you want, which is to do disruptive creative, and we back you by the integrated grid?” Things moved rapidly. No Fixed Address brought on Hahn and built a New York team that would become Mischief @ No Fixed Address, creating the first office outside Canada, and one that quickly made a splash with fresh campaigns that saw Hahn revive his status as one of the industry’s top creatives. Mischief helped No Fixed Address decide to play offense when everyone was playing defense during the pandemic, seeing a chance to build its global ambitions in an organic way by hiring people who fit the mold of the agency rather than concentrating on where they were located. “There's no pressure on us. There's nobody in Paris, London or New York telling me “four more offices, five more brands, I need this and that. When that pressure is gone, you're entrepreneurs,” said Lafond, adding that people who align with the agency’s style have approached the team about doing similar structures as Mischief, wanting to add the @ No Fixed Address to their agencies and becoming a part of the grid, which gives the team options for expansion. Growth with no borders Currently, No Fixed Address has about 200 employees, up from roughly 130 at the time the pandemic started. In the last year, the NFA ecosystem has grown organically and more than doubled in size, up 104% in growth. Mischief represents one-third of the overall network. “Our plan for growth, honestly, is doing good work,” Kerry McKibbin, president and partner at Mischief @ No Fixed Address told Adweek. “Keep the quality of work very high, hire the best people in order to do that. A huge part of the NFA model is the great talent.” Doing good work leads to happy clients, which leads to more businesses wanting to work with the agency, said McKibbin, who came to Mischief from MullenLowe U.S. in Boston, but before that worked at Publicis in Toronto. She said that the way the agency plans to fuel its growth is by continuing to do good work. “I'm sure that we could scale up far beyond where we're at, but we need to ensure the quality of the work remains, and so we’ve paced that scaling.” Carpenter told Adweek that the agency succeeds by following opportunity, which can come in many ways—from talent, from clients and from services. “But the mindset from the beginning was that we were going to take a very integrated approach to solving problems.” "Creativity is everything" Carpenter said that even though No Fixed Address is a completely integrated agency, “creativity is everything for us" and revamping its processes is key. Many of the founders came from the agency side, and they wanted to essentially strip away the layers of approvals and multiple cooks in the kitchen that can muck up good creative. "We’re looking for those clients who want to make their mark creatively who have interesting challenges and have a lot of trust in their partner," Carpenter said, adding the agency wants clients who deliver briefs without a specific outcome in mind so that the agency can ultimately deliver the best solution. Lafond said that the agency has roughly 70 active clients across North America, solving different problems for companies as varied as the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, Novo Nordisk, Little Caesars and Aviva. Recently, it worked with Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum to curate a real-time experience that captures the unique perspectives of children and teens living through the pandemic. On the Mischief side, McKibbin, Hahn and company have done groundbreaking and entertaining work from the get-go. They helped a voting rights group make deepfakes of authoritarian leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un issuing ominous pronouncements about the dangers of voter suppression and manipulated elections, and they put forth a “Send Noods” campaign for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that created a touch of controversy. More recently, they teamed with grooming brand Eos to put out “Vagnastics,” a pumped-up jazzercise short that placed frank discussions about personal grooming front and center, and worked with brewing company Blue Moon on a “happy hourglass” beer glass for the pandemic era. “Greg is probably the most inspiring thing for us all to watch. Because he's not confined by absolutely anything,” said Lafond. McKibbin said that the agency does say no to prospective clients and ideas that aren’t the right fit, and that everyone who works within the grid can make decisions that are in the best interest of clients and the people in the agency. “We’re always looking for the Swiss Army knife people who are also humble…the better people are at their jobs, the more humble and kind, they tend to be more collaborative in working with one another,” said McKibbin. While No Fixed Address may not have the holding company-style "conquer the world" mentality, Lafond is proud that the agency has been able to grow and stay true to its roots. “We’re definitely invited to more global pitches now, and as our profile has increased, the opportunities like that are presenting themselves…(but) we maintained our independence,” said Lafond. The agency is looking to expand, but the team doesn’t know exactly where that growth will be. “That’s why we’re called No Fixed Address. The whole idea is that we’ll figure it out and organically go that way.” Sign-Up for the AdFreak newsletter to get the best creative straight to your inbox.