Labour

CO-OP Advertising launched in 2012 as a deliberate argument against the traditional agency: a boutique core — a dozen people, offices in Toronto and Calgary — that assembled custom teams from a wide network of freelancers and consultants for each brief. The pitch, as VP of strategic communications James Loftus put it to strategy in January 2018, was that hand-picking specialists who already knew a category skipped the learning curve staffers face when they are shuffled between brands. Clients in that period included autoTRADER.ca, Midas, Weed Man and Chatime; TRADER Corporation had appointed the agency for autoTRADER.ca in 2015, starting with national television and moving into digital. The agency made the Growth 500 ranking of Canada's fastest-growing companies in 2019. In October 2021 it rebranded to LABOUR, saying the new name better reflected a unified planning, creative and PR offering — the model had shifted from mostly freelance contributors toward a full-time in-house team, alongside a hiring push, client wins and expansion into Quebec. James Loftus became president; Peter Brough kept the managing director role and operations. The agency still works with AutoTrader, and its recent published work includes a Delta Bingo campaign and a report on the working conditions of registered practical nurses. Ian MacDonald, who had been AutoTrader's marketing director on the client side, was VP of strategy and media at CO-OP when he presented the agency's programmatic work for that client at TechTO's MarketingTO in October 2018; he is now chief marketing officer at Trader Corporation.