Our Work

Johnson and Johnson’s PR Agency Approached Talent Connect as they were in search of a spokesperson for their Johsnons’ Baby Bath and Skincare collections.  The client stressed the importance for the personality to be a new or expectant mother, have a large following (six figures or higher) and have a relevancy with the Canadian market and would be relatable to the Johnsons target consumer to build trust in their products. 

Jessi Cruickshank was a natural choice, as she had just given birth to her twins and was a celebrated figure well-known for her honesty and sense of humor on all topics related to motherhood.  Talent Connect was able to approach Jessi’s representative and negotiate a 9 month contract for Jessi to act as Spokesperson for the Johnsons’ Baby Collection, sharing a new product from the collection each month.  

Napoleon was looking for well-known professional athletes to participate in their marketing program. When they approached Talent Connect, we felt NHL superstart, PK Subban would be an ideal fit based on his personality, the demographic of his followers and his love for good BBQ. With the approval from Napoleon, Talent Connect leveraged existing relationships with PK’s team to negotiate the deal.  Ultimately, PK signed on for a four week deal with the Napoleon Phantom program and produced two highly engaging and successful posts.  When it comes to celebrity talent managers and creators, an interest-based negotiation is always an ideal format when it comes to closing the deal. 

XP Sports is a new energy brand targeting the gaming demographic. XP Sports positions their product as the best energy product for gamers who want to take their gaming experience and skill to the next level. With zero brand awareness as they prepared to go to market, they approached Talent Connect to secure ideal brand ambassadors to promote the product line.  Talent Connect began an outreach program to initiate discussions with top tier online gamers including online gaming personality, SypherPK.

Talent Connect was able to negotiate a 6 month partnership for SypherPK to become the face of the brand and the launch campaign.  The partnership with SypherPK and XP Sports was a multi-channel partnership including Twitch, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter, with a special XP Sports integration in SypherPK’s Twitch Streams including gaming tournaments and practices. The partnership proved especially successful garnering 2.1 million organic impressions with a 5.3% engagement rate and attracted 32k Unique site visitors.

Osmows is a chain of middle eastern restaurants that spans across Canada with over 100 locations. Osmows was referred to Talent Connect to piece a deal together for one big name in the sports world, preferably Toronto basketball. The thought was that their customers, present and future, love basketball and would positively associate the image of a Toronto Raptor player to their expanding franchise business. In understanding their needs we learned they had spent quite a bit of time and resources on their own trying to get a Toronto Raptor on board but hadn’t found much success based on their budget, and running into non-competes. Luckily we were able to tap our network and were not only able to deliver one, but two Raptors that also happened to be very good friends… Fred VanVleet and Norm Powell, a detail that was important in being able to do the deal and stay within the budget. We helped negotiate 3 commercials to be shot in a 4 hour window, along with some photography and the rights to use that content for a year. Everything went off without a hitch. Osmows was then able to play these commercials during the 2019 playoff run, which of course as well all know, saw Fred and Norm become NBA Champions of the Toronto Raptors. Talk about catching lightning in a bottle… 

The right players for the right business at the right time in history. 

This content also fed their social channels, in-store collateral, and appetites across Canada that now saw Osmows as the leading Shwarma and Middle Eastern Restaurant, opposed to just another.

We followed that up by signing Norm Powell the following year and creating even more content. 

Plan Canada was in search of a Canadian celebrity with mass appeal and influence to create educational content to generate interest and sign ups for their Change the Birth Story campaign. 

Interior Designer and TV personality, Jillian Harris, has grown to become one of Canada’s most influential Mommy Blogger. With a following in excess of 1M engaged followers, Jillian’s profile was a natural fit for this campaign and Talent Connect approached her agent to negotiate her rates and participation.  Jillian was interested in participating in the campaign because as a Mom she believed in all of the amazing work Plan Canada was doing to #ChangeTheBirthStory in many countries around the world. 

Jillian signed on to produce a blog post for the Plan Canada site as well as create an in-feed Instagram post and series of Stories. This partnership generated over 1M impressions and created incredibly positive brand sentiment to Plan Canada’s #ChangetheBirthStory campaign.