When Moncton’s BrainWorks stumbled and fell, Atlantic Canada’s business community scooped them up, setting them down again in a place lightyears ahead.

Like most good Atlantic Canadian stories, this one starts—and ends—with a party.

The second looks something like this: the grand opening of a new office space, with facilities that are a marvel to behold. Called The Imagination Centre, the office is spread over all three floors of an iconic brick building, and its design honours this designation. The folding doors of the new production studio are flung open to create a larger event space on the main floor, where party guests are sipping lattes at Grind Time, the full-service café, and sampling delicacies from the chef’s kitchen. Later, they will climb the stairs to The Lemonade Stand, the bar on the second floor, before carrying their champagne flutes up another flight to visit the hydrotherapy spa on the third. All the while, they are enjoying expansive views of a chilled Petticodiac flowing below along snow-laden banks.

Not quite a year earlier, the first party had also taken place in a century-old, remodeled brick building. That party had been a more intimate affair: workmates celebrating a team member’s 30th in an Airbnb downtown. Here too, the executive accommodations were impressive: vaulted ceilings, ornate wrought iron, spacious bedrooms with brick fireplaces, flat screens and ensuite baths, a contemporary kitchen with centre island framed by white shaker cabinets and blue Venetian tile. 

Both celebrations take place in the same city, and both involve the same individuals. But for all intents and purposes, they could be on different planets. As one participant observed, what happened between the morning of 3 April 2021 and the end of the year can only be likened to a quantum leap forward. 

Moncton’s BrainWorks was born and grew out of a coffee shop in Dieppe in 2012. Co-founder Brad Leblanc jokes the marketing agency should have been called Cup Second (he uses a French pronunciation) as they spent so much time using the coffee shop’s WiFi in the early days. No money, no team, no clients, one mission: to create a new kind of creative agency. 

 

 

Coffee is writ large in Leblanc’s story, and it is not entirely clear which he credits more for BrainWorks’ growth over the following years, caffeine or gratitude. In any case, grow it did. 

“We started with nothing, and it’s wild to know we are going into our tenth year. It’s exceeded our greatest expectations. We never thought we’d have clients across Atlantic Canada, or across the country, and the chance to work with clients in the U.S., Europe or Central America. We’re overwhelmed with gratitude, and I think that’s what’s fueling the mission,” he said.

True to their objective of becoming a different kind of agency, BrainWorks added atypical services to its portfolio throughout the years, including strategy development, transformation thought leadership, stakeholder engagement and government relations. It also honed its preferred M.O.: project-based, high growth opportunities where the agency felt it would be a good fit to help people accomplish their goals. 

 

We feel so grateful to have been able to grow in the way that we have, and it hasn’t been fueled by us. It’s been fueled by everyone else.

—Brad Leblanc, Co-founder, BrainWorks

 

“We are certainly honoured to do major campaigns,” said Leblanc, “but we also love people who are just getting going in pursuing their dreams or who are after a big mission. Everything we get to do is the result of the ideas and ambitions of our clients. We just like to be in it with them.” 

BrainWorks discovered growth was a two-way street. As clients grew, so did the agency. Make more videos, people advised. Push limits, they said. So BrainWorks did. “People have been remarkably supportive, and empowering and encouraging to us along the way. We feel so grateful to have been able to grow in the way that we have, and it hasn’t been fueled by us. It’s been fueled by everyone else,” Leblanc muses. 

 

 

Party #1

In early 2020, BrainWorks was buzzing along at capacity at 171 Lutz Street in Moncton’s downtown area. In hindsight, the pandemic that hit then was an omen, foreshadowing further turbulence on the horizon. CEO David Hawkins pinpoints that day as March 16.

“That to me is when the pandemic really got announced in earnest. Within two days, we had a number of clients who literally went out of business,” said the CEO. 

Some cancelled projects, others couldn’t pay their bills. “We had an economic crisis on our hands.”

Hawkins and Leblanc made a decision then, which they say was not easy to make. No matter what happened, they would stay in business. They would work harder, make the tough calls, do what it took, but they would stay in business. Just days later, John Wishart called with an idea.

The CEO of Greater Moncton’s Chamber of Commerce wanted to start a buy local initiative that would help the city’s businesses navigate the economic uncertainty of the pandemic. There was little seed money for the project, he said, but the need was urgent. Within two weeks, BrainWorks’ remote and locked down team had launched the Love for Local campaign. It would eventually go province-wide.

“That would have been in late March, early April of 2020,” said Hawkins. “We put over $100,000 of our own resources into launching it and making it work. and it’s still running. It’s been hugely successful.” 

 

 

Love for Local showcased N.B. business and grew to encompass a number of campaigns. NB365 spotlighted one business or entrepreneur a day for a year. Seasonal promotions such as the 2021 summer staycation’s ‘Your Backyard is Bigger than You Think,’ encouraged NBers to explore their own province. A local documentary series, Catapult, gracefully told the stories of those behind the N.B. economy. At the time of writing, Love for Local has had over five million video views and boasted 2,400 participating businesses. It has become a movement for local empowerment that has attracted lead sponsors such as UNI Financial Cooperation. 

By April of 2021, BrainWorks had by no means fully shaken the pandemic blues, but they were “getting through just fine, and working long and being flexible,” said Hawkins. “And receiving excellent support from existing clients and new clients, new programs and new activities and offerings.” 

It was time for a party. Harrison Burton, BrainWorks’ VP of Video, was turning 30. 

 

 

Party #2

“David, you’re not going to believe this. There’s been a fire.”

Leblanc said it happened so fast, in just a moment. One minute you are celebrating in an Airbnb with your mates, and the next, all the cellphones in the place are lighting up at once.

Harrison Burton had just got out of the shower, ready to enjoy day two of his birthday celebrations, when his phone sounded. The video attached showed flames shooting from the windows of the office building on Lutz Street—BrainWorks’ offices. 

Leblanc had coaxed the young Haligonian down from the Alberta mountains in 2017 where Burton had been running his own business filming weddings. He moved back east to lead the agency’s audiovisual expansion, spending nights and weekends over the following years building the video department. He had also painstakingly and slowly assembled BrainWorks’ equipment inventory—very expensive equipment now stored in the Lutz Street office.

Harrison ran downstairs to the kitchen where he found Kathryn Basham, BrainWorks’ VP of creative and strategy, distracting herself by making breakfast for her colleagues. They were joined minutes later by Brad Leblanc and copywriter, Danny Bazin, who had tried to drive to the office but were forced to return when they found all the roads were blocked. 

 

 

Burton and Leblanc were antsy. They decided to walk over to the building. “Of course, you start to panic as you’re walking down,” Leblanc recalls. “Once we got in eyesight, we saw fire trucks, and as we went closer, it was all roped off. Windows were broken, we couldn’t get a lot of information, smoke was pouring out. It was a very tense, difficult morning,” said Leblanc. 

Burton remembers waiting at the intersection of Main and Lutz, looking across at the fire trucks parked sideways in the street. “And it kind of hit us there,” he said, “Like, what if this is a total loss?”

And, ultimately, said Leblanc, it was. “Everything gone, up in smoke, poof, just like that.”

Burton said he will never forget the fire chief approaching them. “He put his arm around Brad and I, and said, I’m sorry, guys, but the area where your equipment was is just one melted mass. I remember crumbling right there. Brad walked away, and I remember running after him, giving him a hug and we were tearing up. I think everyone would have expected him to just disappear for a while. But he came back. Many people would have just left, but he found it in himself to come back.”

Leblanc called David Hawkins. 

“The fire really threw a wrench into an already challenging environment, to say the least,” said Hawkins. “Like every other business in Canada, we were dealing with the pandemic, and then, all of a sudden, came the fire. We just got wiped out by it, and we had to recommit, once again, to exactly the same thing. We had no idea what the future was going to look like, but we had to commit to the idea that we could have a future.” 

 

Hawkins and Leblanc made a decision then, which they say was not easy to make. No matter what happened, they would stay in business.

 

This time, support flooded in. Leblanc said the moment word of the fire spread, people started reaching out. Within 24 hours, there was an offer of new office space, free of charge. One of Moncton’s premier photographers offered the use of his equipment. Suppliers said borrow our stuff, print shops asked, what do you need? No charge, we understand. Others offered office furniture. Competing agencies reached out to see how they could help. Lawyers and accountants were back again to prop the agency up. Hundreds and hundreds of calls of support and encouragement started rolling in from all across the region. 

“It was amazing,” said Hawkins. 

“We were completely flabbergasted,” said Leblanc. 

He adds, “It’s one thing to hear from people you know, but it’s something else to have complete strangers reach out from across Atlantic Canada. If you wonder where the strength to carry on came from, it was really that support. When so many people tell you ‘Not only are you going to come back, you are going to come back stronger,’ you start to feel compelled to move in that direction.”

Hawkins said it was enough to get them up and moving forward. 

On the Monday following the fire, just two days later, Harrison Burton was back filming for a client. “David said ‘Stay on the ice.’ That’s his big thing. If we just stay on the ice, we’ll get through this. That is so true, and we’ve dealt with every single day since with that mentality,” said Burton. 

BrainWorks stayed on the ice. They skidded (refinancing the business), slid and fell (long drawn-out battle with insurance companies—pure hell, said Hawkins), but they stayed on the ice. In fact, they built an ice palace. 

 

 

Leblanc said BrainWorks began to look at the fire as a miracle disguised as a disaster: “We thought what a great opportunity it was to advance some of our aspirations. Maybe if we could get creative and barter and negotiate and hustle and be entrepreneurial, and grow and juggle all of this at once, maybe we could become the next best version of ourselves.” 

By late November of 2021, when BrainWorks moved into the Imagination Centre, this next best version had materialized. The new offices meant a 225 per cent increase in space, and their design was the greatest iteration the BrainWorks’ team could imagine, said Leblanc. The centre is meant to facilitate the company’s future and its growth, to be the vehicle that will drive BrainWorks to the next level. Its production studio is meant to become a regional hub of inspiration, and there’s more on the horizon—an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2022 and a solar-powered future. 

At the time of writing, BrainWorks was busier than it had ever been and it had more staff on the ground than it did the day of the fire. Ambitious three, five and 10 year plans for client campaigns and partners were in the works, and the only thing the team was feeling, according to Leblanc, was tremendously grateful. He is convinced it was the power of Atlantic Canada behind the company’s miraculous recovery. 

“We’ve always been guided by ‘We rise by lifting others,’ and what we learned through all of this is that others rose to lift us. The support that met us, it was almost like a moment of grace. Atlantic Canada has yet again carried us through, but not carried us through to put us back down where we were. They carried us further into the future,” said Leblanc. 

One might also argue that coffee played its part. Between the fire and the ice palace, a lot of work was done by the BrainWorks’ team. Maybe it is no coincidence, then, that hanging from the ceiling in the main lobby of the Imagination Centre is a large sign reading, ‘Gratitude’. 

You will find it right above the café.