By: Jenny Wagler - January 24-30th 2012.

Plunging into a male-dominated business in the early 1980s, Joyce Taylor-Bauer – at the time, Joyce Taylor – crafted an all-business image. She chopped her hair, donned glasses she didn’t need and answered her phone with a terse, “Taylor.”

By the time she had honed her skills as a media buyer and become a radio sales rep in the early 1990s, she’d cemented her reputation as a “no-bullshit” deal negotiator.

“People would meet me and they’d go, ‘Oh. I was expecting a tall, darkhaired older person with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth,’” said the petite blonde Taylor-Bauer, 49, sitting in the boardroom of her North Vancouver media buying shop, Taylor Made Media.

While Taylor-Bauer’s demeanor has softened as her experience has grown, her strategic abilities continue to drive her success. In the past two years alone, Taylor Made has increased its billings by more than 50% in the midst of an uncertain economy, landing a string of new accounts, including White Spot, Mercedes and the BC Cancer Foundation. During the same time period, the company’s staff has also grown by half to 10 employees.

“This boardroom was too small immediately,” Taylor-Bauer said wryly, referring to the company’s 2007 move into its current location. But she added with a laugh: “That’s an OK problem to have.”

Born the eighth of nine children in Windsor, Ontario, Taylor-Bauer got a taste for Vancouver when visiting her older siblings on the West Coast in her teens. To prepare for a move west, she studied business advertising at St. Clair College, where she learned power-dressing tips from Dress for Success and purposely didn’t learn to type. “I didn’t want to be a secretary,” she quipped.

In 1983, having saved $700 working shifts at a local bingo hall, 20-year-old Taylor-Bauer packed up her Windsor life and headed west to an internship at Vancouver’s Baker Lovick Advertising.

In Vancouver, she dove into the media-buying business and over the course of five years climbed the corporate ladder to become media director with Vrlak Robinson Hayhurst.

In 1989, Taylor-Bauer switched from media buying to media selling. Hired to launch a western office for Telemedia Radio Sales, she leveraged her insider knowledge of media buying to increase the company’s western business by more than 300% within three years. “I knew the media buyers, and I knew what they needed.” She then helped merge Telemedia with rep shop MediaGroup West.

David St.Laurent, one of MediaGroup West’s owners at the time and now president of Western Media Group Sales Company Inc., remembers hiring Taylor-Bauer – and when he realized what that was going to mean for the company. Preparing for the launch of MediaGroup West, St.Laurent had planned to fax out press releases to local media buying shops – the firm’s prospective clientele. But Taylor-Bauer pitched a different plan: instead of easily-ignored faxes, MediaGroup West would roll the press releases into scrolls, tie them up with ribbon and small bouquets of spring flowers and have them hand delivered. “That helped me realize, ‘OK, we’re raising the standards bar here because it’s got to cut through the clutter,’” St.Laurent said. “And that’s her strategy in how she buys or executes her media: it’s not always ‘Can I get it at the cheapest price?’ – it’s ‘What is the most effective way of communicating the message?”

Over her three years at Media Group West, Taylor-Bauer secured significant business from media buying agencies and landed major supplier clients such as Mediacom Outdoor Advertising Inc.

In 1995, with two successful company launches under her belt, Taylor-Bauer decided to strike out on her own with Taylor Made Media. This time she moved back to the media buying side of the equation, helping clients secure TV spots, print advertising and other media space to get their messages across. “It’s way more strategic [than selling],” she explained. “You’re handling the whole picture, you’re managing the campaign, whereas on the selling side you might just be selling them two radio stations.”

Taylor-Bauer ran the business out of her home for 12 years, fighting
to achieve work-life balance as a working mom. “It’s tough,” she said. “I’d hear the kids cry and I’d want to be there and I’d hear them laugh and I’d want to be there.” But Taylor-Bauer said she was able to create a clear boundary between her family and professional realms, managing to continue building her company despite the challenging economy of the late 1990s and, most recently, the 2008- 09 recession. In fact, she said, the most recent downturn allowed her to attract some key staff as other media shops instituted hiring freezes. Talent, she said, is her company’s key asset and an area she focuses on, with a profitsharing system and other employee-recognition. “Sometimes I just go and get a bunch of 100 dollar bills on a Friday and just say, ‘Go and have a good weekend,’” she said, adding that it’s a cost-effective way of recognizing her employees’ hard work.

Despite industry upheaval, she said, Taylor Made has gained new momentum over the past couple of years, gaining the clout to handle multimillion-dollar accounts while retaining a boutique feel. “I think we’re in a sweet spot.” Taylor-Bauer attributed some of her success thus far to negotiation skills honed around the family dinner table in Windsor – skills that form the bread and butter of the trade. And while she may no longer chop off her hair and lower her voice to create a tough persona, it’s clear that Taylor-Bauer still loves driving a bargain – and holding her ground. “We do pre-[media] buy analysis, we do post-buy analysis. So if you said you were going to get [the client] a million viewers and you only got 800,000, well you owe us 200,000,” she said. “Some people check, some people don’t. We check.”

By: Jonathan Paul - June 16th 2010

Westminster Savings wants to bring balance to its customers’ lives. To do so, it enlisted Taxi Vancouver to help it rebrand and redefine its positioning.

Since research showed people felt separated from their money, they came up with a new campaign introducing the Vancouver-based credit union as an institution with a passionate staff that works with customers and communities to help them achieve better balance.

With media handled by Vancouver-based Taylor Made Media, executions spanning print, OOH, online media and radio depict situations where a person is trying to balance two things in life. For example, one scenario features a family that’s trying to find a balance between spacious square footage in their house, while achieving a sane distance for their commute to work.

“We determined that our key stakeholders believed that our existing brand identity really didn’t accurately reflect our organization, our culture and our core strengths,” said Maury Kask, VP, marketing, Westminster Savings. “As such, our new identity takes these important factors into account and it was launched internally over an extensive six-week period to ensure that our staff really understood our brand direction and our brand pillars.”

Taxi and Westminster also developed an employee campaign to bring the credit unions’ staff up-to-speed on the rebranding and positioning. Web and mobile initiatives, community investment and in-branch work will roll out throughout the year as the credit union continues to phase in its new branding.

“‘Achieve better balance’ is the consumer expression of our core brand promise, we help our members achieve a better balance in life by helping them achieve a better balance financially,” says Kask. “It’s a process that is realized when we work collaboratively with our members to understand and meet their changing needs.”

Click HERE to see the original article.

By: Garine Tcholakian - August 19th 2009

Following a recent review, Taxi Vancouver has been selected as Westminister Savings Credit Uinion’s AOR, and Vancouver-based Taylor Made Media will be helming media for the credit union, which currently has over $1.7 billion in assets, 50,000 members and 11 retail branches in New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Cloverdale, Surrey, Langly, Burnaby and White Rock.

Throughout Lower mainland BC, Taxi Vancouver will be handling strategic planning, design and advertising communications for upcoming product and brand campaigns. “The team at Taxi reallty impressed us with their straightforward, logical and insight-driven approach to brand marketing and demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of our brand in a very short period of time,” said Maury Kask, VP marketing, Westminister Savings in a recent release. “their colaborative team-based approach was clearly evident from our very first meeting.” Work is already underway for the account, which was awarded mid-July.

Click HERE for the original article.

Media in Canada

By: Garine Tcholakian - August 14th 2009

Mega media buys are in the works to promote Western Canada’s first and only 4D theatre. To help introduce BC Lower Mainland residents to Vancouver Aquarium’s newest attraction – the 4D Experience show – a massive Films You Can Feel campaign created by TAXI Vancouver is going big and bold to immerse commuters into the epic experience.

‘We needed to convey a multi-dimensional experience in traditional advertising media that would let visitors know this was something new and compelling that they couldn’t experience anywhere else,’ says Sarah Kirby Yung, VP, marketing and communications at the Vancouver Aquarium. ‘The campaign had to inform, create excitement, and still provide a thematic link to the Vancouver Aquarium’s brand and the aquatic world.’

To help generate buzz around the 4D Experience launch, the campaign targets families and teens via transit, radio, theatre ads, and free dailies, all handled by Vancouver-based Taylor Made Media. The effort runs through November across the Lower Mainland.

‘We knew that the biggest challenge was going to be communicating what the 4th Dimension was exactly,’ Michael Mayes, CD at TAXI Vancouver tells MiC. ‘So we decided to use the media as inventively as we could to demonstrate the idea of Films You Can Feel.’ In radio, he explains, they encouraged people to try to create their own 4D experience while listening, and in cinema it appears as though a manta ray has swam off the screen and into the theater. Meanwhile, sky train sides make it look like passengers are immersed in water. ‘With the media that we couldn’t break barriers with, we showed in-theater images mixed with experiential elements from nature,’ says Mayes. ‘We know it’s hard to get anyone’s attention, so we wanted each piece to work as tightly with the media space as it could, with a strong idea, rather than use media as wall paper and repeat the same concept over and over.’

A Skytrain station domination package, the campaign’s anchor, features layers of advertising at several high traffic stations in the city with eye-catching wall murals in key stations like rider-heavy Metrotown and Waterfront, a hub for seabus, west coast express and helijet, as well as Granville where a giant 68′ x 8′ mural at Granville Station is also featured. Transit coverage also spanned the exterior of the Skytrip trains, its interior posters, as well as the LCD screens on its platforms, covering off the whole Skytrain network which extends into the family-rich suburbs. (The Skystrips are also visible to street traffic and pedestrians as the trains travel on their routes.) Seat drops on the West Coast Express, a commuter express train, distributed a total of 5500 print pieces.

Virgin Radio is also on board as a key radio partner in the campaign, and will have 30 sec spots featured on The Beat and QMFM – both popular with local families. The Aquarium is also sponsoring the ‘Bug’d’ promotion featuring 400 promo spots as well as an online presence running throughout September.

Throughout the Lower Mainland, 15-second digital pre show ads will be featured in 23 theatres and scheduled to run up to seven minutes prior to the show start, which reaches the greatest amount of people, says Brandi Pratt, media director at Taylor Made Media. ‘They are also significantly more affordable than advertising after the house lights go down.’ In addition to the pre show ads, giant 10′ x 20′ banners in high traffic locations at the Scotiabank Theatre in Vancouver and the Colossus Langley theatre are also featured.

In print, two-page front cover wraps of 24 Hours Vancouver are currently running and include the outside front cover and inside front cover of the paper. ‘It’s big and bold which meets our impact objective, yet is more affordable than a four page wrap, which includes the outside cover as well,’ adds Pratt.

‘The challenge was reaching teens, who have less traditional media habits,’ Pratt tells MiC. ‘We addressed this by reaching them where they’re living their lives – on the skytrain, at the downtown skytrain stations, in the movie theatres, and on the radio.’

Read more: http://mediaincanada.com/2009/08/14/aquarium-20090814/#ixzz1f8YsrtZV

Sunday, June 21, 2009

With summer on our doorstep, North Shore residents will soon be out and about enjoying all the natural wonders that make North and West Vancouver the destination of choice for visitors and new residents alike.

It’s also a great time to acknowledge the hard work done by the volunteers, businesses and organizations in our community that make it such a great place to live. Over the past few months, businesses, groups and individuals like Taylor Made Media, BC Hydro, Argyle Secondary, West Vancouver Secondary, Gleneagles Elementary, the Province of British Columbia, Early Discoveries Pre-school, the Soroptimists International of North and West Vancouver, the West Vancouver Community Foundation, Georg Verhagen, the Canadian Iranian Foundation, Mangiae Bevi, and the Northshore Auto Mall have raised or donated over $940,000 for UNICEF, Muscular Dystrophy, Bodwell High School, the City of North Vancouver, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Vancouver Aquarium, Canucks’ Autism Network Society, the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation, the Willing Hearts International Society of Canada and a scholarship for Carlo Milano. Thank you to all the hard working North Shore residents of all ages who take the time to make a difference in the lives of their fellow citizens.

EARLY Discoveries Pre-school raised $2,133 for the Canadian Cancer Society’s Relay for Life walk on June 13 by hosting an open house Sunflower Art Gallery. Children aged three to 13 years old made contributions for the art show and guests received a sunflower to take home at the gala event.

VANCOUVER Aquarium’s Kristi Wilson (left), Alisa Coquet, and Sarah Kirby Yung receive a cheque for $21,000 from Taylor Made Media president Joyce Taylor-Bauer, her son Harry Bauer, and staff members Sarah Suen, Lynn Hemsley, and Brandi Pratt. The money will support marine conservation programs.

MEMBERS of Soroptimist International of North and West Vancouver gather at the annual Recognition Tea along with guests representing
over 29 North Shore organizations that have made donations to the club totalling $84,500.

PRIMARY students from Gleneagles elementary in West Vancouver donned bunny ears and hopped and danced with local firefighters to raise a total of $792 to support vital education programs and other essential services for those living with muscular dystrophy.

ARGYLE secondary’s Schools for Africa Club presents UNICEF with a cheque for 13,930 having hosted a slew of events including Trick-or-Treat for Unicef, fundrasing involving the local business community, cupcake sales, a coin drive contest and Hunger Slumber — a 30-hour fast and fun-filled sleepover.

Mubasher Faruki (left), a BCIT automotive foundation instructor, and Steve Morrey (right), president of the North Shore Automall present Carlo Milano, a graduate of Carson Graham’s BCIT Automotive program, with a $1,200 scholarship. Milano is now ready to go on to an apprenticeship.

MEMBERS of West Vancouver secondary’s chapter of the Willing Hearts International Society of Canada raised $1,900 for the African country Chad. The funds have supplied a school with 91 desks, as well as tables, chairs and benches.

MEMBERS of the Canadian Iranian Foundation present Judy Savage (fourth from the left), president of the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation, with a cheque for $3,000.

MEMBERS of the Bodwell Eco-Action Team receive a cheque for $1,000 for winning the BC Hydro Community Champion award, which recognizes not-for-profit organizations in the province that support sustainability, conservation and environmental initiatives.

CITY of North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussato collects a cheque for $850,000 from former North Vancouver-Lonsdale MLA Katherine Whittred to invest in public safety initiatives and assist the community in becoming carbon neutral. The money comes from the province’s Strategic Community Investment Fund and the Climate Action Revenue Incentive Program.

HELEN Vanee, (centre), chair of the West Vancouver Community Foundation, presents a cheque of over $40,000 in grants to various recipients including Simon Myara, (centre right), representing the Canucks Autism Network Society.