Last month, news broke that Dhaval Bhatt, Joel Holtby and Niki Sahni, top execs from celebrated independent Canadian agency Rethink, were departing to open a new creative shop, backed by another top agency in the country, No Fixed Address. Today, they unveiled their new company’s name and m.o.: Courage.

Co-founders and Chief Creative Officers Bhatt and Holtby and President and Partner Sahni will be at the helm of the independent, owner-operated creative shop, backed by NFA Inc. and its co-founders Dave Lafond and Serge Rancourt. They say the new agency’s moniker serves as shorthand for its offerings—as well as its goals when it comes to clients. 

“Very simply, Courage is a one-word business model,” Bhatt said. “Hire people who show courage, find clients who want courage and do work that takes courage.”

Holtby added, “We love Courage as a name because it offers instant clarity to anyone who hears it on who we are and what we’re about to do. Right off the hop, it creates a shorthand that lets us get to breakthrough work faster and in a more fun way.”

Courage adds to NFA Inc.'s growing collective of marketing services across North America and globally, which span advertising, health, digital products, performance marketing and media planning and buying. The company has seen impressive growth over the last year and in 2021 saw its overall North American revenue jump 100%, fueled largely by NFA Health as well as the massive success of its U.S. creative agency, Mischief, which recently earned the honor of Ad Age’s Agency of the Year.

“The No Fixed Address model is actually very simple—but impossible to achieve without the right people,” Lafond said. “We listen to what clients want and build around their needs. What started as one creative shop six years ago has evolved into an integrated marketing collective we call ‘The Grid.’ This houses services that span media, digital products, design, PR, production, and health. All of our agencies have access to ‘The Grid.’ Courage will be no different.”

Although the company will be based in Toronto, “as we have learned over the pandemic, that’s no longer keeping us from delivering great work anywhere in the world,” said Sahni. “We’re engaged in conversations with brands on both sides of the border.”

The shop’s leaders say they’ve already been working on projects for global brands that can’t yet be disclosed. As for the kind of work to expect from the company, clients can look to the founders’ previous “courageous” projects.  Courage founders’ previous shop Rethink, a former Ad Age Creative Agency of the Year, is known for its inventive ideas for the likes of Heinz, Ikea and Molson Coors.

Bhatt, who was recently named a finalist as Creative Director of the Year at Ad Age's Creativity Awards, cites as one of his favorite projects the “Make it Canadian” case for Molson Canadian, which sold competitors’ beer in the brand’s own boxes in order to get Canadians to support all Canadian brew brands (instead of those from America).

Holtby, a former Creativity Awards Creative Director of the Year honoree, points out previous work on Heinz, such as the “Draw Ketchup” campaign or the earlier “Pour Perfect” push that messed with the label on the condiment’s iconic bottle to show how consumers can best get ketchup out of the vessel. They're all “great examples of courage-led work finding its way into cultural conversations,” Holtby said.

And then, there’s a more thoughtful project for Scotiabank, “Hockey for All,” which called out racism in the country’s most popular sport. “For a bank to take on the role of driving cultural change by directly pointing out the racism plaguing the game it is so heavily invested in takes real courage,” Sahni said.