When creating a campaign for toilet paper, paper towel and tissue maker Kruger Products, Broken Heart Love Affair got right to the point: Paper products are meant to clean up messes. Ads showed bloody noses, crying at funerals and plenty of kid-made sloppiness backed by Rag'n'Bone Man’s song “Human.” The effort led to market share gains and rising sales. Take that, Charmin Bears. Real-life humans were also at the center of a campaign the Toronto-based shop did for travel agency brand Internova Travel Group, whose business model is based on concierge-style travel bookings. An online video mocked algorithm-based booking sites by showing a creepy android figure plugging an underwhelming vacation spot. The tagline: “Don’t let a machine choose your vacation. Go Human. Book Human.”

See all of Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency Award winners here.

The breakthrough creativity is a product of the agency’s business model that guarantees its most senior, talented members work directly on client campaigns. “We have always found it odd that the only creative field to retire their top-performing talent to administrative positions was advertising,” the shop says. Clients agree: The agency already has more than 20 of them, including Four Seasons Hotels, Hershey Co., WW and the Royal Ontario Museum. But the agency wants to manage its growth to maintain its excellence. It uses a “managed scarcity model” under which it limits the number of clients each of its groups works on, which it calls “pods.” 

“We are only able to work so many hours a day, especially as creative people,” it says. Which sounds very human.

See all of Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency Award winners here.