The Team

Fisheye was founded by Jo-Ann McArthur and Andreas Duess.

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Cartoon by Hugh McLeod

We had been observing, independently from each other, that the way people were communicating not only with their peers, but also with brands was changing and that the old marketing models were rapidly becoming irrelevant.

What was of concern to both of us was that these changes were almost 100% consumer driven. Most marketing agencies seemed to be at best ignoring them, at worst they were openly hostile to anything that challenged the status quo.

It became increasingly clear to both of us that if we wanted to work for a company that acknowledges and works within these new and emerging structures in a way that made sense for our clients, we’d have to start it ourselves.

A mutual friend introduced us in the early summer of 2008 and soon after we launched fisheye.

Who is Jo-Ann McArthur?

“I’ve always been fascinated in why people do the things they do and then how to influence and change that behaviour – I guess I’m a bit of a cultural voyeur. Most of my career has been spent on the client side building brands with consumers and retailers at companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Molson, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and Cadillac Fairview.

As President of Molson Sports and Entertainment I had one of the best jobs in the country – and amazing Leaf hockey tickets. Tell any man or teenaged boy what my job was and their eyes would light up. Beer, music and sports.

Sometimes great companies have a larger role to play in times of crisis. I led the Molson “Sarstock” concert up in Downsview Park that successfully relaunched Toronto on the world stage. Post 9-11 there was no playbook to follow and we only had 8 weeks to pull it off. One of my favourite quotes is “luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. Through our racing, broadcast and concert division we had the expertise to pull this off. Definitely a career highlight looking out from the stage while AC/DC and the Rolling Stones played to a small city of 500,000 sunburned, happy people. I spent 8 weeks in a trailer in the middle of nowhere eating timbits, drinking double doubles and swearing way too much, but it was great! (And I eventually lost the 10 pounds I gained.)

One of my strengths has been making the complex simple – diving into the detail and finding and focusing on the 2 or 3 things that will truly move your business ahead and make you remarkable. And to simplify and focus often means choosing until it hurts!

After 5 years with Molson I moved to the agency side of the business as President & COO for Canada’s premier branding and design agency with clients that included Tim Horton’s, Kraft, General Mills, Shopper’s Drug Mart, Molson, Debbie Travis, Canadian Tire, Pfizer, Danone, Corby’s, ITL.
In my spare time I also was Founding Chair of the Sponsorship Marketing Council of Canada, in cooperation with the Association of Canadian Advertisers. I continue to design and teach courses for the Association of Canadian Advertisers, including their Fundamentals of Branding & Design program and also their Sponsorship program.

Giving back to my community is also important to me. I currently serve as President of the Empire Club of Canada – North America’s oldest speakers’ forum of record – for the 2008-09 Season, and also serve as a board member for Variety – The Children’s Charity and ABC Literacy.

Like Andreas, I was frustrated with agencies that claimed to be communication agnostic, but never actually behaved that way. I also came to realize that the way I’d built businesses and brands in the past no longer worked, even though most people still had their head down hoping it would all go away. This has to be a better way and I believe we are finding it!”

Who is Andreas Duess?

“I am originally from Germany. In highschool I planned on being either a psychoanalyst or an artist, but doing an internship in a small local ad agency showed me that there was a way to combine those two interests. Soon after I moved to London, UK, where I got a job as a junior art director for Ogilvy & Mather, working with a writer called Matthew Kahn whose regular partner was on maternity leave.

Matthew was in his 50’s, a big man from New York City who used to take three hour lunches and drink a bottle of red each day. Matthew turned into a great and, giving his gruff exterior, surprisingly kind mentor, showing me the ropes and stopping me from making a fool of myself on more than one occasion. We did most of our thinking walking around Soho, sitting in pubs and cafes, observing life. We did some great work together, mostly for American Express and for the Royal Mail.

Fast forward twelve years and three agencies and I was the Creative Director for Banner, an agency within the Young and Rubicam network specializing in clients in the technology sector. Those were the dotcom boom years and we worked with a lot of Silicon Valley people and companies who were shaping the online world. My favourite client during that time was Cisco Systems, who had international presence and an adventurous spirit, allowing us to create work for them that was both creative and effective.

I’ve always had strong personal connections to Toronto and by 2004 my then girlfriend, now wife, and I decided to make the move to Canada. This was at about the same the time when I started observing a change in how the world worked, how the ways we were building connections with friends and brands was fundamentally shifting. I’ve always been a fan of the Cluetrain Manifesto and it looked like the predictions it made in 1999 were finally coming together.

Tools like WordPress, mySpace and blogger started to emerge, enabling a mass conversation without the involvement of mass media.

Here in Toronto I worked with another industry great, Allen Massey, for a number of years. We caused international waves with our Yale Schmale campaign for Lakehead University, even prompting calls to the White House, and sold some pretty groundbreaking thinking to Ramada Hotels. The next step for me was to start fisheye with Jo-Ann and here we are today. You can see a portfolio of my work by visiting me at duess.com.”

Who is Gracie?

gracie“I am Gracie and I am fisheye’s head of PR. Which means, I keep fisheye’s relationships with the public happy, even with postmen, although that’s not always easy for me.

Jo-Ann, who takes care of me, had the hardest time accepting that I have even more friends than she does, but I think she’s over it now.

I am two years old, I love hanging out at the cottage, kayaking and playing with my duck. I work for belly rubs.

Sometimes I get into trouble for sniffing the garbage at the office, especially if I find and eat the old coffee grounds. I mean, surely they should be thankful that I am recycling what they don’t need, right?”