TAKING THE PULSE with Allegra Wiesenfeld & Reid Plaxton

2023 Applied Arts Advertising Awards Multiple award-winning campaign Major Debt led by Allegra Wiesenfeld & Reid Plaxton for client Student Debt Crisis Centre.

The multi-category Applied Arts Advertising Awards-winning No Fixed Address creative duo, Allegra Wiesenfeld and Reid Plaxton share their creative process, inspiration and more in an exclusive Q+A with Applied Arts.

Winning is nothing new to this team. In fact, Allegra and Reid have been successfully winning awards since they were students at Humber College. Together, their work has earned them recognition as Young Blood winners since 2020 while at TAXI Canada. Let's find out what makes this team thrive.

What is your creative process?

For us, we start with the ridiculous version of an idea and then see how far we can build it up. Usually, those are ideas solely based on a pun or the most outlandish “what if?” to make the other person laugh. Most of it is trash right off the bat, but there’s always something in there that we end up going – ok, but what if what if?

What is the most difficult piece you worked on? What were the challenges?

Right in the middle of COVID, when anything IRL was still a no-go, we were looking for interesting, socially-distanced and low-budget ways to promote Volkswagen’s electric lineup. We came up with the concept to generate Spotify Wrapped results for VW that showcased the brand’s all-electric narrative. We didn’t want to fake or photoshop the results, so our biggest challenge was figuring out how to produce them organically.

We began with a massive playlist of songs that highlighted VW’s investment in electric vehicles – which prompted a lot of internal debate. We didn’t know what Wrapped would showcase this year except for Top Song (it ended up being the year of Your Audio Aura). We even called up Spotify to get some insider info, but they weren’t talking, so we had to play the field a bit when it came to song titles, genres, artists and podcasts. Once we had our playlist, we streamed it on loop. For a year. There was a collective sigh of relief when Wrapped came out, and even the unpredictable categories lattered up to electric.

What is the project you are most proud of? What was your creative process?

A recent one that meant a lot to us was #DearTerry, the 2023 Terry Fox Run campaign for the Terry Fox Foundation (TFF). We grew up learning the story of Terry and running for Terry, but when we got the brief we spent about a week pouring over Douglas Coupland’s book, “Terry”, and learned so much more about Terry Fox. It had so many photos, artifacts and details that fueled our brainstorms. The catalyst for #DearTerry came from a quote in the book, “before there was email, there was simply mail, and Terry Fox probably received more mail than anybody in Canadian history.” This gave us the idea to inspire Canadians to keep running by leveraging their own words to Terry. The TFF dug up thousands of letters from the archives, and from there we built a design system that honoured the letters in a modern way. 

We’re really proud of this because we saw its effects in real life – not just in impressions and logos. It’s still a bit of a thrill to spot someone wearing a #DearTerry shirt in the wild. My mom texted me that she teared up while walking by one of the posters. We teared up watching interviews from the run. We’re so lucky to have been able to work on such an incredible cause.

How has winning Applied Arts Awards impacted your business?

It’s been awesome over the years to be recognized by Applied Arts and see our work alongside Canadian pieces that we’ve admired and have inspired us. The Applied Arts advertising network is vast, and it’s great to have that exposure. Even on the flip-side, we’ve found some incredible talent to work with through Applied Arts – we found the artist Amanda Arlotta (who did an amazing Audi print for us) through her work in the 2020 Illustration Annual. 

Who is your creative hero?

REID: As corny as it is, I’d probably say my brother. Growing up, most of the career options presented to me weren't of a creative nature. My brother was the first in our family to deviate and find a profession where you can draw and create (he’s an architect). I found this really inspirational. It’s what made me look at different avenues and how I, ultimately became an art director.

ALLEGRA: Not sure about an all-time creative hero, but I just finished Moon Tiger and the author, Penelope Lively, is my fixation of the moment. I think the power to tell a story so meaningfully and effectively that it gives you full faith in the writer’s craft – this one so much that it got me ordering her recent memoir of gardens – is hero status.

2023 Applied Arts Advertising Awards Multiple award winning campaign Faster Food by Allegra Wiesenfeld & Reid Plaxton campaign for client Door Dash.

How do you stay inspired?

Back when we were ad students at Humber, we spent a lot of time flipping through physical ad annuals for inspiration, and it’s a tradition we’ve kept up throughout our years. When we’re in the office and looking for a spark, hunting through annuals for the weird stuff people sold through is a lot more fun than entering a doom scroll on TikTok. 

Congratulations to Le Team Allegra and Reid shown above.