The beginning of some beautiful friendships

By Brent Long

The beginning of some beautiful friendships

My humble beginnings in this industry were served in the basement of what was then known as Consumers Gas (now Enbridge). Consumers had their own in-house graphics and printing department. Within a few years I was working the afternoon shift and doing everything from design, to dealing with clients, film imposition and making plates, and ensuring that the printers could run jobs when they came in first thing the next morning.

I made a lot of great friends in my eight years there, and a number of them were internal clients from “upstairs”. Fusion benefited from some of these relationships early on, specifically when Jayne Flinn Burton and Louise Evans approached Norm and I to help with their printed employee newsletter. This was our first big break. Our first major corporate client, and recurring work every two months. Jayne and Louise were great people to work with. We were very, very lucky to be awarded that project.

Our client relationships have usually become more like friendships, based on mutual respect, solving sometimes complex design challenges, and a win-win collaborative mentality.

That project, and those relationships, lead to other connections met through Enbridge contacts, including our first annual report for a gold mining company, and our introduction to Pam Graham and her team at Congress Canada, a conference and event management firm. Things picked up exponentially from that point. And these two types of clients (internal and external corporate comms and conference materials) became the foundation for (and majority of) the work that we would do for at least a decade, before shifting focus to corporate work specifically.

I’ve never been a really good sales person. Fusion has always focused on the people and the work, building relationships, enjoying the process, creating solutions, and having fun. Our client relationships have usually become more like friendships, based on mutual respect, solving sometimes complex design challenges, and a win-win collaborative mentality. Clients that have aligned with that type of relationship usually became long-time ambassadors for Fusion. And we’ve always gone the extra mile for our ambassadors. Because great clients lead to…