Chris Williams

I’ve been working in the online space since about 1994 when the first thing we did was with Chrysler and TVO. At that time TVO had set up a BBS system (First Class) that allowed a community of about 5000 people to log on, chat and share files. Dan Hill (now at CBC) and I developed a downloadable Director file that told people Chrysler was a having a Christmas sale but first they had to shake the snowglobe. We also had an ad in the Toronto Star classifieds that drove people to the “site”.

After that, there were floppy disk projects and kiosks. Then the day arrived when we convinced Ann Boden to let us set up a separate division and get on the internet. Our first project, Miss Vickie’s potato chips, featured an image map which allowed the user to browse different stories found found inside an image of Miss Vickie’s rolltop desk. From there we leapt up to the big league with a huge website for Miller Brewing Red Dog beer. This was a major undertaking that had a content management system, dynamic content based on which sex you signed up as, 4 real audio radio stations, QuickTime VR as you virtually travelled down Route 66. That was 1996.

Between then and the winter of 2001 was the wild ride of the first internet craze. We worked on Chapters (now part of Indigo), Webpersonals (now Lavalife), Ontario government business, Kanetix, Pepsi, and AlphaBits plus many others. Then the internet money starting to dry up and Nortel began to plummet. Meanwhile BBDO was not attracting new business and had lost some key clients. I was in the first wave of layoffs (there were 3 altogether) as BBDO retrenched into its core business.

Luckily I quickly found a new home at Vickers and Benson Direct and Interactive (VBDI) which lasted until 2004 when I transferred over to Media Contacts. Media Contacts opened its doors in Canada in 2005 with Yann LeRoux at the helm fresh from France. I took over as managing director in 2006 as Yann was called back to the mothership to direct the next iteration of Artemis – our proprietary data platform (which rocks BTW).