Customer Spotlight: Kihada Advertising

Our next customer spotlight is on Kihada Advertising, a local and independent creative agency with additional locations in Toronto and Seattle. Kihada has a wealth of expertise in many industries ranging from film to cannabis (marijuana).

We caught up with René Quijada, Kihada’s Art Director, to chat about their journey so far:

1) Tell me a little about Kihada and what you stand for.

We're an advertising agency, who started with print and package design, but mostly catalogues. Our core is to develop a brand from the ground up and help position them in the marketplace or offer a refresh or rebranding to companies that have been established for a while.

We started building our expertise in website development over twenty years ago when they weren’t as much of a requirement for brands, which was a bit of a risk for us. We invested a lot of time and money in understanding, optimizing, and creating the right websites. Since then, we have been one of the first agencies to start offering SEO services, website optimization, backlinks, and all of that, which made us stand out.

We were one of the first agencies to start working with cannabis (marijuana) clients around six or seven years ago. At the time, we were doing a lot of cosmetic lines for international clients looking to launch in Canada when we started being approached by companies selling CBD cosmetic products. Once we began assisting these brands in developing their cosmetic lines, we moved to the government and legal side of CBD products. These companies looked to us to create their brand, ensure they were government-approved, and follow 100% compliance. As it was so early in the industry, we got all the information we needed first-hand from the government, which took a while! However, it allowed us to confidently fill in the gaps for our clients and be a huge resource to them.

At Kihada, we're lucky enough to work with a range of clients from many different industries. So, it's all about getting to know our clients and figuring out a custom solution from there.

2) How did Kihada manage through the pandemic?

The first month and a half was a bit of a panic; we had clients calling us and cancelling contracts, but we had a feeling it was going to be temporary. However, it didn’t take long for us to get calls back! We got extremely busy, especially for our clients in essential industries.

Covid brought everyone home and online, and on their phones, so online development became a big focus for us, in addition to helping brands develop and adjust.

3) What are you most proud of as a company?

The ability to come up with unique concepts and ideas for our clients. Like any agency, we must be consistently on top of the market and offer custom solutions to our clients that will work in an ever-changing market.

I'm also proud that we only work with top providers and vendors, and we have a top crew.

4) How would you describe your relationship with ALP?

We've been working with Associated for ten years now, I think. We’re so grateful to them for educating us and helping us through the process with the marijuana industry. They act as a partner to us and consistently deliver. We’ve had instances where we’re having a label printed, and a percentage may be slightly off, and Associated always catches it and figure out a way to get it redone.

5) What are you currently working on, and what are you excited about in the next few years?

Recently, we've been expanding into film and ad campaigns for TV commercials, which is exciting. The newest things we’re talking to our clients about are NFTs and cryptocurrency, which is a new wave in our industry, and there’s definitely money to be made on merchandising.

We're always looking at what is current, always learning, and always teaching our clients!