Thirteen years in, the partner-owned Toronto brand and marketing agency argues that most briefs describe symptoms rather than problems, and that the work of telling them apart is where the value sits.
Naming the Discipline
Most agencies describe their strength as creative, or strategy, or performance. Art & Science names something narrower and more useful: problem framing. The Toronto agency describes its capability as identifying and explaining the tensions in complex situations to surface the underlying issues, and it treats that as the work that everything else depends on.
Anyone who has commissioned agency work will recognize why this matters. A client arrives asking for a website refresh when the actual issue is that the proposition is unclear, or for a campaign when the problem is that the sales process loses people at the third step. An agency that takes the brief at face value produces competent work that does not move anything. One of the firm’s eighteen published rules for creative problem solving puts it plainly: solve problems, not symptoms.
The name follows the same logic. The firm describes bringing the creative exploration of the artist together with the methodical discipline of the scientist, or as its about page frames it, art asks why and science answers how.
Owner-Operated and Deliberately Mid-Sized
The agency has been in business for thirteen years and is owned and managed by its two principals, Spencer Saunders, president, partner and founder, and Adam Green, vice president and partner.
That structure shapes the proposition. The firm describes itself as small enough to be agile and big enough to move the needle, and positions its ability to scale as a feature rather than a limitation: it can offer white-glove service or a fast-track solution, working to whatever the project genuinely requires rather than to a fixed engagement model.
For a mid-sized Canadian business, this is frequently the practical question. A large holding-company agency may assign a junior team to an account of modest size, while a very small shop may lack the range to deliver across brand, web and campaign work. An owner-operated agency of this scale sits between those outcomes, and the founders remaining directly involved is the substance behind the claim.
Work Across Three Service Lines
The practice covers brand and strategy, website development, and marketing campaigns, and the published case work shows genuine range within each.
On brand, the agency has worked with the global cymbal manufacturer Sabian on a digital transformation around music and entertainment, and with Revera to develop a brand position for the senior living market. On website development, its work includes projects for the plastic surgery provider GraceMed and the debt-relief firm Farber, the latter built around telling the truth about debt rather than simply promoting solutions.
The firm will often be engaged to “right-size” digital solutions for clients. With the explosion of new tools for building, maintaining and integrating digital technology into business and customer experiences, it’s hard for some clients in the mid-market to know what they actually need.
“Many of our clients are large enough to need more sophisticated or custom solutions for their customer experiences, but aren’t yet at a point where “capital E” Enterprise systems make sense,” says President Spencer Saunders. That’s where their years of experience and awareness of the evolving ecosystem of tools adds value.
“We aren’t interested in pushing one solution—we’re interested in solving problems to help businesses scale, but doing that in a way that balances the costs and the benefits”, says Saunders.
Credentials and a Product of Its Own
The firm holds a substantial set of platform certifications, including Google Premier Partner status, Meta Certified Marketing Developer, Microsoft Advertising search certification, and partner designations with WP Engine, Storyblok and Netlify. Its award record includes recognition from Clutch, a 2024 WP Engine award for headless project of the year, and Communicator, ICSC, IAC and AVA awards.
The agency is candid about how it ranks these, noting that awards are welcome but that what matters most is improving market share, revenue and brand affinity.
It has also built a product. Lokum, offered as a separate brand, provides cost-effective marketing for multi-location businesses. This is a sensible move for a services firm: multi-location marketing is a repeatable problem, and productizing it allows the agency to serve clients whose budgets would not support a full custom engagement.
The Case for Framing Before Execution
Marketing budgets at Canadian small and medium businesses are under real scrutiny, and the pressure is usually toward measurable performance activity over strategy work that is harder to attribute.
That pressure is understandable and sometimes misdirected. Performance spend applied to an unclear proposition buys traffic that does not convert, which is why the agency’s own published insight asks whether a website should be optimized for traffic or for leads. The discipline of establishing what the problem actually is, before committing budget to solving it, is not a luxury item.
For owners engaging any agency, the transferable question is simple enough: did they accept the brief as written, or did they interrogate it first? The second is more uncomfortable and considerably more likely to produce work that changes something.
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