Draft:Aasman (agency)

Introduction

Aasman Brand Communications Inc. is a Yukon-based marketing agency, connecting strategy, creative and media. Rooted in Whitehorse, Aasman has been working in and across Canada’s North since 1989.

Leadership history

2017 to present Owners and Partners: Corey Bradbury and Zeke Aasman

1996 to 2007 Owners and Partners: Al Aasman, Margriet Aasman and Trevor Sellars

1989 to 1996 Owners and Partners: Al Aasman and Margriet Aasman

Services

Aasman Brand Communications offers a full range of marketing services including destination marketing, social marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing, behaviour-change campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), website design and building, branding and design.

Clients

Aasman’s client base includes commercial, corporate, government – including First Nations governments, institutional, educational and not-for-profit clients across Northwestern Canada, Alaska, British Columbia and beyond.

The company has had many longstanding working relationships in the North including Agency of Record for the following:

• Yukon Energy

• Wilderness Tourism Association of the Yukon (WTAY)

• Tourism Yukon

• Northwestel

Company history

With backgrounds in journalism and illustration, Albert and Margriet Aasman moonlighted for several years doing freelance graphic design. A small job for a friend at Renewable Resources in the summer of 1989 required that Al and Margriet have a business license. That license required a name. Aasman Design was born.

While work was coming in, the two had little of the studio equipment necessary in those days to produce print-ready materials. Dave Robertson, publisher of the Yukon News, gave the couple a key to the front door and a steno pad to mark down what they used. Most weeknights between 9 pm and midnight found Al roaming the Yukon News premises, using the Linotype phototypesetter, photocopier and the room-sized PMT camera to make half-tone prints. Next day, Margriet cut and pasted the various bits and pieces at the kitchen table, adding overlays, rubyliths and registration marks until she had camera-ready layouts.

By the end of the year, Robertson had sold them a second-hand Apple Macintosh SE (with dual floppy drives!) plus a scanner and external 20MB hard drive. For an outlay of $10,000.00, Aasman Design entered the computer age.

In the spring of 1996, the company incorporated and took on a third partner, Trevor Sellars, who had been with Queen’s Printer for the Government of Yukon. Later that year, Aasman Design Inc. moved into brand new premises at 402 Hanson Street with a staff of six. It now presented as an advertising agency rather than a graphic design shop.

A major internal brand initiative in 2005–2006 shed light on the agency’s preferred type of work: working out a meaningful understanding of clients’ brands, then articulating and advancing them in communications work. They signalled their changed focus with a shift in name to Aasman Brand Communications in 2007.

In 2008, company ownership changed hands to Zeke Aasman and Corey Bradbury, although Al Aasman remains with the company on a contract basis. The company remained at 402 Hanson Street until November of 2024 when the business relocated to the Waterfront Building on Second Avenue.

Location

Aasman is located in Whitehorse, Yukon in the Waterfront Building: 250 – 2237 Second Avenue.

Memberships

Aasman is a member in good standing of the Trans-Canada Advertising Agency Network (T-CAAN), an association of independent Canadian advertising agencies.

External Links

Official site of Aasman