It’s time to review our finalists for 2011 Agency of the Year. To find out which of our top 10 shops takes top honours, pick up the January 2012 issue of Marketing.
Sid Lee
Breakneck growth, huge wins, but staying the same to its creative ethos
“How big can we get before we get bad?” That was the famous question posed by Jay Chiat when pondering the rapid growth of his eponymous agency in its heyday. The problem is a real one for any fast-growing agency annointed with a “hot shop” label.
Sid Lee has been one of the hottest agencies in Canada—hell, maybe even the world—for a few years now. But when asked about Chiat’s famous quote and the challenges of managing rapid growth, Sid Lee president Jean-Francois Bouchard is unequivocal. “I think this is bullshit,” he says. And looking back at the past 12 months for the Montreal-based creative atelier, which has always prided itself on a unique take on creativity, it would seem he has a point. Sid Lee remains very, very good, adding more global clients, opening new offices, increasing revenue by 60% and headcount by nearly 50%.
“The problem is as a company grows, instead of focusing on nurturing their innovation, they become complacent and focus on process and bureaucratic stuff,” says Bouchard. Not so at Sid Lee.
The biggest win of the year was undoubtedly Dell, a months-long pitch against 40 other agencies, including some of the biggest in the world. “We felt like an underdog,” says Bouchard.
“What was really exciting about [the win] was it sort of confirmed that we do have a fairly distinct point of view, and if we can get a big U.S. client to embrace what we stand for, it means that the possibilities are pretty exciting.”
But as big as winning Dell was, Bouchard estimates the technology company only represents about a third of the agency’s growth this year.
Other new international clients include Fatboy, Vitamin Water, Dom Pérignon, IMAX and AFC Ajax (if you’re Dutch or a soccer fan, this is a big deal). Here at home it added Canadian Tire’s new sporting goods business (the Forzani integration) and the biggest brand in UFC, George St. Pierre. After opening in Toronto last fall, Sid Lee moved south, setting up its first U.S. office in Austin, Tex., to service Dell (look for another American location soon). To fuel all that growth, the agency now has 524 staff—up from 356 a year ago. Toronto alone went from zero to 40 in 12 months.
Bouchard says the partners (more than 20 of them) felt they were building to this point over the last few years and believed that once they broke onto the world stage, things would really take off. But he also admits that growth in 2011 was “faster than we expected.”
“But instead of playing it safe, we ended up upping the ante.”
What exactly does upping the ante mean for Sid Lee? After Adidas effectively moved all its business their way, the agency integrated all of its sub-brands into the big, brash, sexy “All In” global platform. “It was a very bold thing because it has never been done in sports,” says Bouchard. It launched in Q1 and sales spiked.
There’s more! To read the full story in the Dec. 12 issue of Marketing, subscribe today.
