Paul Little will step in as co-creative director and a senior copywriter at Sid Lee in Montreal, effective July 11.
Most recently CD at the agency formerly known as TBWA\Vancouver (now Station X Communications), a post he left in April to, as he said at the time “move on to the next stage of my career,” Little will be working on the Dell business at Sid Lee.
Philippe Meunier, creative chief and senior partner at Sid Lee, told Marketing his agency had been speaking with Little about the job for two or three months. “Moving a family across the country is a big decision – it’s not like you’re changing agencies from one side of King Street to Bloor Street,” said Meunier. “Leaving the Rockies is a big thing, but we have great wine. He loves red wine, so it’s perfect.”
This is not a replacement role at Sid Lee; the position was created because of the new business on Dell. “We’re basically doing everything for Dell on the consumer business,” said Meunier. “It’s a lot of work. We’ve been hiring a lot of creative on Dell so Paul is going to be supervising many creative teams.”
Those teams are split between Montreal and Toronto, so Little will work with both of them. “At least once a week we have a creative review [with our Toronto team] via Skype to make sure everyone is aligned on the work,” said Meunier.
The agency’s office in Austin doesn’t currently have a creative department, “but it’s something we will build a few months from now because we’re just starting to know the client, and after that we will probably move some creative team in the space,” added Meunier.
Commenting on why Little was the right person to join Sid Lee in his capacity, Meunier said the creative culture at the agency is very visually driven – Meunier’s own background is as an art director – and most of the people that lead the creative are either art directors or designers. It was time to shake things up a bit.
“There are only a few writers as creative directors, so for us it was a big change to have a new lead on copywriting,” he said. “I think it will bring more of the writing culture inside the agency and I was looking for that.
“Paul is open minded and really wants to embrace multidiscipline and break through boundaries, so he was the perfect casting for that.”
