Two former Postmedia executives launched a new startup Tuesday offering digital services to agencies.
Steve Buors
Instead of working directly with clients, Reshift Media will partner with agencies that excel in traditional marketing to provide SEO, social media and mobile services, according to Reshift co-founder and CEO Steve Buors. Buors was senior vice-president of digital media strategy at Postmedia until April of this year.
Though Buors declined to say which agencies Reshift is partnering with, one industry heavyweight has already offered a stamp of approval. Former M2 Universal president Hugh Dow will sit on Reshift’s board of directors and helped fund the agency.
Buors, who co-founded Reshift with COO and former Postmedia executive vice-president of advertising sales Kirk Allen, said the pair met with over 20 agencies before launching the business to discuss their services and business plan.
Kirk Allen
“What we were seeing were agencies of record with long standing relationships with clients that weren’t necessarily able to provide digital services,” Buors said. Instead, those clients turned to smaller shops that focus on a single area of digital marketing, such as SEO or social, to handle those aspects of their marketing, he said.
Instead of competing to handle accounts directly, Buors and Allen decided to work with agencies to help them deliver digital services to their clients.
The staff at Reshift is largely comprised of former Postmedia employees who followed Buors and Allen to the agency. Carly Steven, an SEO specialist at Postmedia and the Daily Mail in the U.K., is now vice-president of SEO at Reshift. Mahmoud Ghali, a former mobile development manager at Postmedia, is vice-president of technology. Jen McDonnell, former managing editor of the Postmedia-held Dose.ca, also joined Reshift as vice-president of content, as did Postmedia senior art director Sara Atrvash, now vice-president of creative.
