Rethink layoffs signal change in agency’s direction
April 29, 2011 | Eve Lazarus | Comments
This story has been updated.
Creative agency Rethink has laid off approximately one-quarter of its staff, letting go 22 people in its Vancouver office and one employee in Toronto.
Chris Staples, an agency partner and co-founder, said that while Rethink has not lost any accounts, some major clients have had cutbacks. By late in 2010, the agency reported a total headcount of 80 after opening a Toronto office and winning a number of new accounts. Staples said the agency had since peaked at 100 staffers – 79 in Vancouver and 21 in Toronto.
“The business is changing and what we are seeing is clients going through this huge digital shift and budgets being tight and mergers happening,” he said. “It’s just uncertain times.”
Staples said Rethink has gone through a major restructuring. “We were a traditional agency in Vancouver that dabbled in digital. Now we are a national agency with offices in Toronto and Vancouver, and we are a digital agency that does traditional, so it’s been a huge change,” said Staples.
Toronto is also becoming more central to the agency’s bottom line. “Within a year or two, the Toronto office will probably be bigger than the Vancouver office. You can see that’s where the fish are in Canadian marketing.”
Like many Canadian agencies, the company’s human resource needs are also in flux as new digital roles such as community managers, digital strategists and web developers are in demand. “Our clients are shifting in that direction and we are getting projects that we would never have got before.”
Last year Rethink won the SoloMobile.ca website account in both English and French, as well as accounts with Metro Newspapers, Egg Farmers of Canada, Muskoka Cottage Brewery, Toronto’s Eye Weekly, Post Media and Kraft Foods.
ALEX
These shifts have been happening forever. I was born and raised in an ad agency and this is normal. We have a propensity to think nothing will change and when it does we have to be cautiously optimistic. My glass is always half full of emptiness.
Friday, May 06 @ 8:32 am |
STIFF
Hey,
I think everyone needs to RETHINK all of their comments!! Hahahahaha
WOKKA WOKKA
Wednesday, May 04 @ 10:45 pm |
Blinker
Traditional agency going digital… at Rethink this is like taking an apple and painting it orange then calling it an orange. I’ve worked for web based agencies and I’ve worked for Rethink and I can tell you it was a complete kybosh at Rethink. However, as for the layoffs this is all just business as usual for an ad agency. There could be fallout from maybe poorly planned growth, economy based issues, clients changing priorities and perhaps an opportunity to clean house. Riddle me this… Rethink claims to be taking a stronger direction into the digital realm so why did they let go of people within their digital department. This is a great reminder that at the end of the day as much as your company would like you to believe you matter to them… you do not.
Tuesday, May 03 @ 12:20 am |
mk
Honestly, 5 years ago Chris Staples was telling anyone who’d listen that Digital was not the dominion of seasoned and educated Ad folks but was done by smelly anarchists in their basements…in fact I think he even referred to the internet and digital marketing as a fad. Is any of this surprising? I certainly dont wish this sort of reckoning on any agency, but to turn this into a “digital” story now is not only disingenuous but entirely laughable.
Monday, May 02 @ 2:15 pm |
Jon
I’m sure art directors and those in the copy department in the early 1940′s thought the same about TV. The funny thing is how history repeats itself and ultimately the consumer decides on what the medium is going to be. The dinosaurs and the ad snobs of this industry are quickly getting pushed out.
Monday, May 02 @ 10:55 pm