Holmes & Lee = Reason Partners

“Hey, whatever happened to Holmes & Lee?”

That very question was asked by us at the ihaveanidea offices sometime last week. We were going through the old interviews in the Creatives section, and stumbled across one with John Lee, then the president of the  Toronto based agency. We started reminiscing about their Weather Network billboard campaign, which was racking up Lions, Clios, Pencils and others when the ihaveanidea originals were just starting to think about ad school.

Well by coincidence, a story came through in Marketing Magazine, announcing that Holmes & Lee is sans Lee, and has just rebranded themselves as Reason Partners. with a new “cell” model that puts emphasis on three key areas: planning, technology and creative advertising.

“Holmes and Lee had a more or less flat, traditional structure. It operated on strategic creative and wasn’t too different from anyone else out there,” Holmes said. “The cells structure puts the most important disciplines together at the beginning.”

In particular, because digital technologies have evolved so rapidly in recent years, Holmes saw a need to move employees with online expertise earlier into the marketing process. “Creative should work hand-in-hand with technology and strategic planning,” he said.

Catch the entire piece right here.

Welcome back Peter!