By Larry Coffman
Another landmark of the local marcomm community has disappeared!
Hard on the heels of the assimilation of venerable Cole & Weber into Wunderman Thompson (see Ad Age: Added Angst! post), equally esteemed Hornall Anderson has been folded into Sid Lee, a creative agency now with U.S. shops here and in New York and Los Angeles, as well Toronto, Paris and Montreal, where it was founded in 1993.
The “heads up” on the major move came in a terse email on Dec. 28 informing me that Hornall Anderson would become Sid Lee, as of Jan. 1, would not be participating in the 2020 digital MARKETING LINK and would get back to me “in the coming weeks.” However, from sources with knowledge of the situation, I was able to piece together the following picture.
Hornall Anderson was owned by holding company Ominicom, who sold it to kyu when the once-robust design agency had shrunk to 37 staffers in its Seattle office and another 13 in New York City. Tokyo-based kyu describes itself as “a collective of (now nine) strategically curated creative organizations.” of which once-Seattle-based Digital Kitchen also is a member, along with Sid Lee.
The leadership team displayed on the kyu website lists Jack Anderson. Hornall Anderson chairman/co-founder, and Jeff Alpen, Hornall Anderson CEO, among “Our Leaders,” along with Kim Clarke, CFO of Digital Kitchen.
According to Jack Anderson’s MARKETING IMMORTALS bio, he and John Hornall in 1982 co-founded Hornall Anderson, which grew into “an eclectic group of 160 individuals” located in Seattle and London (and later, New York City). The agency’s blue-ribbon client list has included the likes of Starbucks, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, Weyerhaeuser, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Virgin Atlantic and too many others to list here. Click HERE to read Jack’s full bio and Commentary.
The Hornall Anderson story is told in a hardback book, published in 2012, titled Happy Accidents • Hornall Anderson: Three Decades of Design and Discovery, It’s jam-packed with reproductions of work done by the agency over the decades. The foreword is written by Howard Schultz, who explains “why Hornall Anderson continues to play an important role in so many things Starbucks has done over the years.”
In the Introduction, Jack writes: “John and I started simply enough. We wanted to indulge our curiosity and a shared belief in the power of design to elevate brands. We surrounded ourselves with artists, adventurers, thinkers and clients that, like us, were comfortable feeling uncomfortable, and agreed that different was good.
“Inside our small Seattle office, some beautiful things began to unfold. We collaborated. We invented. We honored failures as we soaked up the entrepreneurial spirit of the Northwest. We embraced new technologies, but only as a means to an end. Our teams explored, asked tough questions and broke down barriers. As a result, we made new connections that changed the way we, our clients and their customers viewed the world.” If you don’t have a copy, treat yourself in this New Year and go online buy a copy.
Stand by for further details—in the coming weeks!
Pub. Note: Thanks to fellow IMMORTAL Bill Fritsch, a former exec with Digital Kitchen, for this email with further background on Sid Lee.