It is conventional for agencies to grow by entering other markets, and for those same agencies to claim bragging rights based on the number of offices they have around the world. Rethink opened its Vancouver office in 1999, Toronto in 2010 and Montreal in 2015. But rather than be seen as a company with offices in three cities, each one focused on local clients, Rethink sought to be viewed as a unified entity.

The pandemic accelerated that ambition. Realizing that Zoom had virtually eliminated geographical barriers, Rethink began to look at resource allocation in a very different way.

“When Chris Staples, Tom Shepansky and Ian Grais founded the company, they wanted Rethink to be an alternative to the typical wheel-spinning, stressful agency culture,” explains national CCO and managing partner Aaron Starkman. “The pandemic has really allowed Rethink to realize that original vision.”

Now that geography has evaporated, teams are no longer built around location but around the ideal mix of skills for a particular challenge. It’s common for there to be a meeting with a creative director and a strategy team from one city and a creative team from another, allowing them to look at their entire roster of Rethinkers to determine who’s perfect for a particular project.

And it’s working. For the third time in just as many years, Rethink nabbed three 2021 Agency of the Year medals. While the shop typically takes home two Golds and a Silver across Agency, Design and Digital, this is the first time it stacked all three bases and hit a home run with a Gold in each of the categories.