Rethink New York Marks Year of Growth with Promotion of Second Ever Employee

Little Black Book can exclusively reveal that Rethink New York is promoting Kate Naylor to head of client services, effective immediately. 

Kate joined Rethink in January 2023, as the second employee in the New York office, after CCO Daniel Lobaton. Over the past year, she’s played a major role in growing the New York outpost of the highly awarded Canadian-founded agency - there are now 30 local Rethinkers in New York. 

“I was the second Rethinker in New York, so the real highlight has been starting a brand new team in a new market,” Kate tells us. “It’s a unique opportunity to extend the Rethink footprint in a new country. We now have every department represented, and there’s an energy and buzz in the office because everyone shares the same excitement for building the agency together.

“I love working with Daniel,” she adds. “We’ve grown to become so comfortable with each other and have tremendous trust and mutual respect, which leads to good work. I love how much he pushes the work; he’s also one of the most strategic creative leaders I’ve worked with.”

Over the course of the last year, Kate says the team have felt fortunate to have a lot of conversations come their way thanks to Rethink’s reputation. That said, picking up the account for sound and music library platform Epidemic Sound felt like somewhat of a turning point because, says Kate, “It felt like we really had something of our own in New York that we could nurture and grow.”

That account led to Rethink New York’s recent ‘A Sound for Every Feeling’ campaign, which suggests that life is full of the kinds of visceral and specific feelings that just don’t fit into a digital search bar. So, they identified hundreds of specific feelings in New York, LA and London, and scored each one with the perfect track from Epidemic’s library. It marked the brand’s first campaign under its new tagline, ‘Feel It, Find It’, which aims to encourage creators to supercharge the emotional depth of their content by finding the perfect soundtrack on the Epidemic platform.

“I’ll also say that the pitching process at Rethink has been smoother and better than anything I’ve experienced,” says Kate. “We found our groove really quickly in our pitch teams. We’ve been able to simply lean into one another’s talents and strengths, and everyone’s able to find their role. I think that chemistry has come through in the pitch room where the clients could see and feel it too.”

With this new role, Kate and the wider Rethink team are guiding their focus on four key things. 

First up is finding their interpretation of the best talent in the industry and continue building a team of exceptional people. Diversity is really important to Kate - be it in experiences or backgrounds. “The cool thing about this stage of team building,” says Kate, “is that as we grow, we’re able to find one incredible person at a time who gets Rethink and is really excited about what we’re doing.”

Kate will also be ensuring that Rethink New York’s account management team is thriving. Her plan for doing this is making them feel like they're at the ‘heart of the agency’. “We want everyone who joins Rethink to feel like they’re doing the best work of their careers and to feel mentored and supported,” she adds.

Next up - unsurprisingly so considering Kate’s job title - is the clients. Because every client that Rethink New York works with is new, the team is taking a lot of time to nurture and build each relationship. “Our goal is to be really good client partners - we want to be trusted, strategic, empathetic partners who help with business and marketing goals.”

Finally, Kate is laser focused on Rethink’s core values, which have driven the agency from its birth in Canada in 1999 to become one of the world’s most awarded in recent years. “The values of making sure we are people first, that we lead with respect, that we’re relentless — that’s what sets us apart from a lot of agencies in New York and we’re going to protect those.”

“Kate is the embodiment of Rethink values,” concludes Caleb Goodman, global COO of Rethink. “She leads with empathy and respect for everyone on the team. She is relentless in her pursuit to solve problems so that we can aim for the highest standard in client relationship and creative output.”