Sid Lee Wins Dickies Account and Completes US Leadership Team

Global creative company Sid Lee announces a series of landmark client wins in sports and entertainment, including becoming the global agency of record for Dickies, and by finalising the core of its leadership team in the USA, with Melissa Palazzo-Hart and Nirm Shanbhag joining Sid Lee as chief operations officer and chief strategy officer. These fresh appointments and client relationships will propel Sid Lee forward with a renewed vigor in the American market.

Iconic performance workwear brand Dickies has chosen Sid Lee as its official creative partner to collaborate with and help propel a consistent global experience that engages consumers in new ways in over 100 countries. Other recent account triumphs for Sid Lee in the US include simplehuman, a designer and manufacturer of tools for efficient living, and joining the creative partner rosters of Warner Bros. Games, FC Cincinnati, Marvel, TNT’s Snowpiercer, lifestyle hospitality company SBE, and Cartessa Aesthetics, a disruptive aesthetic device company, to name a few.

Sid Lee USA’s new COO Melissa Palazzo-Hart brings over 20 years of experience building, scaling, and optimizing powerful businesses and brands. “Melissa’s energy, ambition and commercial creativity has enabled her to forge strong relationships with agencies, networks, studios, and a number of the world’s most prestigious brands,” said Andy Bateman, Sid Lee USA’s CEO.

CSO Nirm Shanbhag joins Sid Lee from Notch, a boutique strategy consultancy he founded over six years ago. He previously served as managing director of Interbrand, whose west-coast presence he built and grew by creating an experiential studio. “Nirm is one of the most driven, sharp, and strategic business minds I’ve worked with. He possesses a profound understanding of the emerging platform economy that’s already serving us well with our tech- and entertainment- based clients,” added Andy.

These new key members round out Sid Lee’s leadership team in the USA, which includes Jeff Alpen, managing director, Seattle and New York; Nicolas Van Erum, managing director, Los Angeles; and Cam Levin, chief creative officer.

“Our expansion in the US is borne from our understanding of what clients need from their creative partnerships. Since joining our collective, Andy has attracted top-tier talents and together, they’re reshaping Sid Lee in the USA to be a forward-thinking, digital-first creative company. The team has been able to quickly create critical momentum that’s resonating across our entire collective,” stated Bertrand Cesvet, CEO of Sid Lee Group.

Regarding the progress made since his arrival in late June 2019, Andy remarked, “We’ve really taken the time to understand what makes Sid Lee so special. This company is creative to its core, but expressing why that matters and applying it to our clients’ biggest problems is a constantly evolving challenge. We’re increasingly directing our creativity towards connected digital and physical customer experiences; driving commerce and transactional outcomes for a largely direct-to-consumer client base; and articulating the connection between our clients’ brands and their customers as communities of engaged fans and their role in building culture.”

Next up is an ambitious growth and expansion program that will enable Sid Lee to scale data analytics and predictive simulations in digital design and delivery, as well as in customer experience design. “It’s an exciting time at Sid Lee,” asserted Andy. “The opportunity to define what the next generation of a creative company could and should be is exhilarating. At the same time, we have to deliver on what our clients need now. Balancing these two priorities is key, and we don’t have a minute to waste!”