Formerly independent agency Sid Lee opened the doors to its Los Angeles office in early 2015, months before it was acquired by Japan’s Hakuhodo DY Holdings.
Now it has hired the first creative duo in the City of Angels.
Daniel Söderstedt and Jonny Leicht recently joined the agency as design director and creative director, respectively. Söderstedt had been design director at Mother in New York while Leicht started working with Sid Lee as a freelancer some months ago after working as a copywriter/ACD at Media Arts Lab, GS&P and Wieden + Kennedy, among others.
Moving forward, the two will collaborate on Netflix, The North Face and other accounts. They will report to ECD, managing partner Daniel Chandler, who is based in New York, and work under managing partner Nicolas Van Erum, who has run the L.A. office since it opened two years ago.
In terms of why Sid Lee chose this time to begin staffing up its West Coast office, competition for talent in La La Land has been heating up a bit recently with the opening of Mother L.A. and Anomaly L.A. as well as a series of defections/downsizing moves at Media Arts Lab and other entities.
Söderstedt comes from Sweden, where he worked at Stockholm Design Lab before moving to New York’s design studio 2×4 and later transitioning into advertising with Mother.
Leicht (pronounced “light”) started his career as a strategist at W+K, later moving to the creative side while at Anomaly. He later worked on the Apple TV and Music launches at MAL, and he’s currently surfing as much as possible while leading the Sid Lee creative department.