Cossette has added to its digital capabilities in Montreal, hiring the co-founders of digital agency Five, Martin Bouchard as artistic director and David Fréchette as developer lead.

The pair will be bringing three developers from Five with them: Patrick Freedom Mayer as front-end developer, Simon-Pierre Alepin as developer and Anne Simard as product owner. The group started at the agency last week. Despite the loss of two co-founders, Five will continue to operate as usual for the time being.

The hires mark Frechette and Bouchard’s return to Cossette’s Montreal office. The pair had lengthy terms as Flash developers at the agency, leaving in 2009 to co-found Five, where Frechette acted as technical director and Bouchard as CD, while third founder Bob Mainguy (formerly of Bleublancrouge) acted as president.

At Five, the pair worked with clients including Telus, Cirque du Soleil, Warner Bros. and Ubisoft and partnered with creative agencies including Publicis, Tam-Tam/TBWA, KBS and Bleublancrouge.

At the outset, the new hires will be working on the CCM Hockey digital account, which Cossette was assigned earlier this month. Malik Yacoubi, VP of technology and mobile at Cossette, says that beyond giving the office a team to work on CCM, the hires add to the strength of the approximately 70 people working on digital projects at the agency.

“They have good experience working at Cossette and on a variety of complex projects where you need to have agility and do things quickly,” he says. “They don’t have sports gear experience, per se, but what we wanted was great developers, so they can be integrated into our larger team and develop more products for all our clients.”