Julian Morgan has seen explosive growth since he first joined Rethink’s Toronto office as a strategist in 2017, when the team was made up of only about 35 people.

Since then, Morgan has played a major part of the office’s success, as its Toronto staff now veers closer to five times that amount. His work has led him to a new role with the company, with Rethink recently naming him its head of strategy.

During his six years with the agency, Morgan has risen up the ranks. He was elevated to a group strategy director role to help lead the Toronto office in April 2022, and was named partner in October that year. He has led work for brands across the agency, including “Draw Ketchup” and the “Hot Dog Pact” for Kraft Heinz as well as the recent holiday campaign for Frito Lay.

“The things that I’m most proud of are always the very simple strategies that reveal something so common, but often overlooked,” Morgan tells strategy.

Rethink’s global chief strategy officer and partner Sean McDonald says he’s been thinking about making this promotion specifically for Morgan for two years. McDonald started working at Rethink seven years ago, with Morgan being one of his first hires. With Morgan, McDonald says he’s seen the remit for Rethink’s strategists grow exponentially, with departments for this work becoming more developed in that time. He says on top of this increasingly focused strategy work, Morgan’s fingerprints are all over the Toronto office’s growth, as well as the agency’s growth as a whole.

Looking ahead, McDonald says the two are working closely to ensure the agency continues to produce “strategically sound, creatively excellent work” that compares with top agencies from around the world. A vital part of this, McDonald says, means Rethink can’t rest on its laurels – it must abide by an ethos the company adopted, of learning from people to inform the work it does.

“It’s our point of view that too many agencies rely on desk research alone, claiming to be inspired by data, but not understanding the stories that tie that data together,” says McDonald. “We have a very interesting year ahead of us, dabbling in new ways of tapping into that. So we’re exploring new research methodologies, new tools, new research partners to unlock that.”

“Julian and I continue to talk about how we support that across the agency to give people more perspective, more access to people and more stories to inspire the kind of work that we’ve been doing.”

Morgan and McDonald say that one of the agency’s major goals moving forward is to continue to be a space where strategists can feel challenged to do globally recognized work, and to feel more closely connected to the work the agency produces.

“Rethink is coming into a bit of a maturity in all aspects of the agency, and that’s really exciting to see,” Morgan says. “So getting people to actually feel that outside of our walls is something that I’d love to see more of.”