North was founded 2006 in Portland, Oregon by Rebecca Armstrong and Mark Ray, two big agency expats who shared an ambition to build a smarter, nimbler, purpose-driven agency alternative for select international, domestic, and regional clients.
Purpose
North exists to forge respect, nurture community, inspire collaboration, and create value for brands through imagination, intuition, and hard work. 18 years on, our vision remains intact. We are a B-Corp and majority female-owned.
Leadership
Rebecca Armstrong is co-founder, ceo with 30 years global agency and strategic experience. Mark Ray is co-founder, cco with 30 years global agency, creative, design and production experience. Cindy Wade is partner, managing director with 25 years agency operations and production experience. Landie Viljoen is director of channel strategy with 10 years agency and media planning and buying experience.
Core Capabilities
We have deep in-house and networked capabilities in brand and product strategy; owned and paid channel strategy, planning, and buying; creative development, execution, production (including robust in-house editorial and brand music capabilities), and branded content/entertainment ; social engagement and community management; package and identity design.
Our Approach
North believes Real is Beautiful. The process we built around that ethos is called Brand Realization™, which delivers distinction and competitive advantage for brands, products, and causes. We identify what’s uniquely real and meaningful inherent to a brand’s dna or origin or place in culture. Then we express those compelling truths in ways that are beautiful, empathetic, and deeply relevant to the audience. Our Brand Realization™ toolkit includes data gathering and synthesis, media segmenting and indexing, identifying a unifying mindset, cultural and design audits, creative “ways in” and implementation, scalable and curated production (both in-house and in collaboration with curated partners), performance management, and a Brand Roadmap that becomes a shared document for creative review, mapping purchase funnel and user journey, and providing return-on-investment analysis.
Superfriends
We have built decades-long trusted network of partnerships when additional capabilities are needed to compliment our in-house staff. Our key research partners are Sparrow/Portland and Sense Worldwide/London. Our digital UX and development partner is ThinkShout. Our east coast doppelganger agency is Baldwin&, with whom we share complimenting talents and expertise as well as purpose-driven values. For clients requiring deeper bench depth, our friendship and collaborative relationship with Baldwin& is a unique, flexible option for scaling needs and budgets.
North Family