Julia Reed got her start in spot production answering telephones at a London production house. Now, someone has to answer Reed’s phone, as she is currently managing director/founder of Harry Nash Productions, London.
Before Reed’s company became Harry Nash, it was the London outpost of bicoastal The End. In Sept. ’99, Reed, who was the managing director of the outfit, announced that she had bought a 90 percent stake in The End, London, from Harmony Holdings Inc., the publicly traded company owned by Minneapolis-headquartered iNTELEFILM. Reed re-christened the company Harry Nash. (SHOOT, 9/3/99.) "I really wanted to make it work from London. I think [iNTELEFILM] has enough on their plate with all their companies in the States," she says of her leap to company owner. "And it is very difficult, as I think everyone who has experienced it knows, to run a bi-country operation. … They really wanted to consolidate their efforts in the States and I wanted to consolidate our efforts in London."
As far as what she has implemented within Harry Nash, Reed says, "Actually it hasn’t changed at all on a daily basis. It doesn’t feel any different to be perfectly honest. … I guess in the States there’s a lot of worry about what the competition is doing and there’s none of that here. You just worry about managing the directors that you’ve got."
Reed has been successful in the spot industry both in the U.K. and the U.S. Before her stint at The End, Reed was CEO of the then Tony Kaye & Partners (now Tony K.), West Hollywood and London. She earlier worked for four years as executive producer at the Los Angeles office of bicoastal/international Propaganda Films, before moving over to sister company Satellite, where she was head of commercial production, and was instrumental in diversifying the shopaoriginally a music video houseainto spots.
