EVANSTON, Ill. & NEW YORK --

Singe Creative Studio, based in Evanston, has significantly expanded its portfolio of services with the acquisition of production consultancy Mavis & Co.

Singe Creative Studio has been offering creative and production services to brands since launching last year. It was founded by Larry Byrne, who for decades held top-level production leadership posts at a number of network-owned agencies. Paul Mavis, founder of Mavis & Co., has provided production strategy and advisory services to brands for nearly 30 years.

The newly combined company will operate as Lakehouse Partners. Its mission is to reinvent the role of trusted advisors to brands when it comes to getting content produced, regardless of media channel, format, discipline, geography, or genre. Lakehouse Partners will go beyond what its partners regard as the obsolete role of the “cost consultant” to provide brands with a deeper understanding of how to leverage the content creation and production process to its full advantage.

As CEO of Mavis & Co., Mavis advised marketers in virtually every category on content production strategy for all channels. He’s partnered with over a thousand marketers, including those at L’Oréal, Pfizer, and Unilever, helping them achieve cost-effective production practices while harmonizing relationships with their advertising agencies and the production community.

Byrne brings decades of award-winning production experience to Lakehouse. He innovated production and delivery models for brands like BP, SC Johnson, Unilever, Sears, and Aldi while serving as chief content officer at Leo Burnett, chief production officer at Ogilvy, chief content officer at Publicis Communications and as a consultant to Deloitte Digital.

At Singe, Byrne has applied his unique perspective and expertise to developing practical content creation strategies for clients of all sizes. Going forward as Lakehouse, he and Mavis will share the title of founding partner. The pair have recruited a world-class team to lead specialized practice areas that cover production strategy, production advisory and production services, all designed to meet the evolving needs of today’s brand marketers.

“Lakehouse is designed to take the role of the production consultant into new territory,” said Byrne. “With the complexity of media platforms and formats, the increasingly fragmented nature of production and the new pressures of getting content made under hybrid working arrangements, advertisers need new resources to turn to for insight, guidance and expertise.

“Working with our team, Paul and I will offer our clients the most comprehensive array of production management solutions to be found under one roof,” Byrne continued. “The decision to acquire Mavis & Co. originated from what I was hearing from brand leaders, which is that they need progressive solutions to the content production challenges they face today. Simply put, Lakehouse Partners has been designed to answer that need.”

Mavis added, “Speaking with some authority, I can attest to the accelerating dilution of the production consultant’s role within the agency-client dynamic. To that end, I’ve spent the last three years working with many clients to devise and implement production best practices for them to eventually manage on their own, rather than looking over production company bids and attending pre-pro meetings like I used to do. It’s a changed environment for brands today, and Lakehouse will help them navigate this new landscape.”

Mavis pointed out that being acquired by Singe Creative is something of a reunion for him and Byrne: the production strategies they jointly developed while working on Dove’s campaign for Real Beauty, when Mavis was with Unilever and Byrne with Ogilvy, were subsequently embraced by agency and client alike, first in the U.S. and then internationally, allowing for faster cycle times and generating greater cost efficiencies.

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