Well-known business leader founded digital marketing and content agency bv02 in 2002 and served as its chief revenue officer for 16 years before assuming the same role at cybersecurity startup Field Effect Software in 2019.
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A Toronto-based gaming and animation studio with a growing presence in the National Capital Region has tapped a veteran Ottawa business leader to help strengthen its foothold in the North American entertainment industry.
Relish Studios announced this week it has hired Andrew Milne as its vice-president of growth.
Milne is a familiar figure in the capital’s tech scene. The Sheridan College alumnus founded local digital marketing and content agency bv02 in 2002 and served as its chief revenue officer for 16 years before assuming the same role at cybersecurity startup Field Effect Software in 2019.
At Field Effect, Milne helped spearhead the Glebe-based company’s ascent from a bootstrapped enterprise with fewer than 30 employees to an industry powerhouse with nearly 200 staffers and annual revenues in the US$20-million range.
“It was a great experience,” Milne, who joined Relish last month, says of his four-year stint in Field Effect’s C-suite. “But I knew that I came in to do a job, and once I’d set that up, it was time to look for something that sort of took me back to my roots.”
Indeed, Milne says his long-standing passion for emerging technologies was a driving force behind his decision to exit Field Effect just months after the firm secured more than US$30 million in venture capital.
While he acknowledges that leaving the cybersecurity “rocket ship” wasn’t easy, Milne says Relish co-founder and CEO Paul Pattison’s long-term vision for the studio convinced him it was time to switch career vehicles.
Launched in 2007 as Relish Interactive, the Toronto company quickly made a name for itself in digital production, building apps and websites for broadcast networks like Nickelodeon as well as organizations such as Adobe, NASCAR and the CFL.
Under the guidance of Pattison, an Ottawa native who earned a degree in computer engineering from Carleton University, Relish gradually extended its reach into gaming and animation.
Over the past several years, the firm has expanded across Canada and the U.S. Now with close to 200 employees, Relish has operations in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Costa Rica, in addition to its headquarters in Toronto and an office in Westboro.
Although it makes products for other brands, Relish is probably best-known in the industry for its award-winning interactive storybook app Weirdwood Manor, which has amassed more than a million downloads since its debut in 2016.
The surge in demand for video games and online entertainment during the pandemic prompted Relish to take Weirdwood’s fantasy adventure universe – which Pattison describes as “a little Harry Potter, a little Willy Wonka” – in new directions on different platforms.
The company has spent more than two years developing a Weirdwood-themed board game that’s expected to launch on Kickstarter in April. Meanwhile, an animated feature film based on the storybook series is also in the works.
“You need to have touch points in all these different places,” explains Pattison, who recently relocated from Toronto to B.C.’s Salt Spring Island. “We see it as building out a brand, not just characters.”
Weirdwood aside, Relish’s list of corporate partners also continues to grow. Big-name brands like toymaking giants Hasbro and Mattel are turning to the company for content as they seek new ways to capture the attention of young consumers who are constantly immersed in digital technology.
The result has been a big payoff for Relish. While the firm’s revenues were growing at about 20 per cent annually before the pandemic, they’ve been rising at a hefty clip of about 50 per cent a year since 2020.
“One of the things that Relish has in spades is the ability to adapt into markets that are explosive,” Milne says. “I love being in markets that are making a major shift. A studio like this has a real chance to take advantage of this emerging market.”
To that end, Pattison says Relish is poised to launch more products like “living novels” – choose-your-own-adventure stories that allow readers to virtually explore fictional worlds and interact with characters online.
In addition to marketing its own works, Relish also plans to produce interactive stories and games for other brands. It’s all part of Pattison and Milne’s plan to capitalize on explosive growth in the global gaming industry, which PricewaterhouseCoopers last year projected will be worth $321 billion by 2026, up from $236 billion in 2022.
Sensing a seismic shift in the way audiences are consuming media, providers like Netflix are investing heavily in interactive storytelling as they attempt to keep up. Pattison says Relish, with its digital, gaming and animation expertise, is perfectly positioned to help supply that cutting-edge content.
Today’s consumers “see video games as part of their full entertainment experience, instead of just sitting back and watching a show on Netflix,” he says. “I think we’re going to see a lot of different and interesting experiences coming on console; Netflix is trying to figure out an interactive story technology approach, and I think we’re poised to have the right tools from a storytelling perspective and a game development perspective that we can come into this in a real way.”
And the nation’s capital, with its abundant pipeline of tech and animation talent, could play a big role in that process.
Among the first things Milne checked off his to-do list was hiring local marketing guru JP Burdett, whose resume includes stops at software firm You.i TV and last-mile delivery platform GoFor, as Relish’s director of growth marketing.
About 20 Relish employees, mostly game developers, are currently based in Ottawa. Pattison says that number will likely grow significantly in the years to come.
“These industries (gaming and animation) are merging, and the skillsets are similar,” he says. “I would love to expand our Ottawa team into animation and tap into that market as well.”
