Juniper Park\TBWA has appointed its first executive producer to lead its Toronto production arm, Bolt Content, as the agency continues shifting to meet the needs of content-hungry clients.

Lior Etziony, a producer and content strategist whose experience spans branded content, production management and film, relocated to Toronto from New York City two years ago to lead production and brand films at Media One Creative. While working stateside, he oversaw production, brand partnerships and integrated campaigns for NBC Universal through the network’s in-house agency. He also worked on production and creative within NBC’s lifestyle divistion, LXTV, creating travel, celebrity and lifestyle-branded shows for clients including Ford, Deloitte and Microsoft. He’s also an Emmy Award-winning producer and directed the full-length documentary film Call for Help.

With experience in both short and long-form mediums, Etziony is “very comfortable with high-powered talent, and he’s very comfortable with rapid timelines,” says Jill Nykoliation, CEO of Juniper Park\TBWA. “And to me, those two are usually living in different universes.”

“The fact that Lior worked at NBC Universal, in their in-house and in their film unit, means his brain goes both ways as well,” she says. “He knows how to build assets internally. He knows how to build film. He knows what the ROI of an asset should be. And having someone like that be our executive producer, he can build the appropriate process for each asset, while keeping an eye on what’s the master narrative.”

TBWA’s clients have the option of working with the agency and its production arm or exclusively with Bolt Content as an independent production agency, depending on their needs. That level of flexibility is important, Nykoliation says, as there’s now such a wide range of content to consider for creative work that the agency “need[s] different options for different circumstances.”

Bolt Content Toronto, which launched in early 2018, creates social videos, TV commercials and branded films. To date, it has produced content for Juniper Park\TBWA clients such as Nissan and CIBC. A recent social media campaign for Tic Tac that included a “Tictactionary” (a series of linguistic rules revolving around the “tictac” syllables) and a “Bea-Tic Tac-Box” (a sound kit made from Tic Tac noises) was executed entirely through Bolt Content.

Other offices within the TBWA Worldwide network, including Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne and Shanghai, have their own versions of Bolt.

Nykoliation says that bringing production in-house enables the agency to incorporate the discipline from the outset of the creative process, making for stronger client pitches and greater collaboration across agency teams.

In May 2018, the agency brought on ECD Jenny Glover from TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in Johannesburg.