Red Lion is capping off a hiring spree, bringing in eight new staffers at the tail end of 2014.
Topping the list, Jacoub Bondre joins the Toronto-based agency as director of technology. Most recently, Bondre worked at Grip. Prior to Grip, Bondre held increasingly senior roles at shops including MacLaren McCann, Transistor Studios and Ogilvy and worked as a freelancer for agencies including Anomaly, where he worked with the shop on Budweiser’s “Red Light” initiative. In his new position, Bondre will lead all tech for client and creative needs.
On the creative side joining Bondre is Duncan Collis, a designer who was plucked from his previous agency Cossette by Red Lion president and CCO Matt Litzinger. Stephen Sandian, formerly of Innocean, joins Red Lion as AD, while Kyle Carpenter, formerly of Engagement Labs, joins as a copywriter. All creatives work across all clients, Litzinger adds.
Litzinger says he balanced out folks with agency backgrounds with a few different kinds of hires. First up, he brought in Shannon Murphy as a copywriter. Most recently, Murphy worked at the Drake Hotel chain as a content and community specialist. Joining Murphy is new Red Lion designer Will Harmer, an industrial designer who recently received his masters. For his thesis, he wrote a paper on how air quality in buildings affects people, and designed a system to properly monitor air quality in doors.
Litzinger says the pair are the perfect representation of what he wants out of all his employees. “I’m trying to create departments [with people] who are solutions-based,” he says. “It’s not just thinking about marketing – it’s about finding our clients’ solutions.
“The new [marketing] formula isn’t talking about what you do. It’s making stuff and people talk about you,” he adds. “So here, we want to make stuff.”
Litzinger capped off the creative hires with two new account executives, including account director Kaitlin Doherty, who most recently worked at John St., and Abi Berkley as account executive, who most recently worked at Anomaly.
(From left to right: Doherty, Sandian, Harmer, Carpenter, Murphy, Collis, Bondre and Berkley.)
