Hires, promotions and other news
Weber Shandwick has named Shafiq Jamal SVP and managing director for its Vancouver office, tasked with expanding the PR agency’s presence in the market and servicing its growing number of clients in Western Canada. Jamal comes from Edelman Canada, where he had been SVP for the last three years.
Rain43 has made three major ECD hires as co-founder and CCO John Farquhar prepares to retire this coming fall. The new creative leaders are Jane Murray (ECD at Lowe Roche until leaving last year, who also had CD stints at TBWA, Ogilvy and Taxi) along with Duncan Porter and Dave Stubbs (mostly recently group CDs at MacLaren McCann and associates who helped launch the marketing department at Teehan+Lax).
Agency59 has made eight new hires in response to growth from existing clients (including Telus and Silk’n) and new work from Ontario Savings Bonds and the Insurance Brokers Association. In the creative department, the hires include bringing on intern Carlie Turco as a full-time art director, Dan Tran and Irina Braginsky as graphic designers and Heidi Filici as a writer and videographer. Other hires include Jennifer Green as director of planning and strategy, Alexandra Sauder as senior account executive, and Taycia Chaplin and Maggie Fowler as account executives.
Quebec experiential agency Laprod, which has handled events for clients including Dior, Loto-Québec, Mazda, Metro, L’Oréal Paris, Givenchy and Danon, has renamed itself, becoming Haussman Park.
Cossette has announced that its Cossette Labs start-up incubator program will expand to its Vancouver office. Launched in Montreal in 2012 and Toronto in 2014, the program provides support to new companies for six to 12 months to help their development and build a relationship. In Vancouver, the first start-ups to join the incubator will be health and fitness tracking platform iHeart and student productivity platform Reach.
Invoke, the Vancouver-based digital design agency behind Hootsuite, has hired Gaylene Macdonald as head of strategy. Macdonald was most recently VP of digital strategy at Vancouver’s Karo Group, having also spent time at Blast Radius and Noise Digital. The hire at Invoke comes following a number of new wins last year, including SaveOnFoods and Overwaitea Food Group.
The judges for this year’s Clio Awards have been announced, and three Canadians find themselves on juries: Nellie Kim, VP and CD at Lg2 Toronto, will be on the Film jury; Andrew Simon, ECD at Edelman Canada, will be on the PR jury; and Barry Quinn, CCO at Juniper Park\TBWA, will sit on the Brand Design jury.
Claude Lessard, co-founder and chairman of Cossette, will be inducted into the A2C Hall of Fame in May.
The Marketing Agencies Association Worldwide has announced the winners of the 29th Globes Awards. Cossette was the most decorated Canadian agency with seven awards for work with Mentos and Amensty International, while Cundari won six, Geometry Global won four, Taxi and Diamond Integrated Marketing each won three, and DentsuBos and Orange Door Direct took one each.
New business
Maverick has been selected to handle the launch campaign for online investing platform Justwealth. The assignment includes digital media strategy and content development in addition to media and influencer relations for the startup, which looks to differentiate itself from other digital investment management services by offering 61 portfolio options, as opposed to the five to 10 offered by competitors.
Toronto’s Claythorne Communications will handle all Canadian PR for London-based organic skincare company Pai Skincare.
Media
Bell Media made two announcements that signal bigger moves into the programmatic and branded content spaces. It has partnered with Index Exchange to launch its own, private programmatic marketplace, making digital display and video inventory available through programmatic for the first time. It has also hired former Vice executive Jason Ford as executive producer and creative lead to head a new digital video and branded content team, as well as its MCN portfolio, which includes Much Digital Studios.
Twitter launched its “Moments” offering in Canada, a curated list of tweets and other content around current events, entertainment and sports.
Omnicom named Terry Horton the managing director and office lead for the Toronto outpost of its new network Hearts & Science, which will launch with an initial headcount of 40 staffers. The new global network was announced last week to handle the P&G media business the company won late last year. Horton has been moved to the post after two years at Omnicom’s Touche!.
Cossette Media named Brooke Leland general manager for its operations in English Canada. Leland joins from fellow Vision7-owned shop Jungle Media.