Zulu expands creative and strategy teams

Zulu Alpha Kilo continues to grow this year, making new senior additions to its creative and strategy departments.

On the creative team, Zulu has hired Gerald Kugler and Rodger Eyre – both from Juniper Park\TBWA – as creative directors. Kugler and Eyre will report directly into CCO and founder Zak Mroueh and join a team of six other CDs at the agency.

Kugler had previously been with TBWA since 2013 and Eyre since 2007. Both were promoted to ECD in 2015 and stayed with the agency following its merger with Juniper Park later that year, though their titles were tweaked to group creative director. During their time with the agency, they worked on campaigns for clients including Gatorade, Petro-Canada and Nissan, which have won awards at the CASSIES, One Show and Marketing Awards, among others.

Kugler and Eyre’s promotions at TBWA came following the departure of Allen Oke, who also left to take a position at Zulu. Oke left Zulu last month to take on a new role as ECD at Huge Toronto.

Kugler and Eyre are also the latest creative departures from Juniper Park\TBWA, as CCOs Terry Drummond and Alan Madill left the agency last week and Barry Quinn was named chief design officer at DDB North America in July. The agency will announce a new creative leader in the near future, and has also recently hired ECD Perry Essig, who will work on the Nissan account.

On Zulu’s strategy team, meanwhile, the agency has looked outside the country for its new strategy directors, Laura Kim and Tim Hopkins.

Kim was most recently at Leo Burnett Chicago, where she was part of its innovation group, called Farmhouse. Her past clients include Pfizer, Visa, McDonald’s, Samsung and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Hopkins joins from Grey London, where he worked as a strategy director with a number of the agency’s global clients, as well as with brands like Vodafone, Volvo and Marks & Spencer over a 20 year career. He was also one of the founding staff members of CRM and direct division Grey Response when it launched in 2016.

In an email, Mroueh said the ongoing growth and new business at the agency has required the addition of talent to its strategy team, adding that there will be more to come on both the strategy and creative departments.

So far this year, Zulu has promoted two ACDs to join the aforementioned CD ranks at the agency, hired a new ACD from the U.S. and picked up new business with CAMH and U.S.-based Wink.