Hires and promotions
Edelman Canada has expanded its paid performance and marketing capabilities with the addition of Nirmala Bahall as SVP of the division. She will work out of the agency’s Toronto office. She began her career at Cossette and Alliance Atlantis, then entered ecommerce, CRM and data at Dell, Epsilon and Proximity. She arrives from digital marketing agency Mediative, where she led the Walmart Media Group.
Montreal agency Prospek has added Evelyne Tourigny as director of account services and promoted Laura Heid to the role of account services coordinator. Tourigny previously worked on the media side at Tink, PHD and Bleublancrouge.
Montreal digital marketing agency Dialekta has made five recent hires within its media division: Florence Loranger, Jessica Brosseau-Rivard, Léandre Prévest, Noémie Bellefleur and Sarah Dolan all join as digital media analysts.
New business and other news
Hamilton-based Thinkr Marketing Group has acquired Nova Digital Marketing, forming a new company dubbed Thinkr Digital. The agency’s new in-house digital division will assist clients with digital marketing, lead generation and customer retention.
Content marketing agency Toast Studio has been retained by Kamik, a Canadian footwear and clothing manufacturer. The agency will lead strategy, production, deployment and performance measurement in the brand’s core markets of Canada, the U.S, Norway and Germany.
Media
Joining the Toronto-based Canadian Out of Home Marketing Measurement Bureau as head of marketing is Lara Menzies, who will oversee the group’s national marketing, social media and sponsorships. She was most recently marketing director at Merlin Entertainment, and previously served as marketing and communications manager at Socan and Astral Out-of-Home.
Rogers Media-owned Sportsnet has entered bricks-and-mortar. The sports specialty channel has opened a 220-seat restaurant that overlooks the field at Toronto’s Rogers Centre as a way of engaging with sports fans and providing its broadcast team with a new studio space (for Media in Canada subscribers).
Mars has awarded its Canadian media business to GroupM’s Mediacom. The candy conglomerate has streamlined its agency partnerships, choosing GroupM to lead all of its global work, after putting the account, valued at more than US$1.4 billion, into review in January (for Media in Canada subscribers).
The Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger app will introduce Status ads next year. The new inventory will give brands the opportunity to place ads within WhatsApp’s Status feature, which is similar to Snapchat and Instagram’s Stories function (for Media in Canada subscribers).
