Toronto-based Fuse Marketing Group has made an internal promotion on its experiential offering and hired a creative director as it continues to evolve its integrated creative offering.

Aleena Mazhar, the former VP of the Fuse Live experiential team, has been promoted to managing director of the agency’s experiential practice. A new role at Fuse, Mazhar has been tasked with building out the experiential offering, ensuring a smooth integration, both internally with the agency’s other services as well as with clients. Steve Miller, ECD at Fuse, notes Mazhar will be doing this as clients “further integrate experiential into their marketing mixes.”

“As we integrate our own experiential practice into our creative offering, it became clear the practice needed further leadership and attention, and Aleena was a natural fit,” he says.

On the creative team, Patrice Pollack has been hired as creative director, the first under Miller since he joined Fuse last year. Pollack worked at Miller’s previous agency OneMethod, as well as  J. Walter Thompson. Pollack’s role was introduced to assist in managing the daily creative assignments on CIBC, specifically.

“CIBC is one of FUSE’s largest clients and the relationship requires a dedicated creative leadership resource, a dedication I simply cannot provide on a day-to-day basis,” Miller says. “Patrice will provide that dedication and guidance. And as the agency grows, additional day-to-day creative leadership may be introduced to the creative department.” 

Mazhar’s promotion and Pollack’s hiring reflect the agency’s approach to developing of its integrated creative offering in 2020, Miller says.

“From the integration of the teams, the work, and the talent required to deliver it – culture drives the work, and the attitudes and behaviours within the teams drives our culture,” he says. “That re-prioritization and integration of the creative output are the changing attitudes happening here.”