Venturepark hires a new creative director for investment-focused unit
Randall Graham has returned to the Venturepark family, joining as creative director for District Ventures Plus.
Within the ecosystem of business units that make up Venturepark, District Ventures Plus is a marketing agency focused exclusively on brands that come through the company’s investment activities, as well as those of CEO Arlene Dickinson.
In his new role, Graham will work out of the company’s Toronto office and oversee all of District Ventures Plus’ creative direction, which will include work for the likes of Balzac’s Coffee Roasters and water brand Sapsucker. He has spent the last 16 years at Bell Media, where he most recently served as creative director for the company’s brand partnerships team. This is also a bit of a homecoming, as Graham was previously a copywriter for Venture Communications in the late 90s.
“Since launching Venturepark earlier this year, we’ve made many investments, growing our portfolio of CPG brands, and have experienced tremendous demand for our services,” Dickinson said. “While our partners have varying needs, the one thing they all seek is compelling creative – which Randall has a track record of delivering on.”
D&P hires new social and content leads
Doug&Partners has hired creative directors Matt Taylor and James Ly to lead the agency’s growing social and content practice.
The duo is bringing experience from Draftline, Labatt’s in-house social and content team, but has also worked at Cheil, FCB and Tribal Worldwide with clients including Samsung, PFLAG, BMW and McDonald’s. They will work in collaboration with the entire agency team to bring its growing expertise in experiential marketing, communications and influencer marketing into their client solutions.
The new additions also come following the hiring of Marta Hooper as the agency’s new ECD earlier this year. The agency has also added Jennifer Costa, Jash Shah and Jimmy Lau to its account service team to support its growth.
A2C launches the next edition of the Idéa Awards
The Association of Creative Communications Agencies (A2C), in partnership with the Society of Graphic Designers of Quebec (SDGQ), has opened up entries for the Idéa Awards, recognizing excellence in the full range of Quebec’s creative communications industry.
It coming with a new campaign promoting the 2022 edition of the show, created by Bleublancrouge, is centred around the idea of pinball, using the game to represent the journey of a creative idea and how many different disciplines are needed to keep it in play.
The Idéa Awards were created as an amalgamation of five previously seperate awards shows, with each one becoming its own discipline within the show to recognize the best in Creative, Media, Digital, Design and Effectiveness. Idéa has 141 categories this year, and entries are open until Feb. 25 on a new entry platform created for this year’s submission process.
