Incoming chief creative officer Derek Blais (centre) makes a commitment to Lifelong Crush, joined by fellow new addition, chief creative officer and partner Christina Yu (left), and managing director Caroline Kilgour (right).

Lifelong Crush has scored several major wins with the addition of two new creative leaders, adding Christina Yu and Derek Blais as its first-ever chief creative officers, as well as acquiring Yu’s business in a move that makes Yu a partner in the agency.

The move brings two talents with which the leadership of Broken Heart Love Affair (Lifelong Crush’s parent company) are well acquainted into the agency’s fold as a direct result of its “talent hoarding” philosophy. The goal was to “identify creative leaders who ‘make us jealous,'” Caroline Kilgour, Lifelong Crush’s managing director, tells strategy. “That made Derek and Christina the obvious choice.”

Blais was most recently SVP and executive creative director at BBDO Toronto, where he played a key role in devising that agency’s celebrated “Missing Matoaka” campaign and worked with BHLA founding partners Carlos Moreno, Todd Mackie and Denise Rossetto, as well as Kilgour. He also worked alongside BHLA founding partner Jay Chaney at Tribal DDB. In addition to “Missing Matoaka,” Blais has also delivered celebrated work for major clients including Kijiji, RBC, Ford, Mars Wrigley, Pepsi Co., McDonald’s and Heineken.

Yu, meanwhile, worked with Kilgour to co-found Red Urban for the DDB Network, and also worked with Rossetto and Mackie – as well as BHLA chief creative officers Craig McIntosh and Jaimes Zentil – at DDB. Before launching her own creative practice, she served as managing partner and creative director at Rethink. She has worked on a wide array of blue chip brands globally, including Stella Artois, FedEx, Pepsi, Audi, Johnson & Johnson, Virgin and Capital One.

These prior relationships were every bit as important as the pair’s long record of successful work, Kilgour says.

“It was key that the Lifelong Crush creative leadership be not just top talent, but trusted talent,” she explains. “When you have existing chemistry, you share values and can find shortcuts to lift each other up. Having this level of love and trust in the team lets you solely focus on making the work and workplace better, and that is definitely our collective ambition.”

In addition to the new creative leadership, the agency is establishing itself as more than the content and production arm of BHLA, making it a “distinct but complementary” creative agency working alongside it, according to BHLA founding partner and chief business officer Beverley Hammond – something that had been a founding ambition for Lifelong Crush. The agency will also be onboarding the clients of Yu’s independent practice, including Kelseys Original Roadhouse, Truss Beverages and Lee Valley Tools, among others.

“You realize after being in this industry and seeing so many different models that what’s most important is sticking with the people who share the same values and the same pursuit to create work with genuine value,” Yu says. “I know I’ve found that place in Lifelong Crush.”

The agency is also introducing a new visual identity and ethos, called “unconstrained ideas forever,” which is based on Lifelong Crush’s desire “to play with the emotional side of connecting with a brand” and “what transpires when a brand strikes the right chord and makes a lasting impression,” Kilgour says.

“With client budgets and timelines under pressure, it’s creativity that will save the day. Creativity that exists outside of a medium or a media buy,” adds Blais. “The focus that we all share at Lifelong Crush is cultural relevance – the kind of work that creatives love working on, and the kind of work that stands out from the mess of media we see on a daily basis. We know these things combined will create outsized attention for our clients and punch above budgets to ultimately drive outsized business results.”

Blais and Yu have already begun working with the Lifelong Crush team, Kilgour says, both to onboard the new clients and introduce existing ones to “the new creative leadership and expanded creative perspective, which opens the aperture for some great brand work.”

“As we continue to grow, we’ll have a focus on the kind of work that pushes this industry forward and on developing the right kind of talent to make future-forward creative,” she adds.