Wasserman hires new strategy lead

Maxine Wu has come back to Vancouver’s Wasserman as director of strategic services.

Working with president Cam Landell, Wu will run the agency’s strategic services team and direct its growth, as well as lead strategy on some of the agency’s key accounts.

This is a return for Wu, who spent eight years at Wasserman before leaving in 2013, going client-side as associate director of marketing for the UBC Sauder School of Business.

In the summer, Wasserman announced a number of leadership changes as it restructured the team coming out of the pandemic.

SOS Design is now Borealis

To better reflect how the scope of its work has evolved over the last two decades, design agency SOS Design has rebranded as Borealis Creative Agency.

Founded in Toronto in 2002 and now employing over 20 staff, SOS – an acronym for Studio Out Source – is known for design work for clients like University of Toronto, Ontario Tech University, Humber College and Sheridan College. But the agency has also led design projects beyond academia, for Meridian, Toronto theatre company Soulpepper and Panasonic. Mark Hickmott, co-founder and partner with Ronn Battaglia, says that the agency has also increased it capabilities beyond design to include production, media, research, strategy and data to answer client demand.

To that end, the agency believed it needed not only a new name, but a full rebrand that spoke better to the work it was doing. The agency worked with strategy consultant Mary Jane Braide, as well as its own creative director Sarah Cosentino and ACD Tyler Smith, to clarify its mission and come up with a name and look that Hickmott says is more fitting, as it references a phenomenon that has “elusive qualities of light and magic explained through science and rationale.”

Claude Auchu joins Worldwide Partners board

Lg2 partner, president and CEO Claude Auchu has been appointed as the North American representative on the board of Worldwide Partners.

In late 2019, Lg2 joined Worldwide Partners, a network of over 70 independent agencies from 40 countries, to increase its global market knowledge and create more opportunities for cross-border collaboration. As a member of the board, Auchu says the agency will be able to learn even more from the other board members, as well as “inspire others” with its business model.