Creative agency Social Deviant has promoted Nickolas Daniel to creative director. He has assumed the creative lead on the CareerBuilder account, which Social Deviant won following an informal review in May 2018.
Daniel originally joined Social Deviant in October 2017 as an associate creative director, and has since applied his creative talents to a range of clients, including Red Wing Shoes, The Disney Channel, MillerCoors, Catalina, and the agency’s most recent new business win, Columbia College Chicago.
Prior to Social Deviant, Daniel helped open the Detroit office for Huge, where he worked on Fiat Chrysler, Chase Private Client, Maserati, Meijer, and Nokia Health as a sr. copywriter. In that same role at Geometry Global, his client remit included Mondelez, Colgate-Palmolive, E&J Gallo Winery and GlaxoSmithKline. While at ARC/Leo Burnett Worldwide, Daniel served such clients as Procter & Gamble and Kellogg. Daniel began his ad career at Walgreens as a digital copywriter.
Along the way, Daniel has won nearly a dozen creative honors, including Effies, Reggies, Webby and Pro Awards.
Social Deviant is projecting to nearly double revenue in 2018, adding new business from The Disney Channel, CareerBuilder, Hanna Andersson, Columbia College Chicago and the National Restaurant Association Show, with more prospects in the pipeline.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More