Droga5 London is expanding its offering into brand consultancy with the hiring of Grace Francis as its first chief experience officer.
Francis joins from Grey London, where she was head of experience design and planning and a founding partner of Grey Consultancy. In her new role she will be responsible for ensuring that clients express themselves creatively throughout the consumer experience as well as lead on the Barclaycard account, reporting to chief strategy officer Dylan Williams. She is also a former head of UK and content at Isobar.
Williams said, “After three years at Droga5, Bill, DK and I felt we were now ready to broaden our offering and help brands express themselves creatively across the consumer experience. We interviewed extensively and Grace won hands down. We’re very happy to make her our first C-suite hire.”
Francis added, “As Droga5 enters a next phase of growth, I’m joining to develop an experience design offering that will see us drive innovative and meaningful human-centric design solutions for all our clients and create meaningful experiences between brands and people.”
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More