Joe Burke has been promoted to EVP/chief creative officer at MARC USA, overseeing the ad agency’s three offices in Chicago, Pittsburgh and Boston. Burke joined MARC USA in 2011 and was formerly executive creative director in the Chicago office.
Burke’s experience includes creative leadership roles at DDB, Element 79, FCB and JWT prior to MARC USA. He is perhaps best known for the iconic, multi-award-winning “Is It in You?” campaign for Gatorade. His work also spans such brands as Rite Aid, True Value, Payless ShoeSource, Ruby Tuesday, Navistar, Quaker Oats, Life Cereal, Capitol One, Frito-Lay, Coors and American Family Insurance.
Cari Bucci Hulings, president of MARC USA, said, “Joe is the ideal creative. He’s a truly gifted storyteller, but just as important, he’s such a great leader and genuinely good person – committed to mentoring and developing talent.”
Burke has won assorted creative awards but said he’s most proud of his multiple EFFIEs and the real business results he has achieved for his clients. He adds, “I love the entrepreneurial vibe at MARC USA. From the day I got here, the agency has honored entrepreneurialism and independence – always brave and always seeing brands in fresh, new ways. These are critical factors in making great work happen.”
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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