AMV BBDO has promoted creative directors Toby Allen and Jim Hilson to deputy executive creative directors.
Allen and Hilson have led the transformation of Essity into the U.K.’s most awarded account at Cannes, breaking taboos and shaping culture with Bloodnormal, Viva La Vulva and red.fit for Bodyform, as well as Keep Control for Tena Men. They are also creative leads on the recent headline-grabbing #addresspollution campaign, disrupting the London property market to raise awareness of air pollution.
In 2014 they launched “Hatch,” a creative academy to draw in a more diverse talent pool to AMV, and in 2018 their efforts were recognized by Management Today, naming them alongside FTSE 100 CEOs as “Agents of Change” for workplace equality.
Prior to joining AMV BBDO in 2012 they worked at W+K, producing Honda’s “Spark” and Nike’s 2012 Olympics work, and at BBH, creating multi award-winning campaigns for Audi, Barnardo’s, and Levi’s.
Allen and Hilson are the 7th most awarded creative directors in the world this year, with back-to-back Cannes Titanium Lions, a D&AD Black pencil, and a career haul of over 20 Grand Prix and Best in Shows at Cannes, One Show, Clios and other global awards.
Allen and Hilson will work with CCO Alex Grieve and ECDs Nadja Lossgott and Nicholas Hulley, with a focus on leading AMV’s new creative incubator and unlocking creativity throughout the agency.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More