Award-winning creative agency Eleven has hired Andre Gray as executive creative director. Operating out of the San Francisco office, Grey will lead creative development with chief creative officer Mike McKay for Eleven’s diverse portfolio of clients including Samsung, Pella, JSX, Electrify America and Dignity Health.
Gray most recently worked at TBWA/NEBOKO’s Amsterdam location, serving as the global creative director for Adidas and Gatorade. Since 2017, Gray developed widely recognized creative for TBWA/NEBOKO clients, including the praised “Goodbye Gravity” for Adidas’ ULTRABOOST products. Prior to 2017, Gray held creative positions at various agencies and brands, including Sid Lee, Digitas, Havas and Uber, working with brands like Adidas, Nike, Nissan, Reebok, and Babybel. Gray graduated from Amherst College with a degree in Black Studies and remains connected with the liberal arts college to advance diversity and impactful education.
“As the agency continues to expand into Chicago and New York, space has been created for an ECD in the San Francisco office, and Andre’s experience working on iconic brands like Adidas, Gatorade, Uber and Reebok made him the ideal candidate,” said McKay. “But more importantly, Eleven isn’t merely adding another top-tier creative, but we’re bringing in a genuinely good person–which is a core requirement of anyone hired here at Eleven.”
Gray shared, “For many, from the outside looking in, this might seem like an opportune time to stay in Europe. From my perspective, it’s actually an opportune time to return and use my new opportunity as ECD at Eleven to push American culture forward. As an agency, Eleven is a trendsetter for cultivating talent and culture without leveraging and appropriating, and I look forward to building upon this and learning from storied creatives such as our CCO, Mike McKay.”
In his new position, Gray will build on Eleven’s legacy of developing design-focused creative work while also wrapping in narratives that seamlessly integrate into American culture. Gray has long emphasized authenticity’s role as the centerpiece of advertising and the ability of consumers to differentiate genuineness from inauthenticity, or “just another ad” in the consumers’ perception. According to Gray, the best ads communicate at the level of the people, and they must be as good, if not better, than any other cultural item out there.”
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