Graham Lang has joined Juniper ParkTBWA,Toronto, as chief creative officer. He comes over from Y&R South Africa where he served in the same capacity.
Lang will be at the helm of Juniper ParkTBWA’s creative output as well as partner with its CEO Jill Nykoliation and the agency’s leadership team to further grow business across North America. In addition to his duties at Juniper ParkTBWA, Lang will join TBWA’s Global Creative Core, an elite group of creative leaders from across the TBWA collective, responsible for executing its Disruption® ethos across the entire company.
Lang has been awarded more than 30 Cannes Lions, 18 D&AD Pencils, and has served on juries for The One Show, Cannes Lions and D&AD. Overseeing six offices as chief creative officer for Y&R South Africa and Africa, he led Y&R to be the most awarded network in Africa at Cannes Lions 2017, with a total of eight Lions from the region. Under his leadership, Y&R Cape Town was honored as the AdFocus Agency of the Year in 2015, and Y&R Nairobi won Kenya’s first ever Cannes Lion the same year. During his time in Africa, he led the resurgence of the network, including major business wins such as Land Rover, Jaguar, Skyy Vodka, Amstel Lager, Investec, Lipton, and Telkom.
Prior to his leadership roles in Africa, Lang produced award-winning work on local and global campaigns as creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi London from 2003 to 2008, where he helped pitch and win the global Dewar’s and Sony Eriksson business. He then moved to RKCR/Y&R London until 2011 as the global ECD on Land Rover.
Lang began his career at The Jupiter Drawing Room in Cape Town as an art director, where he won a host of local and international awards, including one of the country’s first ever Silver Pencils at D&AD.
Lang was selected for Juniper ParkTBWA through a global talent search led by Nykoliation and Chris Garbutt, chief creative officer, TBWA Worldwide.
“Since its inception, Juniper Park has been a global agency, in a global city, working with global clients. So we removed borders from our search as well. I said to Chris, ‘Who are the stars around the globe that we wish were in our collective?’ That’s the bar we set for ourselves,” said Nykoliation.
“Bringing Graham on board is part of our quest to raise the creative standard and disrupt creative conventions across the globe,” added Garbutt. “The world needs creative solutions now more than ever and Graham is the kind of talent who can bring big ideas and iconic work to clients and make them a reality.”
“I am honored for the opportunity to join an already strong office that is hungry to lift itself even further,” said Lang. “I love working in and with different cultures, which is why I resonate with the agency’s global mindset. It has a borderless ethos and has the ability to work on business anywhere. I have long admired the work from TBWA so I am excited to learn from and collaborate with some true legends of the game. Most of all I am exited to be working with Jill and her incredibly diverse and talented team in Toronto.”
Since its inception 10 years ago, Toronto-based Juniper ParkTBWA’s client roster has defied borders, with its first client based in Dallas, followed by clients stretching across New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and across Canada. Today, the agency works with brands across North America, with a client roster split between Canadian and U.S. brands, including Nissan, CIBC, eos, Capital Group, Pfizer, GoDaddy, NFL, Vogue International and Virgin Mobile. It is one of three full-service North American offices for TBWA. The diversity of the agency’s leadership team reflects the company’s borderless mindset, with its executive team hailing from Toronto, Paris, London and now South Africa.
