Michelle Roufa has been promoted to executive creative director on Verizon at mcgarrybowen New York.
Roufa first worked for mcgarrybowen from 2013-2015, and helped to land millions of dollars of new business including The Clorox Company and Intel accounts. She returned to mcgarrybowen as a group creative director in September 2016, helping mcgarrybowen win a portion of the Verizon B-B account and position the client as more than wireless company. Here she created a campaign called “Humanability,” which tells stories about how Verizon’s technology products are easing traffic flow in Sacramento, keeping fish fresh in transit, and supporting advancements in virtual surgery and health care.
Roufa said, “It was exciting to have the opportunity to lead creative on Verizon. It’s rare you get the chance to work on a brand and campaign that can genuinely impact society and the future for the better.”
Ned Crowley, U.S. chief creative officer at mcgarrybowen, said, “Michelle is a great creative talent who can go toe-to-toe with the best. It’s great to see her soaring as a talent as well as a leader. Not always easy in this business. Her inspiring work for Verizon is a perfect example of how she tries to find the human truth, or simply, the humanity, in everything she touches.”
Roufa got her start in advertising when she was hired by Cliff Freeman without a portfolio. Her second day on the job she sold a radio campaign, and the rest was history. Since then, she has worked with agencies including Ogilvy & Mather, Y&R, Hill Holliday, M&C Saatchi, FCB, and Digitas, and brands such as Little Caesars Pizza, Cherry Coke, Fanta, Ikea, and Dove. Her work has appeared in the Super Bowl, won scores of awards, including Cannes Lions, One Show Pencils and Effies. Noteworthy among the iconic campaigns she created were “The British just know how to travel” for British Airways while at M&C Saatchi, and the “Make more happen” campaign for Staples while with mcgarrybowen earlier. She is also the author of “The Norma Gene,” a science fiction novel which was released by Bitingduck Press in 2015.
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.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More