Zulu Alpha Kilo in Toronto has made a number of creative promotions and hires across its various disciplines. The agency has promoted Jenny Luong, Kevin Sato, and Vinay Parmar to serve as creative directors. Luong, who first worked at Zulu in 2013, returned to the agency in the summer of 2020 from DDB Chicago. During this past year, Luong has been behind some award-winning work for Cineplex, the ADCC, and HomeEquity Bank. Sato and Parmar have been at the agency for four years and were promoted to associate creative director in October 2019. They have developed award-winning campaigns for Consonant Skin+Care, Reskinning Queen Street West, Betadine, SingleCut Beersmiths and the HomeEquity Bank web series Catch the Scam. Additionally, Zulu has hired Sylvia Stultz from Edelman as head of talent attraction. Stultz will be responsible for taking the agency’s recruitment to the next level as it continues to put a premium on attracting top talent. Furthermore, Zulu has welcomed Matt Camara as a creative director and Ryan Kukec as an associate creative director. Camara comes over from doug + partners. He has worked on many brands including Go RVing Canada, Coca-Cola, and Audi. His work has been recognized by Cannes, Cassies, Effies and the Canadian Marketing Awards. Kukec joins from Cossette. Notable recent work includes “This is Why” for Sick Kids, “Pizza Patio Furniture” for Boston Pizza, and “Haulers” for No Frills. His work has been awarded at Cannes, D&AD, the Effies, Webby, and more. Also coming aboard Zulu are design director Dejan Djuric after 10 years at Leo Burnett, and sr. designer Jackman Chiu after eight years at Jacknife Design. In strategy, Zulu has brought on board Patrick Henderson from TAXI as director, digital strategy, and Cameron Fleming from Forsman & Bodenfors as strategy director. And there have been four new hires on the production front: Tracy Wightman, most recently at Leo Burnett, joins as sr. digital producer; and Heather Hyland from Community Agency, Jason Pearson, who’d been freelancing for many years, and Andrew Sekine from Postmedia join as integrated producers. Zulu’s in-house content division, Zulubot, added a head of production, hiring Adam Palmer who had been freelancing at the content studio since leaving Popp Rok. This hire will allow Tom Evans, Zulubot’s managing director, to provide even more focus on running and growing the business….
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More