Black-owned and minority-led marketing consultancy Think TRUE has opened in Los Angeles. Incubated by experiential marketing agency On Board Experiential (OBE), Think TRUE specializes in brand initiatives centered on engaging diverse and often marginalized communities, delivering support to marketers seeking to diversify their offerings, and promoting a local approach to targeting underrepresented audiences. Think TRUE’s services include brand consulting, audience insight development, talent management, PR and public policy consultation, issue marketing as well as grassroots and community outreach. The consultancy is coming out of the gate with current OBE client JPMorgan Chase & Co., turning out work for the brand’s “Advancing Black Pathways” initiative. This campaign builds on the firm’s existing efforts to help the Black community carve stronger paths towards economic success and empowerment. Think TRUE will also be engaging with OBE clients Nike and Facebook. Think TRUE is led by chief TRUE officer Alvin Stafford, who founded boutique agency Blueprint Collective in 2006. Since merging his company with On Board Experiential in 2015, Stafford has served as VP of accounts, delivering engaging and authentic experiences for Nike Global and Basketball North America, the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and JPMorgan Chase & Co., among others. Joining Stafford is co-principal owner Vada O. Manager, a longtime strategic consultant and corporate board director who’s served on Nike’s corporate leadership team and was an executive advisor to the leadership of Levi Strauss & Co. Think TRUE’s board of directors includes Tina Thompson, second all-time leading scorer in WNBA history, four-time WNBA champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist and current head women’s basketball coach at the University of Virginia. Also on the board are On Board Experiential’s co-CEOs, Dan Hirsch and Deb Lemon, who bring decades of experience creating connected, authentic consumer moments for mega-brands like Nike, Activision and Kellogg’s across the experiential, music, sports and entertainment spaces…..
Rodd Rathjen is set to direct the film adaptation of Behrouz Boochani’s groundbreaking book “No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.” The film is one of the projects selected for the Toronto Film Festival’s International Financing Forum (IFF) in September, with Rathjen working in close collaboration alongside Boochani and writer/producer Ákos Armont. Boochani will take on the roles of story consultant and associate producer, joining the writers’ room and contributing to scripting. The project is jointly led by Aurora Films, Hoodlum Entertainment and Sweetshop & Green. The latter is an Australian and New Zealand production company–the entertainment division of commercial production company Sweetshop–focused on producing local film and TV projects for global audiences. Boochani, who was granted refugee status in New Zealand last month, has been working closely with the Australian producers to develop his story for the screen, with support from Screen Australia. Boochani is a Kurdish Iranian journalist, author and poet who fled Iran in 2012 after the newspaper he co-founded was raided by the Iranian government. As a refugee, he attempted to travel to Australia by boat from Indonesia to seek asylum but was intercepted and imprisoned on an Australian-run offshore processing camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Boochani would spend almost seven years confined in offshore detention. His book is a vivid and lyrical account of his harrowing experience…..
