VIRTUE, the agency born from VICE, has added Susie Lyons to its North America leadership team. She has been named head of strategy, overseeing the strategy, communications planning and intelligence teams across VIRTUE’s offices in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Toronto. Lyons will report directly to Krystle Watler, VIRTUE’s managing director, North America.
Lyons joins from DDB New York where she served as head of strategy. There, she led the strategic vision for the agency and across all clients including Kroger, Capital One, Unilever, and the Tribeca Film Festival. Prior to DDB, Lyons served as VP, marketing strategy at the Lifetime Network where she led marketing strategy for all Lifetime and Lifetime Movies linear and editorial campaigns. Throughout her 15 year career, Lyons has worked at notable agencies including Deutsch LA, 180LA, David&Goliath, Team One and Hill Holliday.
In September, VIRTUE announced new global leadership, appointing Rob Newlan as global president, Watler as managing director, North America and bringing on Simon Mogren as executive creative director, North America. With Marianne Pizzi as head of client services, Jill Rothman as head of production, Daniela Asaro as head of integrated production, and Tara Garcia as head of recruiting, Lyons’ appointment rounds out VIRTUE’s North America leadership team.
Over the past year, the agency picked up 28 new clients across North America and 45 across international markets, in addition to taking home one Grand Prix, one Glass Award, 7 Lions and a total of 23 shortlists at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
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.
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