Lifelong Crush adds to creative, strategy teams

The new hires are in response to organic growth among existing clients, as well as some new relationships.

Lifelong Crush Team

The newest additions to the Lifelong Crush team include (from left) Caleigh Smith, Marcelo Mariano, Julie Martinson and Savannah Onofrey, with EVP and managing director Caroline Kilgour (right).

Lifelong Crush has hired four new employees – of which includes two new creative directors – in response to the agency’s organic growth with existing clients and some new business wins.

The agency, which is a subsidiary of Broken Heart Love Affair (BLHA), hired Marcelo Mariano and Julie Martinson into their CD roles in January.

Mariano comes to Lifelong Crush after spending the previous year working as an ACD for Media.Monks in Toronto. He held the same role with a number of other agencies including Publicis Sapient and Zulu Alpha Kilo in Toronto, the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., and J. Walter Thompson in Brazil. Across his career he has worked on a range of clients including Hyundai, CAMH, Tim Hortons, Oreo and Ford Motors.

Martinson, meanwhile, joins the agency from The Kitchen, Kraft Heinz’s in-house social and digital team, where she held the same role. She also has previous experience as a CCO at Colour, and held ACD positions at Proof and Union prior to that. She has worked with brands such as Aurora Cannabis, Mazda, Canadian Red Cross and Netflix.

The two will work across the agency’s client portfolio, says Caroline Kilgour, EVP and managing director of Lifelong Crush, with “a mandate to harness their passion for culture to inform the creation of engaging content that elevates consumers’ experiences.”

Lifelong Crush also made a pair of hires to its strategy team.

Strategist Savannah Onofrey joins the agency from Rethink, where she led strategy on several Kraft Heinz brands, Metrolinx, and Nescafé. She has an extensive background in social, influencer and brand strategy and will primarily focus on content strategy, according to Kilgour, ensuring “strategic coherence is maintained throughout the marketing and communications discipline.”

Meanwhile, Caleigh Smith has been hired as a social media strategist, with a background working on brands in food, retail and not-for-profit. Community management and content development will be key areas of focus for Smith, Kilgour says.

The new hires bring Lifelong Crush’s full-time headcount to ten, Kilgour says. The agency will make additional hires in the first quarter.