Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners (BSSP) has hired Jimmie Blount as its new creative director. Blount will lead creative on Blue Shield of California and the agency’s portfolio of Sovos Brands, which includes Rao’s Homemade and Noosa Yoghurt. Blount also will contribute to the agency’s growing new business efforts. Based out of Austin, Texas, Blount will report to BSSP’s executive creative director, Sinan Dagli.
Dagli said, “Jimmie brings a deep history of working with some of the fastest growing brands and creating award-winning work that inspires creativity. Jimmie’s experience developing digital media campaigns using novel technology will enhance our creative capabilities for both clients and the agency.”
Throughout his career, Blount has created campaigns that delivered standout results for brands like ESPN, Vital Farms, High Noon, Redhat, among others. His work has been recognized at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, The One Show, Clio Awards, The Art Director’s Club, and assorted other competitions. Previously he served as creative director at Preacher. While at the agency, his Vital Farms team developed an OOH campaign that touted the brand’s transparency and commitment to animal welfare using a camera with a special shutter release for hens to give people a clear look at their farm. Prior to Preacher, Blount served as an art director at Baldwin&. Blount brings a love of hacking traditional media to create unexpected, buzzy campaigns and activations, such as when his team trapped 63 people to a billboard and armed them with signs to create a message to demonstrate the power of collaboration for Redhat.
“BSSP has been a vanguard independent small agency for nearly 30 years. Having worked at a couple agency start-ups, I was intrigued by BSSP’s legacy of success. I know I can learn here and contribute to an already killer group of creatives and ad pros,” said Blount. “I’m eager to bring my skills to the table to strengthen BSSP’s client partnerships, and looking forward to making new friends, experiencing John Butler’s Monster Museums, landing some new business, and, with luck, winning some awards along the way.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More