The One Club for Creativity will induct Rebeca Méndez, Susan Hoffman, David Lubars and Tom Burrell to the Creative Hall of Fame. Diane Cook-Tench will be named to the Educators Hall of Fame.
The Creative Hall of Fame has a rich heritage of honoring the lifetime achievements of creative luminaries in advertising and design, such as Mary Wells, David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Lee Clow. The first inductee was Leo Burnett in 1961.
“The Creative Hall of Fame is the ultimate recognition of a storied career as a creative professional, and our newest inductees are being honored because of their significant impacts on the advertising and design industries,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO of The One Club for Creativity. “These are creatives whose work has transcended advertising, influencing pop culture, uplifting African-American culture, laying the groundwork for the next generation of creatives, and even influencing thought and action on climate change. They are titans of our industry.”
Méndez is an artist, designer, and professor at UCLA, Design Media Arts, where she is director of the CounterForce Lab, a research and fieldwork studio dedicated to using art and design to develop creative collaborations, new fields of study, and methods to research, create, and execute projects around the social and ecological impacts of anthropocene climate change.
Hoffman has created some of Wieden+Kennedy’s most memorable work in more than three decades at the agency, including one Nike spot that pretty much ruined the Beatles for everybody. She famously opened W+K London and W+K Amsterdam, and has intermittently served as executive creative director for the Portland, New York and Delhi offices. As co-chief creative officer, Hoffman currently oversees the entire global network.
Lubars is chief creative officer, BBDO Worldwide, and chairman of BBDO North America. In the 13 years since Lubars joined BBDO, he has helped transform the agency into the most creatively awarded in the world and a recipient of more than 15 Agency of the Year recognitions by various industry publications. His work for BMW Films changed what was thought of as advertising forever. He was named one of the top ten creative directors of all time in a recent story published in Forbes CMO Network.
Burrell launched what is now Burrell Communications in 1971. By understanding and highlighting the positive aspects of black American culture, Burrell changed the face of American advertising. A collection of Burrell’s advertisements for Coca-Cola is archived at the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.
Cook-Tench is the founding director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s grad school, the Brandcenter. Today, the VCU Brandcenter boasts a league of alumni that lead major brand work across the world. Prior to teaching, she won more than 100 national and international awards for her creative work.
The Creative Hall of Fame ceremony is a black-tie gala event that will take place on Monday, September 18, in the grand ballroom of Gotham Hall in Manhattan.
“No Good Men” and “Only Rebels Win” Bring Love From Unexpected Places To Berlin Film Fest
A surprising and touching Afghan political rom-com that is said to feature the first ever on-screen kiss in an Afghan movie opens the 76th Berlin Film Festival Thursday.
Set in a Kabul newsroom in 2021, with the Taliban on the cusp of returning to power, "No Good Men" tells the workplace love story of camerawoman Naru, separated from her cheating husband and struggling to keep custody of her young son while trying to build a career in a male dominated industry and patriarchal society.
Director Shahrbanoo Sadat said the kissing scene cost her lead actor three weeks before shooting began, and forced her to step into the role herself.
"The joke was everyone who wanted to play Naru, they didn't want to do the kissing, I wanted to do the kissing, I didn't want to do the rest of the film," Sadat said.
And it wasn't just the casting that was met with resistance. The Afghan film industry is small, she said, so the expectation is that the movie will be "good PR" for the country.
Sadat had her own ideas, though.
"I love Afghanistan, but I cannot close my eyes to patriarchy, sexism, all the big topics, and just say the good things about Afghanistan, so I'm disappointing my people," she said.
Making an Afghan film in Europe, with European funding, she also felt added pressure to be a political and feminist filmmaker or make a war movie.
Sadat received multiple letters of complaint from funders who said it was inappropriate for them to support a rom-com given the political situation in Afghanistan.
"For me it was like, wait a minute, what? I feel offended that you feel offended about my project," she said. "I'm coming from a war country, and this is my way of expressing myself, to go through the oceans of... Read More