Havas Media Group (HMG) has named agency veteran Courtney Cherry its managing director of global communications. Reporting to HMG’s chief global growth officer Erin Flaxman, Cherry is responsible for developing and implementing a growth-driven global marketing and communications strategy for the agency. This includes crafting the HMG story and advancing the agency’s Meaningful Media proposition, capabilities and thought leadership in the marketplace. Her remit will include external communications, media relations, internal communications, ownership of digital channels, industry partnerships and beyond. Cherry brings more than 18 years of strategic communications and agency leadership experience to HMG. Most recently, Cherry served as SVP, director of global communications at Publicis Groupe’s Starcom where she developed and led brand marketing communications programs, driving growth, client engagement and agency differentiation across more than 100 global markets. Before that, Cherry held a variety of leadership roles at Chicago-based corporate communications agency Reputation Partners with responsibility for setting agency growth strategy, unlocking organic client revenue, growing digital capabilities, cultivating talent and leading the agency’s largest accounts….
Minority-owned and Miami-headquartered mobile advertising and digital media company Adsmovil has named Maria Twena to serve as its first ever chief marketing officer. Twena, who has 30+ years industry experience, was most recently EVP of brand and marketing at WelcomeTech. She previously served as CMO of Entravision Communications and Pulpo Media, and through the years has been the president, CEO, and/or managing partner of several major agencies, including GH Latino, and her own Second Generation Soy. During her tenure at McCann Worldgroup, Twena founded a division that targeted the bilingual/bicultural Hispanic cohort online. While there, she received an ADCOLOR Award (2009) for her groundbreaking work on identifying, segmenting and targeting bicultural Hispanics, and developed industry best practices for driving acquisition. Twena has served as an ANA faculty member (Multicultural Marketing), as a board member of AHAA (now the Hispanic Marketing Council), and as a ThinkNow advisory board member….
Full Lineup Set For AFI Fest; Official Selections Span 44 Countries, Include 9 Best International Feature Oscar Submissions
The American Film Institute (AFI) has unveiled the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, taking place in Los Angeles from October 23-27. Rounding out the slate of already announced titles are such highlights as September 5 directed by Tim Fehlbaum, All We Imagine As Light directed by Payal Kapadia, The Luckiest Man in America directed by Samir Oliveros (AFI Class of 2019), Zurawski v. Texas from executive producers Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence and directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, and Oh, Canada directed by Paul Schrader (AFI Class of 1969). A total of 158 films are set to screen at the 38th edition of AFI Fest.
Of the official selections, 48% are directed by women and non-binary filmmakers and 26% are directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Additional festival highlights include documentaries Architecton directed by Victor Kossakovsky; Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie directed by David Bushell; Devo directed by Chris Smith about the legendary new wave provocateurs; Gaucho Gaucho directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw; Group Therapy directed by Neil Berkeley with Emmy® winner Neil Patrick Harris and Tig Notaro; No Other Land directed by a Palestinian-Israeli team comprised of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal; Pavements directed by Alex Ross Perry; and Separated directed by Errol Morris. Notable narrative titles include Black Dog (Gou Zen) directed by Guan Hu; Bonjour Tristesse directed by Durga Chew-Bose with Academy Award® nominee Chloë Sevigny; Caught By The Tides directed by Jia Zhangke; Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh with... Read More