BETC London has made seven hires: the sr. creative team of Ash Ghazali and Jon Kallus; the creative duo of Nat Cantor and Neil Gurr; head of design Rafe Greenlaw; art director Gareth W. Rice; and director of creative services Kate Blumer.
Sr. creative team Ghazali and Kallus come over from BBH London where their where their professional partnership began, creating films for Barclaycard and Mentos. Before their fortuitous meeting in London, Kallus was based in San Francisco, teaching at Miami Ad School and working at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, where he was part of the team that brought the world a 50 foot vending machine for Doritos at SXSW. Before that, he wrote the first big DirecTV campaign at Grey NY, shooting an eccentric Russian billionaire and his mini pet giraffe.
Ghazali started his career at Ogilvy Singapore in 1999, bringing them awards success with his FHM print and Levi’s Reborn online campaigns. He moved to BBH Singapore in 2008, transferring to BBH London two years later, where he was the creative director on the Google account. He oversaw the Google Voice Search billboard campaign, which earned gold at Cannes as well as a Media Grand Prix. He also helped launch Google Chrome with a film starring SBTV’s Jamal Edwards, which picked up 4 million views in just three days.
The AKQA creative team of Cantor and Gurr brings to BETC 14 years of creative experience on such brands between them as Nike, Xbox, Heineken, Volkswagen, Mazda and Fiat. The pair started working together in 2012, a partnership which saw them lead the award-winning Nike Barbershop campaign for Euro 2012, which allowed football-obsessed fans to emulate some of football’s most iconic hair styles online, and even get their hair chopped for real at pop up barbershops around the world. Cantor and Gurr also worked together on Nike’s “The Chance,” an innovative campaign that gave young, unsigned footballers the opportunity to put themselves in the spotlight and earn a professional contract.
Greenlaw joins BETC London as head of design after seven years as a designer at Mother London, where he worked on an extensive portfolio of brands including Ikea, Stella Artois, Motorola, Becks, Schweppes, Boots, Intel-Acer, Travelodge, Pot Noodle, Coca-Cola and Diet Coke.
Art director Rice hails from New Zealand. He moved to Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam in 2009, where he worked on the global re-launch of Coke Music, Heineken and the Film Institute Netherlands. Gareth moved to London in 2012, where he spent time at Mother boutique agency Wednesday, working across a range of fashion and luxury clients, before heading to BETC London.
Blumer becomes director of creative services at BETC London. She brings 13 years of experience to her new roost. Blumer spent the first four years of her career at AMV BBDO, before moving to BBH London, where she spent five years as traffic, producer and art buyer on Audi, eBay, Barclays and British Airways. Her next move took her to Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam and Coca-Cola, ESPN and Nike, before heading back to the U.K. to be head of project management at Havas London.
