Aaron Starkman has been promoted to chief creative officer of Zig‘s Toronto agency.
Starkman has contributed to campaigns for Molson, IKEA and Best Buy, among others, as a multi-award winning writer and creative director, including three golds in Cannes.
"I have worked with Aaron for eight years now. He joined Zig a couple months after I did," said Zig president Shelley Brown. "I’ve watched him blossom as both a creative person and a creative director, particularly on Molson. He is brilliant, there’s no question about that, and he’s at the point now where he’s truly ready to lead."
Starkman, who has also been made a partner at the agency, said he’ll remain very hands-on with key accounts such as Molson as he takes a more "profound" role within the creative team.
The creative director’s position he vacates will remain unfilled for the time being, though Brown said Zig will consider looking inside and outside the agency to fill it in the future.
Starkman is assuming the position vacated by Martin Beauvais, who left the agency yesterday.
Beauvais led the agency’s creative department since 2006 when he joined from BBDO Montreal. He said his departure is a "pause" to assess the future.
"Things are changing fast in my world," Beauvais told Marketing Thursday afternoon. "Media and clients are changing, and I figured it would be a good time to take a bit of a pause to think about exactly what I’d like to do that best uses my talents and energy that will challenge and stimulate me."
The designer-turned-creative director said he will return to agency life at some point "for sure," but did not know when.
While at Zig, Beauvais held the title of executive creative director. Brown said changing that title to chief creative officer is to signal the agency’s attitudes towards integration.
"In the past, we had an executive creative director of digital and executive creative director of everything that wasn’t digital," Brown said. "That, frankly, was against our philosophy. We don’t believe there is such a thing as great digital or non-digital creative. There are great ideas that we find the most powerful ways to express. Aaron’s title is deliberately different to signal that we have a single creative group."
Zig’s last digital creative lead was Cameron Wykes, who left the agency in January to launch Baby Robot, a digital agency affiliated with Allard Johnson Communications.
Zig also has an office in Chicago, where Stephen Lepps, Starkman’s former partner, has creative oversight.
The agency is part of the MDC Partners network.
