Announcing its intention to become “go-to content providers” for brands and agencies, Toronto-based design, video and animation studio Loopmedia has launched a new content marketing division.
The company has also made a pair of key senior hires, adding former Publicis Toronto creative director Jason Theodor and Toro founding editor William Morassutti as partners. Theodor joins the organization as vice-president executive director, strategy and creative, while Morassutti joins as VP, executive director, content and editorial.
Loopmedia president Sonja Perovic said the two new hires “amplify” the company’s creative and editorial firepower, turning the company into a “go-to resource” for content and content marketing solutions.
Perovic, who co-founded Loopmedia in 1995, said building a content marketing division from a production standpoint creates a “huge advantage” for the company, noting that $44 million was spent on content production and distribution across North America last year.
She said advertisers are increasingly shifting from a model in which they push advertising out to consumers to attempting to pull them in with engaging, shareable and discoverable content.
Millennials, who now comprise half of the Canadian workforce, prefer interaction to interruption, watch video-on-demand rather than TV, and tend to trust content shared by their friends.
The new hires continue what Perovic characterized as a “growth trend” for the company, which earlier this year hired Shiv Harrilal, a senior video editor whose resume includes music videos and feature films and who has worked with agencies including Taxi, John St., Grip and Anomaly.
“We’re building our content production capabilities across the board,” said Perovic. “It’s become clear to many in our industry that the ‘interrupt and repeat’ approach of traditional advertising is no longer effective in a digital, streaming, always-on world that delivers high quality content with no interruptions at all.”
Theodor is also an accomplished writer and speaker who has given presentations at conferences including Verge, FITC, NXNEi and the IAB’s MIXX Conference. His resume also includes a stint as senior creative director with Blast Radius, and interactive creative director with Grey Canada. Other agency stops include Critical Mass, OgilvyInteractive and MacLaren McCann.
Morassutti was a founder of the now defunct men’s magazine Toroin 2002, and also launched its web-only successor ToroMagazine.com.
He also served as creative director at the Toronto Star’s content marketing division, Star Content Studios and as editor-in-chief at YouInc.com, a website dedicated to the entrepreneurial lifestyle.
