Creative 100: Honoring the Most Innovative Talent Across Advertising, TV, Visual Art and More (2024)

Game night:After leaving his full-time agency job, Mike Alfaro took his wildly successful Millennial Lotería—a humorous take on the popular Mexican bingo-like game lotería—to new heights. The game, which started as a personal art project, is now available in Target, Walmart, Barnes & Noble and hundreds of small Latino-owned stores across the United States. McDonald’s even reached out to bring an exclusive edition of the game to franchises across Southern California for game nights. Alfaro also partnered with Disney to create 45 unique Millennial Lotería posters for the movie Wish.

Children’s literacy:Alfaro wrote and published a line of bilingual children’s books called ¡Sí Sabo! Kids. The first book launched in March and taught children early Spanish vocabulary from street vendors, who are an important part of the Latino community. The next two books will be released in September 2024, followed by a 3-in-1 bilingual learning game coming exclusively to Walmart in October.—Aleda Stam

No mistranslations:A true globetrotter, David Martin Angelus has worked around the world for international brands including Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Deezer. He was the mind behind Duolingo’s “The Tattoo Duo Over” campaign, which poked fun at people who tattoo languages they aren’t fluent in on their bodies—risking embarrassment when it isn’t actually correct. Duolingo offered to cover up the tattoos of these victims of mistranslation.

Working with Pride:A member of the LGBTQ+ community, Angelus is most proud of his “Silver Pride” work for hosting platform Misterb&b. The campaign helped aging LGBTQ+ people attend Pride marches by offering them comfortable and accessible places to gather along parade routes. “The initiative to bring them back to Pride marches across the world is a wonderful one,” Angelus said. “Especially because many LGBTQIA + seniors live alone and suffer from higher rates of depression.”

Advice to aspiring creatives:“Be very curious about everything,” Angelus said. “What’s new today is old news tomorrow so you need to keep up with the tech and the trends.”—Aleda Stam

Not a ‘Hack’:Italian-born director and writer Lucia Aniello won an Emmy in 2021 for both Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the HBO Max show Hacks, which she co-created. She was also lauded for her work on Broad City.

Directing the holiday spirit:Aniello directed Apple’s 2023 holiday ad, a stop-motion take on the Scrooge tale that was both touching and exceedingly creative in how it updated the story for the modern creator age.

Comedy training and timing:Having trained at sketch comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, Aniello came into contact with Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin, who had her direct the first campaign for the company, which went viral.—Kyle O’Brien

Setting social media ablaze:Allison Apperson and Chase Zreet get the credit for creating one of the most talked about ad campaigns of 2023. The Solo Stove campaign featuring Snoop Dog had every major news outlet and social media feed ablaze as people discussed the rapper’s decision to go “smokeless.”Some of Hollywood’s biggest stoners even publicly committed to quitting weed in solidarity with Snoop. A second wave of coverage swept the advertising biz as the campaign ignited an industrywide dialogue about the role of virality in larger marketing strategies.

Fierce mentors:Apperson and Zreet have a track record of fighting for the teams they lead, supporting good ideas from junior creatives and sharing the spotlight when those ideas strike gold. Throughout the Solo Stove press whirlwind, they both regularly praised their junior talent who worked on the campaign.

Their motto:“Stubborn tenacity gets us pretty far.”—Aleda Stam

More public art than advertising:Last year, Lynsey Atkin spearheaded the remake of Channel 4’s idents, sweeping numerous industry awards. The project was “a huge undertaking with massive creative pressure, but a total joy—and rarity—to create something that felt much less like advertising and far more like a piece of public video art,” she said.

Laying the groundwork:“I spent most of [my childhood] in my bedroom copying Garfield cartoons and glue-gunning glass beads to my carpet, which is almost indistinguishable from my job now,” Atkin recalled.

Advice to aspiring creatives:“Taste is everything. Figure out what you like (and why).”—Brittaney Kiefer

Building an agency:Avinash Baliga joined Tombras from Maximum Effort, where he worked on campaigns for Mint Mobile, Weight Watchers, Bolt Financial and Aviation American Gin. The first executive creative director for Tombras, Baliga spent the last year building out the New York team’s footprint and creative output.

Blurring the lines:His work blurs the line between advertising, news and culture. In the last year, he was behind several culturally relevant campaigns across the agency’s client roster, including deepfaking vegans for Steak-umm, launching the world’s first global campaign targeting aliens for MoonPie, trolling Philly for Zaxby’s, leaning into dating trends with “Situationship Boxes” for Sweethearts Candies, and helping the Special Olympics redefine the word special.—Aleda Stam

Fooled you:Vanessa de Beaumont has a history of making culturally relevant, viral ad moments, and 2023 was no different. She was the brains behind the 2023 Super Bowl’s most disruptive campaign: Tubi’s “Interface Interruption,” which fooled millions of viewers into thinking someone was changing the channel. The 15-second spot prompted 70,000 people to log into Tubi and kicked off the brand’s most successful year yet, with viewership jumping 71% year over year.

Other highlights:De Beaumont also continued Coors Light’s successful partnership with NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes with the creation of the “Coors Light Bear.” The ad, which shows Mahomes in typical beer-drinking situations, is accompanied instead by a bear, poking fun at the NFL’s rules on players and alcohol advertising. De Beaumont ended the year bringing back Chili’s iconic “Baby Back Ribs” jingle with a fresh take from Boyz II Men, which was released on vinyl and featured in a series of spots showing how catchy the tune is.—Aleda Stam

Hat in the ring:Though she wasn’t on Dick’s Sporting Goods’ roster of ad agency help, Lake Bell recently pitched an idea for a campaign “as a wild card,” she told ADWEEK, mainly because she’s a longtime fan of the retailer. Andher concept—“filmic, comedic nuggets” with friends Kathryn Hahn and Will Arnett—clicked with brand execs, who not only hired her but also committed to a yearlong partnership to boost their ecommerce platform.

Mini-movies:“Click on Dicks.com” is the latest work on Bell’s growing commercial CV, which also includes sultry ads for an orange wine from Nomadica, a darkly comic holiday film for hot-selling weed soda Cann, and branded content for Intel and W Hotels. Bell, a prolific voiceover actor and onscreen TV and film star, has been writing and directing for more than a decade, delving into the marketing space in recent years with a discerning eye. “You can deliver a better product if you’re aligned with the ethos of the brand,” she told ADWEEK. “That’s integral in the choices I make.”

Walking the walk:The New York native, transplanted to Los Angeles, populates her sets with pros from underrepresented groups and hires through ManifestWorks, which provides job training to the formerly incarcerated.—T.L. Stanley

Can’t stop the music:Buoyant Bob is a hot-selling cannabis brand from Missouri’s Show-Me Organics and, through Tony Billmeyer’s deft maneuvering, a verified artist on Spotify with several versions of a groovy song called “The Man Who Got So High.” The project, part of Billmeyer’s goal to “make brands famous,” is one way the former ad agency creative (BBDO, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Erich & Kallman) has muscled into places normally off-limits to weed marketers.

Gift of ganja:For the 2023 holidays, Billmeyer positioned the Vivid brand like top-shelf booze, packaged in a handsome gift box meant to bust lingering stigmas and invite weed to the party. Accompanying advertising from Bandits & Friends leaned into classic Americana with Yule log videos and Norman Rockwell-esque artwork. The campaign came as a follow-up to a faux Big Pharma spot called “Ask Your Doctor” that jabbed at the medical establishment as the opioid epidemic raged in the state.

Making noise:With heavy restrictions in the space—cannabis is still federally illegal—Billmeyer searches for nontraditional ways to break into the mainstream, namely via earned media and public relations, “because in cannabis marketing, there are lots of trees falling in the woods with no one to hear a sound.”—T.L. Stanley

Building worlds:After starting out as a fashion journalist and editor, Heidi Bivens pivoted and has worked for 25 years as a stylist, 20 years as a costume designer and three years as a director and producer. Most recently, she oversaw costume design for upcoming feature film, The Smashing Machine, directed by Benny Safdie and produced by A24, and for the HBO show Euphoria. She also collaborated on a Chanel campaign and styled Taylor Swift for her 2023 Time magazine cover. “I look for stories where I have an opportunity to world-build, creating costumes that transcend or heighten reality,” Bivens told ADWEEK.

Advice to aspiring creatives:“Persevere and meet as many people as possible. You never know where a connection will take you.”

Personal mantra:“Everything is always working out for me.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Road trip:Swedish natives Noah Bramme and Andreas Karlsson took a journey through American history this year when they created Volkswagen’s first Super Bowl campaign in a decade, telling the story of the first Beetle arriving on U.S. soil in 1949. A nostalgic and emotional film, “An American Love Story” led to the German automaker being the most engaged brand of the night, quadruple the engagement of the next highest car brand. The duo also created a heartwarming Volkswagen commercial for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, drawing attention to the United States women’s national soccer team’s identity off the field.

School buddies:Bramme and Karlsson are old school friends and began working for Åkestam Holst, one of Sweden’s largest agencies. Three years later, they jumped across the pond, moving to New York City for their current roles at Johannes Leonardo.

Advice to aspiring creatives:“Work hard and be passionate. Our experience is that advertising is fair, in the way that you get what you give. So far we’ve been generous with our time, energy and ideas—and in return we’ve been getting a lot of opportunities, trust and recognition back. Just keep swimming.”—Aleda Stam

Dynamic duo:Having partnered during their time at Ogilvy & Mather, Sean Buckhorn and Gonzalo Navarro traveled to Droga5 together in 2018 and slowly established themselves as a creative force, working together on some of the agency’s most well-known clients, including Dos Equis, ESPN, Allstate and IHOP. This past year, the duo were pivotal in the creation of Levi’s “The Greatest Story Ever Worn” as they combed through the brands archives, Reddit threads and even community newspaper obits to find stories worth telling.ADWEEK named it one of the best ads of 2023.

Family affair:In November, Buckhorn’s and Navarro’s sons were both born within two weeks of each other—and the duo almost immediately began production on the Paramount+ “A Mountain of Entertainment” Super Bowl spot, which ranked in ADWEEK’s top 10 ads of the Big Game. They believe it’s their wives who should be on ADWEEK’s Creative 100 list for Most Understanding Spouses in Advertising.—Aleda Stam

Jack of all trades:With a background that includes music videos, sketch comedy and the animated TV series Mr. Pickles for Adult Swim, Will Carsola wears many hats these days at the canned water startup. He designed its skull logo and created Murder Man, blending a few of his favorite genres, comedy and horror, into the ultimate on-brand mascot. “One day I might be helping to write an original concept or script,” Carsola told ADWEEK, “and the next day I might be drawing a deer wearing a gimp suit.”

Key creative:Carsola was behind the massively popular Liquid Deathcollaboration with e.l.f. Cosmeticscalled “Corpse Paint” this spring and theTom Segura, mostly-SFW, sustainability-minded project dubbed the “Recycling Glory Hole.” He designs most of the brand’s swag, including some “dream-come-true” Metallica merchandise. Next up is an animated show called The Adventures of Murder Man, co-written with Liquid Death’s CEO Mike Cessario and produced by Titmouse, exploring the character’s bizarre origin story.

Words to live by:“Be nice to people, make mistakes and learn from them, and be weird.”—T.L. Stanley

Keeping the lights on:Running Mojo Supermarket’s creative department for the last two years, Kate Carter has been responsible for growing the agency’s portfolio, culture and revenue. In the last year, she was key to bringing on TikTok and Peloton, establishing Mojo’s successful social and performance marketing capabilities just to win the business. The two accounts are the agency’s second and third largest by revenue.

Witty creative:Last year, Carter was also the creative mind behind Match’s “Adults Wanted” campaign, which was inspired by vintage Help Wanted signs and drew emotionally mature adults looking to bring fun and excitement back to dating. The out-of-home installations plastered lines like, “Fall stupidly in love with someone who’s actually really smart,” and, “Get really naughty with someone really nice,” on installations around New York City and Los Angeles neighborhoods with the highest population of adult singles.

Telling stories:Carter recently wrote a children’s book for her niece and nephew entitled Please Don’t Be a Brat.—Aleda Stam

Launching his eponymous company:The Southern California-based photographer launched Micaiah Carter Photography eight years ago, after graduating from Parsons School of Design with a Fine Arts degree.

Blue-chip brand work:Carter signed with an agency in 2016, and since then, he’s worked with brands like Nike and Apple, and with publications including Vogue Spain and Time magazine. One of his favorite projects was a recent Hennessy campaign starring actors Teyana Taylor and Damson Idris.

To those getting started:“Try not to stay stagnant for too long. You really have to go after the things you want,” Carter said.—Olivia Morley

Challenging tropes:This past year, Charlene Chandrasekaran and Dan Morris oversaw a new platform for male grooming brand Harry’s, with its first TV spot about a man who is fascinated by a colleague’s satsuma mandarin peeling skills.The humorous story contained a subtle message defying toxic masculine tropes. ADWEEK named it one of the best ads of 2023.

Climbing the ladder:Chandrasekaran and Morris began their careers together at BBH London before settling in at Droga5 London, where they created the facetious “Crystal Barn” ad for Barclaycard Business, a slow-mo marathon to promote the Baywatch film, and a social media campaign for coffee liqueur brand Kahlúa. The pair settled at Mother offshoot agency The Or at the start of 2023.

Advice to creatives:“Don’t miss your mum/dad/nan/kid’s birthday for anything work-related.”—Aleda Stam

Choose your own adventure:An outdoorswoman with a passion for variety, Lydia Choi’s work for the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation drove eco-conscious consumerism and gave women of all ages an outlet to bolster their confidence outdoors. The “Find Your Best Self on the Water” campaign framed fishing as essential for the success of creative women, and a Vanity Fair takeover saw actress Ellie Kemper going fishing for the first time.

Responsible ecotourism:For Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Choi launched the town’s “Stay Wild” platform, an awareness campaign to encourage people to visit while teaching tourists to become stewards of the land. Her “California Road Snow Show” went to three snowless cities to encourage people to visit Jackson Hole.—Aleda Stam

Scrappy creative:Getting their start in a small market nearly 400 miles away from São Paulo, Brazil, João Corazza and Bruno Reis had a scrappy way of working that relied less on big budgets and more on delving into pop culture for commonalities in public appeal. The method served them well when they arrived at Africa Creative (DDB São Paulo) in 2019 and nabbed more than 15 Cannes Lions over the next four years. The creative streak continued when they joined David Miami last year.

Poking the bear:In 2023, Corazzo and Reis took a swipe at Apple for their new client Android. The launch of the iPager—a satirized Apple product mocking Apple’s use of 30-year-old technology—associated Apple with outdated SMS technology and changed perceptions of both Apple and Android. The campaign struck a chord: Less than two months after the iPager debuted, Apple retired its SMS messaging for the more secure RCS chats that Android uses.—Aleda Stam

Full calendar:Sara Cummings and Abby Gross were quite busy in the last year. They were the ideators of a Showtime brand voice update, an Entenmann’s rebrand, plus a new summer campaign for Little Bites. They also helped write the script for a 23-episode “RomCommerce” series for Walmart, hitting on all the classic tropes from an old flame meet-cute—in a Walmart of course—to a messy love triangle.

So fetch:The highlight of their year was creating Walmart’s Black Friday commercial that brought the cast of Mean Girls back together, but as parents. Cummings and Gross treated the source material as sacred doctrine, continuing Cady, Gretchen, Karen and Damian’s stories authentically while incorporating Walmart products into the script. The storylines were brought up to date, with Gretchen Wieners returning as the spouse to a “cool Asian” and mother to her own vicious teen daughter, while Karen Smith capitalized on her breast-based weather forecasting talents for a journalism career.—Aleda Stam

Notable trophies on the mantel:Ayo Edebiri skyrocketed to fame as chef Sydney Adamu in FX’s critically acclaimed comedy-drama The Bear, picking up a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, Critics Choice Award and a Primetime Emmy Award along the way.

A woman of many talents:Edebiri has written for shows like Sunnyside, Dickinson and Big Mouth. Edebiri also starred in indie film darling Bottoms, has guest starred on Abbott Elementary and voiced roles in the animated films Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

A zig-zaggy career:Before finding success in Hollywood, Edebiri initially went to NYU tobecome a teacher.While there, she gravitated toward stand-up comedy and found inspiration in other successful Black female comedians.

Relatability and humility are the key ingredients:After winning the 2024 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series, Edebiri famously paraphrased a James Baldwin quote inher speech: “The act of love is just really an act of mirroring. And I think anything that anybody sees in me that’s worth anything is because of the people who love me and support me, and it made me who I am.”—Luz Corona

Keeping it real:Even before Firdaous El Honsali joined Dove, its groundbreaking “Real Beauty” campaign challenging unrealistic beauty standards inspired her career. A veteran of L’Oréal, Garnier and The Body Shop, she got the call to join Dove and immediately recalled seeing Dove’s ads as a university student. “[‘Real Beauty’] made me want to join this iconic brand immediately.” she said. “Since then I wake up every day having the feeling I can bring my skills and creativity to the table to give a voice to a strong purpose, one that delivers social impact for the world and growth for the business.”

Pushing for progress:This year marked 20 years of “Real Beauty,” and Dove recommitted to its purpose with “The Code,” pledging to never use AI to showcase people in its ads. Another highlight was partnering with Drew Barrymore and numerous creators for #TheFaceof10 campaign, which highlighted the absurdity of girls feeling the pressure to apply anti-aging creams on their skin at the age of 10.—Brittaney Kiefer

Checks over stripes:Prior to leading brand marketing efforts at Instagram, Arinze Emeagwali worked at Nike as North America brand marketing lifestyle manager. Notable work included co-founding the Nike Yardrunners campaign that celebrates the legacy of historically Black colleges and universities.

About that campaign that broke the internet:Emeagwali helped lead the launch of Instagram’s Close Friends feature in a campaigntargeted to Gen Z. Lil Yachty’s 11.3 million followers were added to his Close Friends group, propelling the campaign to virality for 72 hours.

Origin story for love of consumer insights:“[I was] the last stop on the A train but always went to school in Brooklyn so I spent many hours on the train people-watching to entertain myself,” Emeagwali told ADWEEK. “Paying close attention to what people were wearing helped really sharpen my observation skills. These skills gave me an appreciation for people and human behavior.”—Luz Corona

New influential:Starting her career at the beginning of the influencer era, Julianne Fraser opened Dialogue New York in 2017. Unlike the early days, Dialogue and its clients are now challenged to stand out in a sea ofmodern influencer ads that can be inauthentic and cookie-cutter. Fraser implemented the agency’s “Dial In” partnership platform, a tool to save time and money while connecting brands to the right talent for the right campaigns.

Creative encouragement:In the latest from Dialogue’s long-standing partnership with Little Spoon, Fraser led the brand’s Lunchers influencer campaign. Born out of Fraser’s encouragement that employees pursue creative endeavors outside their work, the campaign cashed in on nostalgia with ’90s and ’00s celebrities and a range of influencers that displayed how outdated the kids’ food category is today.

Personal mantra:“One’s reputation takes a lifetime to build and a split second to fall. Lead with integrity.”—Aleda Stam

Number 321:Sally Fung and Sara Radovanovich have spent the last year working closely with FCB Canada’s longtime partner, the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. First they launched “Runner 321,” where Adidas asked the largest organized marathons to reserve bib number 321—which stands for Trisomy 21, another name for Down syndrome—for a neurodivergent athlete. The campaign kept Fung and Radovanovich in close contact with Chris Nikic, the first Runner 321, and went on to win five Cannes Lions.

Outsmarting the algorithm:The duo worked again toward equity for people with Down syndrome with their Inployable initiative. The campaign started an employment network on LinkedIn for those with Down syndrome, outsmarting the algorithm by “hiring” people with Down syndrome to a company page, giving them instant job experience to include them in job searches. Fung and Radovanovich worked with the Down syndrome community to best represent them while LinkedIn added skills to the platform to represent the community.—Aleda Stam

Into the groove:In directing one of ADWEEK’s 20 best spots of 2023, Liquid Death’s “F**k Whoever Started This,” the duo known professionally as Tusk leaned heavily into both their extensive music video roots and their quirky taste in collaborators. Gravitating to “zany, vibrant and/or strange brands, sometimes a combo of all three,” the partners in work and life put their unique stamp on a hilariously demented concept that starred Puritans, pitchforks and a tallboy of canned water burning at the stake, all set to an ’80s-inspired dance pop ditty. They dubbed it “one of the most brilliant, nonsensical yet totally sensical creative pieces we’ve been a part of.”

Melodic mix:Further blending music and brands, the duo has integrated Maybelline, Beats by Dre and Essentia into videos for pop stars like Tate McRae, while helming traditional commercials for Sony, Google, Truly seltzer and the Met Gala, among others.

Coming of age:One of their passion projects recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The short film, called Ripe!, is a “dreamlike romance” in the vein of Before Sunrise, “but for lesbians,” they said. The directors, who aim for “humor and heart” in their storytelling, hope to turn it into a full-length feature.—T.L. Stanley

It’s electric:Gabriel Gama and Guilherme Grossi—affectionately known to their colleagues as “The Gs”—brought Netflix and General Motors together last year to promote electric vehicles at the Super Bowl. The key to the campaign was getting Netflix to commit to featuring at least one EV in every title they produce. The campaign brought Will Ferrell into all of Netflix’s recent hits to discuss just which titles should feature EVs, with Love Is Blind and Squid Game making much more sense than Bridgerton.

Other work:Friends since they were six years old, Gama and Grossi have been a creative team for more than 12 years, working across three countries. In addition to their Super Bowl work, they created a new brand platform, “Come Back to Your Senses,” for Bath & Body Works that saw a 10-foot candle touring the United States. The duo also created Perfect Bar’s first out-of-home campaign.—Aleda Stam

Climate leadership:Wawa Gatheru has become one of the most high-profile climate creators of her generation, with over 80,000 followers across platforms. At 25, she has led Black Girl Environmentalist for three years, an organization she founded as a digital community. It has since expanded into a climate advocacy group focusing on narrative change, community development and green workforce development. “POC-led organizations receive 1.2% of philanthropy, and youth-led organizations receive .76% of climate philanthropy,” Gatheru said.

Where’s Waldo? but make it Paris:Parisian artist Ugo Gattoni illustrated the posters for the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. “Known for his colorful, fun universe,”according toParis 2024 president Tony Estanguet, Gattoni created the first diptych in the history of the Games with fantastical, detailed scenes that are visually connected in a style reminiscent of Where’s Waldo? books. He spent more than 2,000 hours on the posters, depicting every event in the tournaments, Olympic emblems and Parisian landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Seine. His unique artwork will serve as a lasting symbol of the Games.

A moment in time:The posters will be temporarily displayed at Paris’Musée d’Orsayand soldat French retailer Carrefour. Gattoni, who has previously worked with brands including Cartier andHermès,saidit was a milestone to have his work shown to a global audience: “It’s very important to me that a piece of art has a life in its own time, so it is absolutely fantastic that this drawing can be shown in a museum alongside paintings that are hundreds of years old.”—Brittaney Kiefer

A historic role:Lily Gladstone, who was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, made history with her role as Osage woman Mollie Kyle in Martin Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon. For her performance, she became the first Indigenous Golden Globe and SAG winner and the first Native American Oscar nominee.

Representation matters:Gladstone used her time in the spotlight to uplift other Native American artists and creatives. “It has taken too long [to reach this milestone],” she told Sam Fragoso, host of the Talk Easy podcast. “This is an industry that historically hasn’t been too kind to us … Representation really does mean something [because] maybe Hollywood is ready to have these moments and conversations, but a lot of the world isn’t.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Bold storytelling:For her second film, the 1980s-set Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass mashed up several genres and concepts, including neo-noir crime thriller, dark comedy and fatal attraction, with a dose of magical realism. Her goal with the Western-tinged female bodybuilding tale was to “make something fun and sweaty and violent,” she said in The Associated Press. The sapphic drama, which got a rowdy response at its Sundance Film Festival premiere early this year, is another ambitious swing from Glass, who told the Los Angeles Times: “The sort of films that I feel capable of making, I don’t think I’d be particularly good at trying to shoehorn into something more sensible.”

Instant classic:Love Lies Bleeding follows her feature debut, the psychological horror flick Saint Maud, a pandemic-delayed sleeper that became a critical favorite, with veteran filmmaker Danny Boyle calling it “genuinely unsettling.”

Stranger things:The 34-year-old London-born and based Glass hasn’t announced her next project, only hinting at her ongoing fascination with “the weirdness of human existence and consciousness,” telling Vulture, “I’m interested in bodies and brains.”—T.L. Stanley

Quick on the uptake:It’s been less than a year since Amanda Goldfine and Luke Anderson founded Juxtapose Studio, and the creative duo has already won business from both blue-chip clients including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Dunkin’ and British American Tobacco, and high-growth startups such as Tushy, Kyte and Curio. Beyond advertising, Goldfine and Anderson are developing documentary and narrative projects that tell the stories of marginalized communities, including “Kiss My Grass,” their first documentary that premiered at SXSW and produced with Colin Kaepernick and Rosario Dawson, about the persistent inequity in the weed industry.

Left-of-center pitches:Goldfine and Anderson are proudest of the Dick’s ecommerce campaign they worked on this year, which stepped away from earnest, athlete-centric content in favor of high-brow comedy. The innuendo-filled spots starring Will Arnett and Kathryn Hahn did so well that Dick’s invested in a yearlong television media buy.

Advice for aspiring creatives:“There are people who want to work with you, and there are people that want something from you. Surround yourself with like-minded collaborators who share your values and give you creative energy.”—Aleda Stam

Not slowing down:Susan Golkin cut her teeth in advertising at the same time as David Droga, Jeff Goodby and David Lubars. Yet at 50, when some agency veterans are winding down their careers, Golkin shows no signs of slowing. She is the brains behind some of VML’s most notable work from the last year, such as three Super Bowl ads—including the unhinged “Mayo Cat” for Hellmann’s—the agency’s first campaign for Breyers and “Mended Murals” for Vaseline. She is a creative cornerstone for growing Unilever accounts and helped land Lenovo (for then Wunderman Thompson).

Supportive colleagues:Golkin credits the support she feels from VML execs and younger creatives for her success. “It is amazing what you can accomplish when you feel appreciated,” she said. “This drives how I want my teams to feel.”–Aleda Stam

Giddyup, cowgirl:After becoming the first official nonalcoholic partner for Coachella 2023, earning it the nickname Soberchella, Brianda Gonzalez’s The New Bar doubled down on the alliance with festival organizer AEG’s Goldenvoice this spring. She expanded the presence of her Venice, Calif.-based retailer on both 2024 Coachella weekends and added its country cousin, Stagecoach, to the mix, serving booze-free wine, beer and co*cktails to concert-goers. The former tech executive also reached further into on-site collabs in related deals with Postmates and American Express.

Brick and mortar:Gonzalez, a native of Guadalajara who grew up on touristy Catalina Island, tripled the size of her store’s physical footprint this year, opening locations in West Hollywood and San Francisco. She split her time between building the brand’s ecommerce platform and online presence while bulking up experiential activations, like a recent Danny Trejo in-store appearance to sample his zero-proof tipples.

Words to live by:“You don’t need a revolutionary business model,” she said. “So much of what sets a brand apart is how you do what you do and how you make your customers feel.”—T.L. Stanley

Perfect match:A recent pairing, Brynn Good and Shiran Teitelbaum connected at Deutsch LA to bring a combination of unconventional, vibrant curiosity and competitive ambition to the shop. With Good as the artist and Teitelbaum as the wordsmith, their partnership has brought brands like PetSmart back into the cultural foreground and given legacy companies like Snapple a renewed relevance.

Creative AI:Last year, Good and Teitelbaum took Snapple’s signature cap facts into the future. Using generative AI, Snapple facts became the Snapple fAIct generator, allowing users to discover their own facts about whatever noun they can think of. Generative AI helped again when the duo used it to assist volunteers, staff and fosters at PetSmart Charities make compelling profiles for adoptable pets. Now any animal shelter can use the tool to help pets find their forever homes.—Aleda Stam

Notoriety for education:CreatorKahlil Greene, known as the “Gen Z Historian,” first gained notoriety three years ago when he started posting educational videos to TikTok, on topics ranging from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to how cultural appropriation manifests within TikTok trends.

Building a career on and off TikTok:GreenetoldADWEEK earlier this year that he sees the creator industry as a way to hone his skills as a writer and educator. As an example of his blend of “pop culture and learning,” earlier this year Greene created a campaign about Black rodeo history that was inspired by Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter album release. He was nominated for twoEmmysin 2023 for hosting the kids’ news program Nick News. In May, Greene won aPeabody Awardfor a documentary series made with fellow creator Ariel Viera on the hidden history of racism in New York.

Growing partnerships with brands:Greene has worked with brands like Adobe and Fiverr but said corporations could be more open to working with educational creators.“Brands still have archaic biases on what a content creator does, and I’m trying to break through that and show that substantive, impactful content is more effective than forgettable, clickbait-y content,” Greene told ADWEEK.—Catherine Perloff

Bridging brands:Barrie Gruner enjoys working closely with Disney+ colleagues in the streamer’s partnership with Hulu. “Bridging the two brands and teams as a milestone moment for the company was hugely rewarding,” said Gruner.

Telling hopeful tales:Gruner worked on We Were the Lucky Ones on Hulu. “As a Jewish entertainment executive, I am so proud to touch a project that tells a family’s true and hopeful story about surviving the Holocaust. Doing this today is more important than ever,” said Gruner.

For the birds:Gruner admits that her hobby might age her beyond her actual years, but she admits to being passionate about birding. “I do it almost daily. It is calming, educational—gives real perspective. I do have to say that I’m offended on behalf of some of the birds with names like the ‘lesser goldfinch’ and ‘common raven.’”—Kyle O’Brien

How it started:As an adolescent, Tyrell Hampton discovered a passion for dancing and photography. “I thought, why not combine these two things I love? It started with some dancers, an iPod with a camera and some down time,” Hampton said.

Traveling for Gucci:The luxury brand project took Hampton to Seoul, where he shot photos of K-pop star Hanni and spent free time capturing photos of the city.

Hampton’s advice for aspiring creatives:“Start making mistakes now,” the photographer said. “As a young person, you have the privilege of doing everything for the first time.”—Olivia Morley

‘Having a Blast’:Jen Hart and Anthony DiMichele were the creative masterminds behind this year’s Mountain Dew Baja Blast Super Bowl campaign, “Having a Blast.” The 30-second spot, featuring the aridly dry humor of Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman, put the product in every single frame of the commercial and made 51 Best Of lists. The campaign was so successful, PepsiCo awarded GS&P the Mountain Dew creative account outright.

Quick work:The “Having a Blast” ad took five minutes to write and one frantic day to shoot. “It sounds crazy, but the spot we ended up making is eerily similar to what we wrote that very first day,” said DiMichele. The duo made very few concessions, with the kids party, the UFO, the wrestling ring, the nightclub, the gaming scene and even the Nick Offerman cameo all in the original script.—Aleda Stam

Party time:It takes a youthful exuberance to answer a brief from the largest fast food chain in the world, McDonald’s, with a party. But Kelsey Heard and Nell Stevens did just that when tasked with devising a summer campaign last year. They threw a party for beloved McDonald’s icon Grimace, complete with a collaborative birthday playlist and a partnership with Krool Toys to make a retro video game for customers to play online. But the star of the party was the Grimace Shake, which took the internet by storm.

Picture this:Heard is most proud of the fake birth certificate and baby photos she made for Grimace, which were the foundation for the campaign’s commercial. “The highlight of my life was deciding to give him buck teeth and a little hat,” she said. “I’m glad the internet loved him just as much as I did.”

Advice to aspiring creatives:“This is a very unserious business. Try to make yourself laugh at every step of every project,” said Heard. Stevens added: “Never sacrifice your passions or your happiness for your silly little job.”—Aleda Stam

Humorous approach:In an advertising landscape where purpose fatigue has set in, Matt Heath’s irreverently funny approach to marketing has brought Party Land and its clients success after success. Spanning the comedic spectrum from mischievous to heartwarming to satirical to morbid, Heath has brought campaigns such as Liquid Death’s “Greatest Hates” album or its “No Brainer” zombie-deflecting headband to life.

Funny pays off:However, Heath is more than a funny adman. His advice for clients to “commit to the bit” is a marketing strategy that earns brands their place in the hearts of consumers—and brand loyalty pays dividends. The buzzy “Haha You Just Ate Vegetables” campaign for Wholly Veggie achieved a 25% sales increase in key markets, while the darkly funny “Don’t Die Before You Try It” campaign for Dave’s Hot Chicken achieved a sales increase of up to 14%.—Aleda Stam

Building fantastical worlds:Yorgos Lanthimos’ award-winning film Poor Things soared partly because of the magnificent set design, co-created by Shona Heath along with James Price. The fantastical sets included a London mansion, a luxurious ocean liner, a whimsical Lisbon cityscape and a Paris brothel. The movie won Best Production Design at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Best advice for other creatives:Heath, who has also worked on ad campaigns for brands including Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu,Hermèsand Christian Dior,told the Financial Timesthat the best advice she ever received was:“Say no (thank you). It gives you time; it brings you love.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Voice of a generation:Kai-Isaiah Jamal was the first trans person to be nominated for Model of the Year at the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Awards 2023, but it was not the first time the model, poet and activist has made history. In 2021, after becoming the first black trans model to walk for Louis Vuitton, the fashion house’s late creative director Virgil Abloh called Jamal “the voice of their generation.”

A family affair:While breaking into fashion’s inner echelons, being the cover star of magazines such as i-D, and collaborating with brands from Louis Vuitton to Calvin Klein, Jamal has used their platform to uplift the trans community and speak candidly about their experiences. “I’m so lucky to have the queer family around me that constantly push me to be whole and unapologetically myself,” they told Dazed.—Brittaney Kiefer

Personal growth:Over the last four years during which Arts & Letters has grown in talent and client roster, Molly Jamison has grown with it, working on everything from ESPN to the NFL and NBA. Now, she spearheads work for accounts including ESPN, Tito’s Handmade Vodka and HubSpot.

Bet on me:Since her promotion last year, Jamison has continued leading creative for A&L’s longtime client ESPN. She’s particularly proud of launching the new ESPN BET platform “What a Play.” With a punch of humor, the spots include a female bettor, a growing part of the category. Jamison also continued A&L’s steady brand-building for Tito’s Handmade Vodka with the charming “Spokescart” series for which she created “a magical bar cart that acts like your best friend.”

Advice for the next generation:“Just make the thing. Make the deck. Make the comp. Write the script out. Even if it ends up not being right, it’s not a waste of time. You want to be known as the person that does things instead of talking about maybe doing them.”—Aleda Stam

Chronicling life interruptions:Suleika Jaouad first gained fame for her Emmy Award-winning New York Times column,Life Interrupted, in 2022. In the column, she chronicled life with cancer after being diagnosed with a form of acute myeloid leukemia in 2011 at age 22. Separately, her features and essays have also appeared in publications like The Atlantic, The Guardian, Vogue and NPR.

Words that matter:Jaouad’s TED Talk about life after cancer was one of the most-watched TED Talks of 2019, garneringnearly 5 million views. She has since become an advocate for those living with “life interruptions,” serving on Barack Obama’s Presidential Cancer Panel. Her advocacy work has brought her everywhere from Capitol Hill to amaximum security prison.

The scrolls continue:Jaouad’sBetween Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interruptedmade the New York Times bestseller list. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she created the Isolation Journals, a community creativity project to help others convert isolation into artistic solitude. Since then, over 100,000 people from around the world have joined the Substack.—Luz Corona

Women’s health:While Katie Jensen has worked on household brands such as General Mills, P&G and Toyota, her passion is women’s health. She led the launch of an industrywide initiative to codify menopause benefits in the workplace; called “the Menoclause,” the initiative outlines six policies that every company should adopt and includes a website to educate HR professionals on menopause statistics.

Be weird:Jensen is also an advocate for more creative freedom with her team and the industry at large. She thinks creatives should put more of themselves into the work they do, be weird and be authentic. “Instead of sitting in front of the screen, we need to go see more movies, go to more shows, read weird poems, take long showers, go on walks, do mushrooms, go to art museums, do mushrooms at art museums,” Jensen said.—Aleda Stam

Going solo:After taking the world by storm as a member of K-pop group Blackpink, Jisoo’s solo career is also blossoming. Her solo debut single, Flower, from her debut single album Me, hit No. 2 on Billboard’s Global 200. Earlier this year, she founded her own label, Blissoo.

Blazing K-pop trails:“We have walked the path that other artists have made, but [Blackpink members] have developed our own trail too,” Jisoo told Elle. “We debuted at a time when the platform was expanding and accessibility to K-pop was increasing. Just like we walked on a path that had been created for us, I hope we could help make the path easier for those who would come after us.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Football but make it fashion:Kristin Juszczyk entered the 2023-24 NFL season as a spectator cheering on her San Francisco 49er husband and left with a fashion empire on the rise. She has been creating herbespoke 49ers gearfor years to change up her game day wardrobe but first gained notoriety afterTaylor Swift and Simone Bileswore custom-made football team puffer jackets, designed by Juszczyk, while supporting their partners on the field.

Sustainability FTW:The designer prides herself on repurposing old clothes and vintage team gear.

Deal or no deal:The buzz led to signing a licensing deal with the NFL, allowing her to use the league’s logos on her creations. She most recently designed the jacket for the winner of the Indy 500.—Luz Corona

Monetizing news:YouTube channel TLDR News founder Jack Kelly is making strides where more established publishers have failed: turning a profit from YouTube news content. With viewers increasingly watching YouTube on the bigger screen, TLDR News—roughly 10-minute explainers for those under 35—seems a more lucrative bet than publishing on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It monetizes through programmatic ads placed by YouTube as well as host-read sponsorships.

Creating for the platform:Kelly credits this success to using YouTube in ways thatcreators would, rather than reclipping broadcast news segments. TLDR News has five core channels including Global, EU and Business, publishing videos like “How a US-Saudi Defence Pact Could End the War in Gaza,” with nearly190,000 viewsand over 1,000 comments. And it uses that engagement to its advantage: If a video gets too many thumbs-downs, it makesanotherone discussing the audience response. While marketers remain squeamish about news content and platforms pull back their support, successfully packaging news to younger people is rare.—Lucinda Southern

Winning the Big Game:Adam Kornblum oversaw L’Oréal’s first national Super Bowl ad for skin care brandCeraVe, which ADWEEKrankedthe No. 1 campaign of the game. Its ingenuity came from CeraVe building hype weeks before the Big Game with an influencer-led strategy that pranked people into thinking actor Michael Cera was the brand’s founder—with many onlookers not even realizing it was a marketing stunt. The campaign “beat every KPI we set at the start,” Kornblum told ADWEEK.

Finding love:The brand’s next unexpected move was tospoof a romantic comedy, but in this love story, the matchmaker is a dermatologist and “the one” is a bottle of moisturizer. “CeraVe is a playful yet serious brand [whose] tone of voice and personality lend itself” to the rom-com genre, said Kornblum.

Tapping into the zeitgeist:Kornblum is aware that “consumers are skipping ads now more than ever,” he said. As such, he’s intent on helping the brand become part of culture, “transcending traditional advertising while tapping into the zeitgeist.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Emotional storytelling:Work from Pierre Janneau-Houllier and Dan Kroeger is deeply rooted in emotional storytelling. Last year, they worked with Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper to tell the story of Solo, a 7-year-old boy who, with the help of eye-tracking technology, steps outside the limitations of living with cerebral palsy to share his imagination for Montefiore Einstein’s holiday campaign. The result was an epic adventure about Solo traveling through New York on an inflatable dog.

The odd couple:An unusual pairing, Janneau-Houllier from France and Kroeger from Chicago, the two have freelanced together for almost a decade, creating notable work for brands such as Beats, Apple, Montefiore and Expedia. Before joining 2023’s ADWEEK U.S. Small Agency of the Year, Alto, they also worked at Ogilvy New York, Wieden+Kennedy, Portland and Amsterdam, and 180 LA, where they first became partners.

Advice for aspiring creatives:“Stay inspired. If you’re not, change something until you find it again.”—Aleda Stam

Starting from the bottom:Unable to afford advertising school, David Krueger instead called around until he found an agency willing to give him a job and his first brief, where he immediately convinced Cadbury to develop a whole new chocolate. It wasn’t long until he settled into the WPP fold at Ogilvy Johannesburg. For the next 17 years, Krueger worked his way around the network, leading creative teams in South Africa and Germany and earning Ogilvy its first three Radio Grand Prix awards.

A creative meritocracy:This past year, he worked on Ikea’s Cannes-winning “Proudly Second Best” campaign, a project that highlighted David Madrid’s culture of collaboration and creative meritocracy. “There is no arrogance or political agenda or feelings of jealousy,” Krueger said. “The work is the most important thing, and we all aim to make that better. So we open the floor to any and every thought to see if we missed something.” —Aleda Stam

Speaking the same language:Having honed his creative chops at BBDO, Zocdoc and VaynerMedia, James Kuczynski became global creative director of brand and marketing at Duolingo during the Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020. He’s spent the last four years leading the brand’s creative team and spearheading its in-house marketing studio.

‘WTF’ moments:In the past 12 months, Kuczynski has helped Duolingo scoop a gold Cannes Lions trophy and taken its “unhinged”green owl mascot Duo to Super Bowl 57, the Barbie premiere and The Eras Tour—all to generate what he describes as “WTF” moments for audiences.

On creative content that resonates:“I’ve seen lots of time wasted taking [an] algorithm-first approach [to content],” he said. “At Duolingo, we aim to reach new subcultures, create authentic connections with those audiences and create content they want to share. My goal is to design content that connects, resonates and transforms fans into brand ambassadors.”—Rebecca Stewart

It’s showtime:Leading a team of more than 30 creatives, Ellie Lloyd is known for developing campaigns for entertainment clients such as Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO Max, Paramount+, Showtime, NBA, The Roku Channel and Spotify. This year, she led and won the creative team for the Jägermeister global social AOR pitch and positioned Spotify as the go-to place for fans to get closer to their favorite K-pop artists—including directing the first video with the K-pop girl group Twice.

The advocate:As a disabled woman with endometriosis, Lloyd is an advocate for change in how the advertising industry views and treats those with disabilities. She is a member of Glow’s DE&I Committee and leads the agency’s pro bono initiatives in 2024. Lloyd also believes in the importance of mental health conversations. “It’s so important to me, as a creative leader, that I not only advocate for my team, but also provide a safe space for them to come to me with any feelings of uncertainty, stress or whatever else life throws at them,” Lloyd said.—Aleda Stam

Hit show:Issa López is the Mexican director, writer and producer who created True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of HBO’s True Detective series. Starring Kali Reis and Jodie Foster in her first adult TV role since 1975, the series concluded with widespread acclaim.The New Yorkercalled the fourth season “a feminist revision of a series best known for its macho poetry and its ogling eye.”

Flipping the script:López toldVanity Fairthat she envisioned Night Country as a “dark mirror” to the first season. “Where True Detective is male and it’s sweaty, Night Country is cold and it’s dark and it’s female,” she said.—Aleda Stam

Career of impact:Marie Claire Maalouf has a history of using her creative talent as a platform for impactful work. In her previous role of 17 years at Impact BBDO, she led the internationally awarded “Despair No More” campaign for TENA, which gave women in the Middle East a platform to redefine menopause and erase the derogatory Arabic word for menopause that translates to “age of despair.”

Campaign for democracy:Working with Lebanon’s largest newspaper, An-Nahar, Maalouf produced the Cannes Grand Prix-winning “The Elections Edition,” a work of political activism that provided paper and ink from an unprinted edition to print ballots for the country’s entire voting population—ending a delaying tactic from the government to stop the election.

Advice to aspiring creatives:“The industry is a team sport, so surround yourself with people that you want to learn from, are aspirational to you and get things actually done. Actions speak louder than words.”—Aleda Stam

Cultural Renaissance:Beyoncé’sRenaissance World Tour was a defining cultural moment of 2023. A futuristic yet retro spectacle featuring a flying disco horse, the ode to Black, queer culture offered a master class in visual storytelling. Along with Beyoncé, Andrew Makadsi, creative director at the artist’s Parkwood Entertainment label, is credited with bringing the experience to life.

Cowboy Carter:The Lebanese-born DJ, producer and art director is now working behind the scenes to support Beyoncé’s pivot into country, creatively directing her Cowboy Carter album, which has earned the artist the title of the first Black woman to top the Billboard Country Albums chart.

What do you strive for, creatively?“My goal is to be original. It’s finding beauty—and this is for me—in situations or happenings that are not seen as beautiful. I try to draw from that. I think this is how I differentiate my work,” Makadsi toldVogue.—Rebecca Stewart

Art attack:“Trying to Understand the Art Market,” the blunt headline in Marion Maneker’s LinkedIn profile, goes some way to explain how even seasoned experts grapple with the industry’s complexities.Formerly the president of ARTnews, publisher at HarperCollins and features editor at New York magazine, Maneker’s newsletter, Artelligence, covering the global art market, wasrecently boughtby buzzy media startup Puck.

Beyond the art nuts:Maneker’s missive boasts 32,000 free and paid subscribers and features stories on events like New York’sgigaweek(when auction houses fantasize about doing more than a billion in sales) and fresh reporting onInigo Philbrick’sattempt at a comeback after his $86 million fraud. With that scope,Maneker’s newsletter is read not just by art houses, auctioneers and galleries, but also increasingly by those funding the transactions: bankers, insurers and lawyers.—Lucinda Southern

Bold moves:Under Kory Marchisotto’s leadership, e.l.f. sets a new playbook for the beauty industry with humor and real talk. Recent highlights include serving order withJudge Judyin its first national Super Bowl ad and reuniting withJennifer Coolidgeto design a lipstick shade. Marchisotto also helped e.l.f. go viral for a goth-themed collaboration with beverage brand Liquid Death—“a fellow bold disrupter that I have admired for some time now,” she said.

Championing diversity:With“Change the Board Game,”e.l.f. and partners like tennis legend Billie Jean King are calling on U.S. business leaders to put more women and diverse candidates on corporate boards. Marchisotto oversaw the creative execution, which she called “one of the most important campaigns in my career.”

Advice to the next generation:“Our strongest limitations are the ones we create for ourselves. Own your power, reimagine the box and welcome all circ*mstances as a catalyst for change.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Carving her own path:Jane Marie is a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning journalist and podcaster who co-founded the podcast production house and recording studio Little Everywhere in 2016. Hit shows include The Dream, which over its three seasons has tackled multilevel marketing, wellness and the life coach industry.

Finally!Marie and Little Everywhere’s most recent podcast series—Finally! A Show About Women That Isn’t Just a Thinly Veiled Aspirational Nightmare—follows the everyday lives of American women and bills itself as “reality TV, just on the radio.” TheFinancial Timessaid the show had an “understated yet distinctive charm” with “sweet, funny and fascinating self-portraits.”

Out for fun:Before starting her own venture, Marie was a producer for esteemed radio show This American Life for nearly a decade. TAL host and producer Ira Glasstold The New York Timesthat Marie is “simultaneously out for fun and has a deep sense of injustice. Often people who have a keen sense of ‘That’s not fair!’ aren’t also charismatically funny.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Taking care of people:Bethany Maxfield landed her first job in advertising at Humanaut and has spent the last seven years learning and thriving at the agency. Following Humanaut’s mission of doing work for brands that make things better for people, animals and the planet, Maxfield is driven by her compassion for people and their well-being. In the last year, she showed just how wild eggs could get for Pete and Gerry’s organic eggs, introduced SunButter’s Jammies sandwiches with a bright, kitschy campaign and launched Secret’s whole-body deodorant for odor protection “from your pits to your bits.”

Proud moment:But Maxfield was proudest of the Organic Valley “Protecting Where Your Food Comes From” documentary-style campaign that told the story of preserving America’s organic farmland. “The resulting work is something that the Humanaut team cared deeply about since the story it tells is something we’ve been working towards telling for years,” she said.—Aleda Stam

Creating street theater:Faye McLeod has garnered global attention for creating Louis Vuitton’s windows and special displays, ranging from a giant Yayoi Kusama sculpture on the roof of the fashion house’s flagship store in Paris to whimsical animals and circus acrobats. Her displays often transcend storefronts and use 3D technology. “Windows are street theater,” shetold ADWEEKin 2023. “It’s not always about attracting customers. It’s about captivating the public.”

Windows to the brand:The Glasgow, Scotland, native started by creating window displays for a local boutique before landing design jobs in London and New York. “I look at windows like the billboards to your brand,” she said. “For some people, it’s the first interaction they’ll have with your brand.”—Brittaney Kiefer

Fry funeral:Matt Miller and Tommy Yong found a rhythm working with KFC in the last year. When it introduced a new recipe for seasoned fries, they held a funeral for the brand’s old french fries. They teased the event with clips of a casket full of fries before holding an actual hourlong livestream event, which included a eulogy to the old spuds. The duo also apologized to utensils on KFC’s behalf with a campaign that reminded the public why KFC is “finger lickin’ good.”

Have a break:Armed with the knowledge that prompting AI platforms with human empathy to “take a breath” could improve its accuracy, Miller and Yong introduced the “Have AI Break” campaign for Kit Kat. They authentically connected the brand’s DNA to a cultural moment while helping the public use AI more effectively.—Aleda Stam

‘A Mountain of Entertainment’:After three years and 15 installments, Paramount+’s brand campaign, “A Mountain of Entertainment,” has yet to disappoint. Terry Minogue is a key reason why, as he oversaw itslatest entry, which went viral for “its absurdly humorous storyline involving Sir Patrick Stewart throwing [the animated character] Arnold at a mountain as the band Creed sang.”

Built for TV:Minogue has honed his TV marketing skills for years, helping build brand campaigns for numerous Spike TV properties, such as Bar Rescue and Ink Master, and SyFy.

Charting a course through TV:Ally Pankiw started her career directing music videos, commercials and short films before breaking into TV. She wrote for popular comedy Schitt’s Creek and directed shows including Feel Good, Shrill and The Great. Recently, she directed the first episode in the latest season of Black Mirror. “Joan Is Awful” became one of the most streamed episodes of Black Mirror ever and contributed to the growing conversation about AI’s impact on the creative industries. “I also got Salma Hayek and Annie Murphy to do some pretty depraved things in a church,” Pankiw said.

Clearing up confusion:Recently, Pankiw directed a campaign for Loewe featuring Schitt’s Creek co-creator and co-star Dan Levy. The ad was a comedic take on the fashion house’s heritage while poking fun at its famously hard-to-pronounce name. “One of my greatest joys as a director is getting to put top-tier talent in ridiculous wigs, so this was a special one,” said Pankiw.

Opening doors:Pankiw runs a paid mentorship program for young female filmmakers. “Just start making sh*t,” she advises aspiring directors. “Don’t wait for someone to give you permission or resources or encouragement to showcase what you want to say, because they won’t.”––Brittaney Kiefer

Channeling rage:Monkey Man, Dev Patel’s directorial debut, is more than an action thriller that fans have dubbed “John Wick in Mumbai.” It’s an indictment of political corruption, weaponized faith and caste systems, according to the star, who also wrote and produced the hit film that took six years to bring to the screen. “I wanted to create a story about the underdogs challenging the untouchable status quo,” Patel told the BBC.

Action inspiration:The 33-year-old actor, known for Slumdog Millionaire, Skins and his Oscar-nominated turn in Lion, lists his influences as Bruce Lee, Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung and Korean films that have pushed the revenge genre “into something that feels really substantial and meaningful and cinematic and artful,” he said at a recent gala where he was honored as one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2024.

Double-oh-seven:Though no decision has been announced, it’s widely rumored that Patel is in line to be the next James Bond, with GQ’s post-Monkey Man assessment concluding that “to choose anyone else for the role would be a tragically missed opportunity.”—T.L. Stanley

Stealth talent:During Paula Pell’s 18 years behind the scenes at Saturday Night Live, she was considered one of the iconic show’s secret weapons, punching up sketches with her razor-sharp writing and creating some of the series’ most memorable characters like Debbie Downer and the Spartan Cheerleaders. Aside from that gig, the veteran performer has had numerous turns in front of the camera, including television and film roles in Wine Country, 30 Rock, A.P. Bio and Mapleworth Murders.

4ever’s too short:But it wasn’t until Netflix recently started airing the comedy Girls5eva that Pell stepped fully into the spotlight as the scene-stealing modern elder of a one-hit-wonder pop group looking for its second chance at stardom. Pell plays the out-and-proud Gloria, a character that breaks new ground not just on a body positivity level. “If we’re going to be inclusive, let’s be inclusive with age too,” the 60-year-old Pell said. “And I certainly feel like content is more inclusive now with queer people, which is making me very thrilled because I had an absolute desert of it when I was growing up,” she told Vanity Fair.

Blockbuster season:Among her projects in the pipeline, Pell is writing a Netflix movie for Kim Kardashian with Janine Brito, Pell’s wife and frequent collaborator. Meantime, she’s part of the voice cast for Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 launching this summer.—T.L. Stanley

Drop the beat:With Artists Equity, Brandon Drew Jordan Pierce wrote and co-directed with Ben Affleck a series of Dunkin’ ads for the Grammys and the Super Bowl this year. In one, Affleck collaborates with rapper Ice Spice to announce the Munchkins Drink. In another, Affleck surprises his wife, Jennifer Lopez, with a Dunkin’ branded rap performance as the DunKings, backed by an exuberant Tom Brady and a hesitant Matt Damon. The song—also written by Pierce—would later be released in its entirety, and the accompanying tracksuits worn by the “band” would sell out.

A multi-hyphenate career:Pierce, a.k.a. Beedy, is a veteran of Wieden+Kennedy, 72andSunny and Hulu, where he set up an in-house creative studio called Greenhouse. While at Hulu, he created, wrote and directed an anthology series, Your Attention Please, by Craig Robinson, and became part of the writers’ room for Inside Amy Schumer Season 5, which won a WGA award. Pierce also established MadeByBeedy studio, collaborating with agencies including Wieden+Kennedy, The Martin Agency and Ogilvy on brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and DoorDash. MadeByBeedy also produced a forthcoming TV series starring plant stylist Hilton Carter.

Advice to creatives:“Always be making something. Don’t wait for it to come to you. Find a way and create your destiny.”
—Aleda Stam

A statement-making designer:Zac Posen is the creative behind some of the most memorable looks in red carpet history. He’s dressed everyone from Michelle Obama to Sarah Jessica Parker to Rihanna. So it wasa big get for Gap Inc. to secure himat the start of 2024 to help revive its sales.

Closing the Gap:Posen is tasked with helping Gap’s flagship brand revive its‘90s heydayand acting as chief creative officer for its Old Navy stores. In the few months since joining, he’s already made his mark on culture, dressing The Holdovers actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a denim gown for the Met Gala.

Advice to budding designers:“Live and breathe [your brand],” Posen recently toldFashionista. “It will help you form your identity, [then] live that identity on every possible platform you can—from how you walk down the street to all the different social media platforms possible; and think about how it adapts to it beyond just the clothing, but the whole world you want to create in it.”—Rebecca Stewart

Scandi influence:Ditte Reffstrup has been creative director at Ganni since 2009. Having spent 15 years at the helm of a brand responsible for making effortless, Scandinavian minimalism a fashion must-have, over the last year Reffstrup has been working on innovations to make sure Ganni stays relevant for the next decade.

Cult collaborations:The cult brand has teamed up with Juicy Couture, Barbour, New Balance, Dr. Martens and U.S. model Paloma Elsesser for successful limited collections targeting millennials and Gen Z. It’s also doubled down on its commitment to be a “responsible” fashion brand, sitting out of Copenhagen Fashion Week to support and consult with a group of sustainable Nordic designers instead.

Street style:“For me, creativity isn’t something that you switch on and off. It’s just always on … I get inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. I probably feel most inspired when I’m on the streets. I love people-watching and tapping into other people’s energy,” Reffstrup toldBrowns.—Rebecca Stewart

Changing the game:Sam Reich has been instrumental in building out Dropout’s offerings, including creating the streaming service’s most popular show, Game Changer. “I believe I am one of Hollywood’s only CEO slash game show hosts,” he said.

New game? New rules:Much like Game Changer, where Reich writes new rules for every episode, he’s rewriting the rules of Hollywood to make Dropout a sustainably built media company. “We are trying to be a talent-first company by (a) creating a terrific on-set environment, (b) not asking for exclusivity and (c) paying generously and sharing in profits.”

Creative influences:Reich’s love of magic, escape rooms and social deduction games have influenced Game Changer episodes, including one show where three comedians had to literally escape their green room.—Jameson Fleming

A new venture:Cristina Reina has spent 16 years working her way through the creative ranks at BBDO Spain, DDB Madrid, DDB New York and McCann North America, working with top clients such as Smirnoff, Verizon and Microsoft—even bringing home a few Cannes Lions. This year, Reina’s record of creative excellence brought her to Quality Experience, a new indie shop opened by former DDB CCO Ari Weiss.

Capturing attention:One of the biggest challenges in the industry is capturing audience attention amid competition from other advertisers and platforms like Netflix and YouTube. While some brands try to counteract consumers’ fatigue with short-term PR spikes, Reina said this approach doesn’t build long-term brand value. “To change things, it’s key to give purpose and value to every touch point, every interaction with the brand, and transform them into experiences capable of capturing the attention, affinity and loyalty of our audience,” she said.—Aleda Stam

Dark history:Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz shook millennials across the country this year with the release of Quiet on Set; the documentary series showed what was going on behind the scenes on children’s TV programs in the 1990s, with a particularly damning focus on producer Dan Schneider’s tenure at Nickelodeon. The series led to conversations around treatment of child actors and Schneider releasing an apology video.

On the hunt:Following the #MeToo movement, Robertson saw a string of viral videos from Schneider’s shows featuring underage stars doing innuendo-heavy things that she thought evoked p*rnographic imagery. The idea for the documentary began to form as Robertson teamed up with Schwartz to reach out to cast and crew who worked on Schneider’s shows.

Personal mantra:Robertson, founder and president of Maxine Productions, a part of Sony Pictures Television, said: “Stay at the table.”—Aleda Stam

A win for Vault-Tec:This past year, Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner brought one of video game publisher Bethesda’s hottest franchises to the silver screen. Fallout premiered on Amazon Prime Video and saw 65 million viewers in its first 16 days—the second most-watched title in the platform’s history.Fans and critics alike sang the series’ praises, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 93% approval rating andcalling the show“an adaptation that feels like a true extension of the games.” Tim Cain, one of the video game’s creators, applauded the series for matching the quirky yet dark mood of the games.

Existential threat:“Film and television have both been facing one existential threat after another for our entire careers,” Robertson-Dworet and Wagner told ADWEEK. “The challenge there is for writers to try and not be overly reactive to those threats. Just try to do what genuinely interests you in the moment you find yourself in, and hope that you’re not alone in that.”

Advice to aspiring creators:“If a director wants to practice directing, they have to spend a lot of money to do that,” they said. “Writers have the advantage of low overhead. Buy Final Draft. Buy Fade In. And find yourself some free time to write. That’s all you need really.”—Aleda Stam

The sky’s the limit:Since July 2023, Ron Robinson has been one of the creative directors charged with crafting artistic experiences for outer shell of theLas Vegas Sphere, the 580,000-square-foot LED globe and venue that dominates the city skyline.

Multisensory creative:Robinson is part of Sphere Entertainment’s multidisciplinary design and creative team. He is focused on artistic and promotional content.

An immersive medium:Robinson creative and art directed the Sphere’s big unveiling “Hello World” as well as its fantastical Lunar New Year display. He also produced promotional content for the Sphere debut of director Darren Aronofsky’s “Postcard from Earth”. In last 10 months, the wider creative team has (literally) put Microsoft, Sony, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and McDonald’s names in lights, blending advertising with art. —Rebecca Stewart

Born to create:At 25, Filipino-American Bretman Rock has been creating content for nearly a decade, garnering over 40 million followers. In recent years, he’s expanded beyond the makeup tutorials and storytelling of his early YouTube career, making way for a deeper, more spiritual side—evident in his 2023 memoir, You’re That Bitch & Other Cute Lessons About Being Unapologetically Yourself; MTV’s Following: Bretman Rock; and YouTube Originals’ 30 Days With: Bretman Rock.

A nonbinary icon:Last June, Rock made history by being the first openly gay man tograce the coverof Vogue Philippines’ inaugural Pride issue, though he also embraces a nonbinary identity. “I go by all the genders,” Rock, who prefers he/him pronouns, told Vogue. “Girl, I’m Bretman. I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. … At the end of the day, the person that needs to know who you are is you and the people that you love.”

Brand partner with a conscience: Splitting his time between Hawaii, where he grew up, and Los Angeles, he works with brands including Balmain, Valentino, Michael Kors, Stella McCartney, Crocs, MAC Cosmetics and Postmates while championing social and environmental causes. —Kathryn Lundstrom

Powerhouse creatives:Combining their backgrounds in art and experiential, Lexi Rodriguez and Olivia-Jené fa*gon joined up at Giant Spoon to make waves. As two subversively creative women of color, the duo have brought the agency its biggest new business wins to date. For her first campaign at Giant Spoon, Rodriguez helped Savage X Fenty break into sportswear with its first TV-driven “Power X Play” campaign. fa*gon won Walmart’s DEI experiential business in 2023 with a new strategy to connect to the retailer’s Black consumers, including launching four Walmart Makers Studio events and the Black & Unlimited Clock to celebrate the extra day of Black History Month.

Joining forces:Together, Rodriguez and fa*gon won the competitive pitch for Ritual Vitamins’ brand awareness strategy with their “Trace Like a Motherf*cker” campaign. The centerpiece spot is a humorous, expletive-riddled take on a mom who does her research and only uses the best vitamins: Ritual.

Advice to aspiring creatives:“Be more uncompromising,” said fa*gon. “Be respectful and self-aware, yes, but don’t be scared to hold the line of your ideas or reach for bigger and better than what’s being made available to you.”—Aleda Stam

Directing Down Under: Steve Rogers grew up in Australia, where he started directing. He opened Revolver 25 years ago and joined Biscuit shortly after. His company and his family are based in Sydney. Over the past year, Rogers has directed commercials for Uber, Etsy, Hornbach and Volkswagen.

A “degenerate” fan: Rogers has a longterm love and abiding fascination with “degenerate” art of the 1920s, which was most all modern art that was considered “degenerate” by the Nazi party.

Personal motto: “Real pain for my sham friends, champagne for my real friends.” He also offers advice to aspiring directors: “Have a point of view and defend it.” —Kyle O’Brien

Worldly creative:Jonathan Santana’s 25-year career has taken him around the world—from Johannesburg to Paris to London—and earned him a handful of Cannes Lions. He launched Stella Artois’ first global campaign for Mother and helped TBWA\Paris earn Cannes Agency of the Year four years running. Now settled in New York at Johannes Leonardo, Santana creatively led the agency through Volkswagen’s Super Bowl commercial, the emotional “An American Love Story,” to reignite enthusiasm for the brand in the U.S.

Creating buzz:He also led the out-of-home campaign that introduced ID Buzz, VW’s electric iteration of its iconic Type 2 microbus, to America. Ads across the country brought the bus’ signature two-tone paint job to life with playful headlines to compete in a market where nearly 80% of all vehicles are white, silver or black. “It was so iconic, our ads were instantly identifiable even without words,” Santana said.

Advice to new creatives:“Be a sponge. Creativity thrives off connections derived from a bank of knowledge and inspiration found where others don’t bother to look.”—Aleda Stam

Unexpected:Jeff Schermer and Jose Ramirez have a history of turning expectations on their head for campaigns. For Super Bowl 58, instead of leaning into AI, they used practical visual techniques in the “Javier in Frame” campaign for Google Pixel. The ad, which brought the experiences of a blind person to life, was the first time ever a Super Bowl commercial was directed by a blind filmmaker. In March, the duo launched the global platform for Stella Artois, “A Taste Worth More,” with a cheeky out-of-home campaign that turned David Beckham, one of the world’s most recognizable faces, into a hand model so the beer could shine.

Culturally relevant:With a strong grasp on the cultural zeitgeist, Schermer and Ramirez devised the “Roam Free Little Bird” spot for Vital Farms in response to Elon Musk removing Twitter’s iconic bird. They also launched Verizon’s “Test Force” in a nod to the wireless company’s nostalgic Test Man campaign and were behind the “Memes to Dreams” campaign for Popeyes, which made the “Popeyes meme kid” into the brand’s first spokesperson in nearly a decade.—Aleda Stam

Self-discovery:As the first CMO of art collective Meow Wolf, Kelly Schoeffel described the gig as “part archaeologist, part architect, part community-builder, part ticket-seller.” After 20 years in the ad agency business, most recently as executive strategy director at 72andSunny, she was drawn to her first client-side job by the group’s “pure artistic expression.” And as a longtime Meow Wolf fan, she “loved being around the messy ambition of it all,” she told ADWEEK.

Weird and wonderful:During her 18 months with the brand, Schoeffel helped launch the Dallas exhibit called The Real Unreal, working with agency Preacher on a surreal campaign that featured quirky pop-ups, ’90s-inspired ads and track-suited mall walkers. She also prepped for the second Texas location, opening later this year in Houston, and a Los Angeles debut in 2026 as the brand continues to expand its presence and position itself as a major player in entertainment. This month she announced a sabbatical during which she’ll plot her next move.

Pearl of wisdom:“Have a point of view—you can always change it—but nothing is less motivating or confidence-building than interrogating a heap of ideas that no one can or wants to fight for.”—T.L. Stanley

Bottoms up:Rachel Sennott’s career started like many aspiring to Hollywood today—posting a lot online. She soon gained a following for irreverent tweets and Instagram posts, garnering coverage such as “Tweeting Through Quar with Rachel Sennott” fromPaper.

She parlayed this online fame onto the big screen, with a breakout role in the film Shiva Baby, released in 2020. She co-wrote and starred in 2023’s comedyBottoms,which was produced by MGM. It performed well at thebox officeand was nominated for Critics Choice Awards.

Future plans:Since Bottoms’ success, Sennott has nabbed more film roles, including lead inI Used to Be Funnyand a member of the upcoming ensemble filmSNL 1975. In March, Deadlinereportedthat HBO greenlit a TV show written, starring and produced by Sennott.—Catherine Perloff

Creative pedigree:Sam Shepherd has made his way through creative powerhouse agencies of the last 10 years: Mother New York, DDB New York, Deutsch and Leo Burnett Chicago, working on household names from co*ke and Oreo to HBO, Kellogg’s and Tide.Now he’s at hot shop Uncommon Creative Studio, which opened a New York office last year after Havas acquired a majority stake in the agency.

Building for the real world:With Uncommon, Shepherd is building “things that we wish existed in the real world,” he said. For example, he led SiriusXM through a new brand platform and identity and launched the “Closer” ad, with lauded director Kim Gehrig, to showcase how the audio entertainment service brings listeners closer to what moves them throughout their lives.

Advice to aspiring creatives:“No matter what you hear, always look for the trouble. That’s where the magic is. There are no rules.”—Aleda Stam

Remake this:Francesca Sloane has a history of writing for television greats. She wrote and produced for the Fargo television series, then wrote for Donald Glover’s Atlanta. Most recently, she partnered with Glover again to create Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the spy thriller TV show based on the 2005 film of the same name. The show quickly became one of Amazon Prime Video’s top five new series debuts ever.

Candidly critical:When the show launched, Sloane was openly honest about skeptics wondering what she and Glover were doing working on a spy show. But the goal was to “subvert” the spy genre, she wrote in an open letter. “No one would need a show that retold the same blockbuster movie,” she said. “But what we set out to do was to make something wholly original.” —Aleda Stam

The power of a creative environment:Song’s father was a filmmaker and her mother a graphic designer. She’s likened growing up in a creative household to having a “creative trust fund. It was a supportive environment, and it made my own career path easier to navigate. My parents, as fellow artists, always understood my work,” she recently toldToronto Life.—Rebecca Stewart

Poking fun at advertising:Teddy Souter and Frazer Price have a history at Maximum Effort of creating quirky and dryly humorous ad that often poke fun at the medium itself—much like the agency’s co-founder, Ryan Reynolds. For National Change Your Password Day on Feb. 1, they partnered with password management software 1Password to help protect people from bad actors who want to steal their data. So the duo cast a spokesperson who is notorious for bad acting: Tommy Wiseau. For the comedically meta ad, Wiseau mocks his own infamous cinematic skills while warning viewers of thieves online.

Unserious business:In their previous job at Droga5 London, the duo created some of the shop’s most celebrated work. In another irreverent ad campaign for Kahlúa, Souter and Price personified the brand’s belief in living life unseriously by creating an exhibition of images that have never had any likes on Instagram. Fashioned like a real art gallery, the Zero Likes Given exhibition included random pictures of flowers, legs and even the oldest unliked picture ever posted to Instagram.—Aleda Stam

Who is Vince Staples?As creator and star of a surreal, genre-bending Netflix series based loosely on his life, Vince Staples gleefully pokes fun at his own fame—fellow characters on The Vince Staples Show often have no idea who he is. That’s an on-brand move for the low-key multi-hyphenate, known as an intellectual rapper with a deadpan sense of humor.

More than music:The 30-year-old Southern California native and alum of the Odd Future collective made his mark in hip-hop, with “Ramona Park Broke My Heart” being his latest studio release. But his reputation has continued to grow as visual artist and creative collaborator, working with brands such as Acura, Sprite, Converse and Beats by Dre.

Up for anything:He takes a “why-not” attitude these days, bulking up his CV with gigs including a global tour and acting appearances in the White Men Can’t Jump reboot, Abbott Elementary, Dope and Insecure. He told the Associated Press recently, “I appreciate the process and the ability to do these things for a living. Like, this is highway robbery.”—T.L. Stanley

Like minds:After a year in which her venture capital group raised $23 million to invest in plant-based startups, Jennifer Stojkovic engineered her largest Vegan Women Summit to date this spring in Los Angeles. The group champions female professionals acrossplant-basedfood, fashion, wellness and other categories. For the event’s third outing, she drew more than 1,000 participants, along with heavyweight brand sponsors such as Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, Nature’s Fynd, Dr. Bronner’s, Violife, Oatly and Meati.

Spice up your life:For her first product collaboration as creative director, Stojkovic married VWS with clean beauty brand Chella for an eyeshadow palette with a ‘90s vibe. She and four other multihyphenate industry leaders starred in its promo campaign,reenvisioning the Spice Girlsas “Plant Girls” with a spot-on recreation of the pop group’s debut album cover. Tagline: “The future of beauty is diverse, sustainable and plant-powered.”

Pushing forward:The native Canadian, animal lover and rescue diver who authored a bestselling book, The Future of Food Is Female, says she will continue to lean into her social and environmental advocacy with the mantra, “Do no harm, but take no sh*t.”—T.L. Stanley

Delicious TV:After storming the Emmys with FX series The Bear, Christopher Storer is one of the most in-demand talents in TV and filmmaking. Season 3 of the show, which follows a renowned chef and his team overhauling a family restaurant in Chicago, is one of the most anticipated premieres of 2024.

New guy [in advertising]:For Coca-Cola, Storer directed the ad “New Guy,” about a man who meets his girlfriend’s family for the first time. The ad was inspired by the hit series, featuring a similarly spirited and chaotic family. To ensure the commercial had the same look and feel as The Bear, the crew even borrowed the same lenses that were used to film the show.

The pressure of time:“Part of the reason why I even wanted to make [The Bear] in the first place was I probably become unhealthily obsessed with time in a lot of instances, and it can create anxiety, and there’s no better setting than a restaurant for the pressures of that,”Storer said at the Television Critics Association press tour last winter.—Brittaney Kiefer

Stealing attention:Less than a year has passed since David Suarez and Danny Gonzalez founded Bandits & Friends on two basic principles: First, attention can’t be bought; it has to be stolen. And second, clients deserve the trust and respect of a friend. Already, the duo has grown the agency to 30 creatives and produced attention-stealing work such as The Athletic’s “Losing Is for Losers” campaign and Show-Me Organics’ “Ask Your Doctor” campaign that took on the pharmaceutical industry.

A history of success:Suarez and Gonzalez got their start interning together in college before landing their first gig at JWT NY. Their tenure in advertising brought them to TBWA NY and Barton F. Graf 9000 before they spent nearly a decade at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, creatively running accounts such as Xfinity, StubHub, Credit Karma and Liberty Mutual Insurance, where they created the LiMu Emu and Doug insurance duo.

Their mantra:“It doesn’t matter what you have to say if you can’t get people to listen.”—Aleda Stam

Business meets culture:Equally interested in stories about bars where Goldman Sachs interns spend their weekends and the new formulation of Glossier’s lip gloss, Emily Sundberg has you covered with her daily missive Feed Me, a sharp blend of business news and culture. Born two years ago, Feed Me was a product of Sundberg’s hunch while working at Meta that there’s an appetite for daily business news combined with aggressive coverage of New York culture.

The right place:Growing up in Long Island exposed Emily to “some of the subcultures I’m fascinated by (the world of finance, frustrated teenagers, people who are close enough but not quite in New York City).” That location also allowed her to study at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, which she credits as probably the most important step in her career path. Current creative side projects and hobbies include poker and filmmaking (she’s made a film aboutGardiners Island, America’s oldest privately owned island), and she’sjust finished a fragrance certification course after finding herself regularly writing about the business of perfume.

Personal mantra:“Winners don’t sit on the bench.”—Lucinda Southern

Riding with Swifty momentum:Ethan Tobman was creative director for perhaps the biggest cultural moment of the last two years: Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. He is proud to have conceived “visually immersive worlds worthy of her storytelling.”

Rising from the indie world:Tobman started working in the early 2000s in the independent New York film scene, which led to high-end fashion shoots, music videos and commercials, as well as larger scale film and TV work, and most recently, live performance.

Led by taste buds and travel:Every project Tobman takes on is led by his love of food and travel. After designing the film The Menu, he was asked by chef Dominique Crenn to redesign her three-star Michelin restaurant, Atelier Crenn. “The project was a lifelong dream come true,” said Tobman.—Kyle O’Brien

Breaking ground:This year, standup comedian Taylor Tomlinson became the only female host of a regular late-night show—not to mention the youngest at age 30—taking over the slot vacated by British comedian James Corden. Industry observers are watching whether Tomlinson, who has three Netflix specials under her belt, can shake up late-night TV and make the format appealing to young people.

Unusual beginnings:Tomlinson was raised in a strict religious home in California and began her standup career on the Christian church circuit. Now her comedy focuses on topics she once considered taboo, such as mental health, sex and dating.

Advice to aspiring standup comedians:“Write and perform as much as humanly possible,” Tomlinson said.

Personal mantra:“Take nothing personally.”—Brittaney Kiefer

The rise of Tyla:Tyla was making waves long before the fragility of her Balmain Met Gala dress (made from sand) called for two people to carry her up the stairs. This viral scene was preceded by a busy 12 months for the South African artist in which she released her widely lauded self-titled album. Her single “Water,” an Amapiano-influenced track, also inspired a TikTok dance and won her the inaugural Grammy for Best African Music Performance.

Helping Gap get its groove back:In March,Tyla’s prowess among Gen Z got her noticed by Gap, which tapped her to appear in its “Linen Moves” spot, a reimagined take on the TikTok-famous music video “Back on 74” by Jungle.

On her creative process:“My creative team is from South Africa. So everything I do is South African, close to home and constantly pushing the culture and who I am in general,” Tyla told Cosmopolitan.—Rebecca Stewart

A BAFTA nominee: Molly Manning Walker earned a British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) nomination for her 2023 film, How to Have Sex, which won awards at Cannes and European Film Awards.

Women’s soccer grit: Manning Walker showed how tough women’s soccer can be in a campaign for Amazon. Her commercial, “The Grit,” is a montage of the diverse methods players use to protect themselves and heal their bodies, including ice baths, finger tape and gum shields. Manning Walker has a direct connection to football, as she is co-founder of soccerteam Babe City FC.

Styled by punk: Punk and graffiti had a hand in developing Manning Walker’s style, as she grew up photographing her brothers’ bands while fending off kicks in the mosh pit.—Kyle O’Brien

Expats:Building on the success of her 2019 comedy-drama film The Farewell, Lulu Wang’s next project, Expats, was released earlier this year. The miniseries, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video, was based on the 2016 novel The Expatriates and follows a forlorn and depressed American woman—played by Nicole Kidman—living in Hong Kong with her family when tragedy strikes.

Two doors:The show spends the first four episodes chronicling three American expat women dealing with grief in Hong Kong, but in the fifth episode, Wang turns the story on its head. At the Toronto International Film Festival last year, she explained her desire to “create two doors” into the show: The first is the pilot, while the second is this fifth episode, which steps away from the protagonists to put their lives into context among the tertiary characters living in the same spaces.—Aleda Stam

Finding a way:Azsa West has always followed their own path. After dropping out of college three times, they applied for Wieden+Kennedy’s experimental school, WK12, and never looked back. “Learning from real clients and projects with higher stakes paid off compared to hypothetical situations,” West said. While West has worked at several agencies in their nearly 20 years in advertising, they always find their way back to Wieden+Kennedy.

Creative heaven: In their first year as chief creative officer, they helped win the DoorDash account, then led the team to the Super Bowl with the ambitious “DoorDash-all-the-ads” sweepstakes, which had watchers crowdsourcing the 1,813 character promo code to win all the products shown in ads during the game. They also worked on the recent “Skims Lab” campaign, with West calling the experience “creative heaven.”

Don’t just make ads:Outside of the day job, West is a filmmaker, artist and ceramicist. Their advice to other creatives is to“make as many things as you can. Don’t just rely on your advertising opportunities. I’ve hired many people purely on their personal work because they were able to demonstrate something that cannot be taught: having a point of view and their own style.”—Aleda Stam

Social media maven:Ansley Williams has ridden the wave of influencer marketing from its humble beginnings as a niche tool to its acceptance as a cornerstone of modern brand strategy. In the nine years since her career began, she’s showcased her chops as a strategic, creative mind with an exhaustive knowledge of social media culture.

Guerrilla marketing:Earlier this year, she led CeraVe’s Super Bowl campaign, “Michael CeraVe,” building on an old Reddit thread speculating that actor Michael Cera was behind the skin care brand CeraVe. “Influencers were not just participants but central drivers of our narrative, playing a critical role in sparking speculation that Michael Cera could be the founder of CeraVe,” said Williams. What followed was a guerrilla-style, social media-led campaign that began with viral pictures of Cera handing out bottles of CeraVe in his Brooklyn neighborhood and ended in a Super Bowl spot.—Aleda Stam

New pop princess:Feeding into his ’90s-to-current-day obsession with Britney Spears, Jake Wilson jumped at the chance to direct the music video for singer Snow Wife, known as Gen Z’s version of the global megastar. The dance-centric short film for the single “Wet Dream” is the latest of his artist collaborations, following work with Lizzo, Cher, Saucy Santana and Vincint.

Gimme one margarita:Other recent projects have included “One Margarita, Saucy Remix,” a raunchy rap video with Cindy Crawford re-creating her famous Pepsi Super Bowl campaign. Pulling double duty as an ad for Casamigos tequila and BlendJet blenders, the short film is an example of how Wilson tries to find “un-cringeworthy ways to incorporate brands and products into my work, so they can create a memorable moment and enhance the story rather than distracting from it.”

The A-list:Once a performer himself, Wilson said he’s disheartened with the current state of entertainment, where original ideas are considered risky and greenlights more often come to “reboots of old IP” or name-only projects. “It feels impossible for journeymen talent to break through,” he told ADWEEK, “which makes no sense, considering everyone on the ‘A-list’ started out somewhere.”—T.L. Stanley

Perfect match:Within hours of first meeting, Matthew Woodhams-Roberts and Dave Horton had already developed eight scripts for Adidas. Their partnership in the decade since has produced disruptive work for brands such as Sony, Mitsubishi, Snickers, Netflix and Expedia.

An ego-free voice:They’ve worked with more than 40 celebrities, but their ego-free creative approach always puts a brand’s voice first while simultaneously developing work that resonates culturally—from reuniting SNL’s Wayne and Garth and introducing them to Cardi B for Uber Eats to pairing up Lil Nas X and Elton John. The duo’s track record continued last year in the viral Super Bowl ad for Uber eats that featured Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer and the Beckhams. The ad ranked fourth on the USA Today ad meter.

Their mantra:“Stay hungry. Stay foolish. When in doubt, steal from Steve Jobs.”—Aleda Stam

Harmonious chaos:As co-founders of design and creative studio Hard Feelings, Polina Zakharova and Sveta Yermolayeva merge visual art, design, technology and sound art for global brands and artists including Gucci, The NBA, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Travis Scott and Drake. Recently, they produced video and visuals for Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour. “Our ‘harmonious chaos’ mantra is all about mixing art, music, fashion and tech into something uniquely stunning. We dive deep into each medium, creating a conversation between them to amplify the emotions,” Zakharova toldStirworld.

Fashion for the future:Working alongside artist, stage designer and 2018 Creative 100 honoree Es Devlin, the duo created visual and video art for Gucci Cosmos, a London exhibition marking 102 years of the Italian fashion house. “Gucci Cosmos is not just a walk through time but a dance, where every frame captures the essence of an icon and projects it into the universe of the future,” Zakharova said.—Brittaney Kiefer