This week's guest judge is Martin Beauvais, executive creative director of zig, Toronto.
Since Martin joined zig in 2006, the agency has repeatedly placed in the top five in Canada's agency of the year awards, due in large part to his influence on the agency's creative. One of the only Francophone ECD's in Toronto, Martin has been named the most influential bilingual creative in Toronto by Strategy magazine and included as one of the 100 Most Important People in Marketing Communications in Canada by Marketing magazine. Most recently at zig, he's led award-winning campaigns for IKEA, Best Buy and Pfizer, among others.
Prior to joining zig, Martin was partner and executive creative director at BBDO in Montreal, following a stint as Creative Director at Taxi Montreal. He worked on clients including Pepsi, Chrysler, Parmalat and Pillsbury, as well as a wildly popular milk campaign that became a pop culture phenomenon, spawning two platinum music releases for the songs used in the commercials and increasing milk consumption in Quebec - the only milk campaign in the Western world to meet with such success.
Martin's work has earned countless international accolades from Cannes, The One Show, AIGA and others, as well as Canadian shows including the Marketing Awards, CREA, Canadian Marketing Association Awards, the Cassies and EXTRA. His work has been featured in everything from industry publications to Playboy and Penthouse, and some pieces are permanent fixtures in design museums in Europe, Canada and Japan. He regularly serves on juries for international and Canadian awards programs, and is active on the industry speaking circuit.
Martin is a designer at heart, and has passionately advocated the benefits of solid design work throughout his career. He has a knack for spotting young creative talent with massive potential, and serving as a mentor to support their rise to success - in fact, most of the talent he's hired in the last 15 years has quickly reached Creative Director level at respected agencies.
Other accomplishments include his ability to say "bollocks" with a perfect South London accent - a miracle for a French Canadian, and one he's always happy to demonstrate. He and his wife have two daughters, Mathilde and Lola, and split their time between Montreal and Toronto. When he's not busy with the industry or his family, Martin skis and plays golf, limiting his sports to games where he can't blame others when he loses.

Look out for Martin's review of this week's best ads, which will be posted here around midnight Tuesday, Toronto time. read more