The Mill expands offering with new team

The Mill has taken on four new staff members to lead a new division of the company offering creative strategy and ideation, production and experiential marketing services.

Alex Wills (pictured, top left) is joining as chief experience officer; Alex Schneider (pictured, top right) becomes chief brand officer; Anna Fogg (pictured, bottom right) joins as global strategy director; and Aleissia Laidacker (pictured, bottom left) has been appointed global director of creative technology.

Wills will be responsible for defining The Mill’s future role in “developing transformative experiences for audiences, brands and fan cultures”. He has previously held senior leadership roles at R/GA and AKQA.

Schneider joins The Mill from Wednesday Agency Group, where he was Global CEO. He has more than two decades of experience helping grow world-class creative agencies, brands and content studios. In his new role, he will focus on ensuring The Mill is able to meet the creative challenges of brand partners across gaming, fashion, automotive, technology and lifestyle industries. He will also lead global expansion plans as The Mill explores new territories.

Meanwhile, Fogg will work with clients to define the trends in culture and behavioural shifts impacting modern audiences as they migrate into new spaces online. She has 15 years of strategic experience in creative agencies working for VCCP, Cheill and Naked Communications before joining The Mill.

Finally, Laidacker will develop The Mill’s offering across augmented/virtual reality, AI, game development and immersive technologies. Previously at Magic Leap and Ubisoft, Laidacker has over 20 years of experience in media and entertainment.

This evolution of The Mill is in response to the changing media landscape of the past 12-months.

Wills said: “Our goal is to ideate and produce innovative content and experiences that draw on our 30-year legacy of visual storytelling and unique understanding of modern audiences. Emerging technology allows brands, products, and entertainment properties to move ever closer to their audience in new ways. We’ll be building out our capabilities to work across every medium from filters and real-time avatars through AR and VR to magical full-blown location-based experiences. We have actively been building an Experimental Design Studio and Real-Time 3D powered Creative Technology team, in order to rapidly scale our offering to further bring our world class CG craft into interactive experiences, enabling us to deliver next generation audience experiences.”

The Mill CEO Josh Mandel adds: “The expansion of our business offering comes in response to the new challenges faced by brands looking to reach and engage audiences in new and emerging spaces online and virtually. These spaces are creating new opportunities to shape a consumer experience that demands the latest in visual effects and tech enhanced storytelling.”