Image courtesy of Broken Heart Love Affair
Broken Heart Love Affair (BHLA) is restructuring its leadership group as it folds subsidiary Lifelong Crush into the agency as a content production studio.
Strategy has learned that Rachelle Claveau is now president of both BHLA and the newly renamed Lifelong Crush Studios, while Christina Yu becomes CCO at both BHLA and Lifelong Crush Studios and Derek Blais becomes CCO of innovation in a newly created role at BHLA.
Claveau was appointed BHLA’s president this spring and Yu had been serving as CCO and partner along with Blais as a CCO at Lifelong Crush, both since May 2023. Lifelong Crush’s 11 employees, including creative and account management talent, as well as freelance contractors are also being folded into BHLA.
Beverley Hammond, co-founder and chief business officer at BHLA and Lifelong Crush, tells strategy that Caroline Kilgour, Lifelong Crush’s long-time EVP and managing director, is no longer with the company.
Founded in spring 2020, Hammond says that over time, Lifelong Crush’s “success created the unintended consequence that as both agencies evolved to meet client demands, they increasingly moved toward the same space in the market.” She says the new structure will eliminate overlapping conversations and priorities, while allowing BHLA to respond to a wider array of briefs.
“Our shared clients found it cumbersome to cross two agencies for their own evolving creative needs and asked us to fix that for them.” Beverley Hammond
“In the past, the two agencies partnered on briefs that required full-funnel creative services, which in some cases, complicated and confused clients who increasingly are asking for one creative partner,” Hammond adds. “This allows us to build ideas that move seamlessly from brand platforms through commerce and customer experience.”
The changes position BHLA as the group’s lead integrated creative agency, while Lifelong Crush Studios will serve as its dedicated production arm focused on video, content creation, activations and fabrication.
Lifelong Crush launched in April 2020 to offer planning and strategy, campaigns, design, content and analytics as the parent company prioritized higher-level “brand transformation and domination” projects, Hammond said at the time.
Kilgour was appointed the agency’s EVP and managing director in November 2020, leading the agency to success during its early stages and gaining recognition from strategy as Small Agency of Year in 2024 (Silver) and 2025 (Bronze).
“Caroline made a significant contribution to the growth of Lifelong Crush over its first five years, turning it into an award-winning agency,” Hammond says. “We are grateful for her passionate contribution and leadership.”
The restructuring comes after a busy period of change at BHLA. In April, Claveau was appointed president after 2½-plus years as EVP and national managing director and Jolene Matika became managing director after three-plus years as SVP of people and operations.
BHLA added Matthew McDonald and Layton Wu as creative directors later in the spring before the agency announced that Denise Rossetto, one of BHLA’s co-founders, would be stepping away from day-to-day operations to take on a “creative counsel” role.
