CALLING Appoints Jenny Zhang as Strategy Director

CALLING has hired Jenny Zhang in the newly created role of strategy director, as the creative company continues to grow its team and expand its client list. 

In the short 12 months since former Livity business partner Rani Patel and ex Uncommon creative director Josh Tenser founded the agency, CALLING has proved itself as a disruptor to the advertising landscape, attracting enviable clients and industry talent with its proposition of helping brands to find a higher calling. It counts Dr. Marten’s, Interflora, NSPCC and Trans Pride UK Collective among its client list. 

Jenny joins CALLING with a blend of agency, client and ecommerce expertise alongside a wealth of experience in fashion and lifestyle brands. Jenny has worked across clients such as Adidas, Estée Lauder Companies, JW Anderson, the North Face and Alexander McQueen.  

Most recently Jenny worked as a partner at cross-cultural agency TONG which is based in London and Shanghai with a focus on Chinese consumers. Prior to this she was strategy director at creative agency SUPERIMPOSE, a branded content strategist at Condé Nast and global brand marketing manager at ASOS. 

Jenny is a former recipient of The Drum’s Global 50 Women under 30 and the DOTS 100 Rising Stars. Last year she was included in Management Today’s 35 Women Under 35. 

Jenny said that in her role she would be working closely with CALLING’s founders Patel and Tenser as well as “helping the agency’s clients to build the relevant frameworks to connect with today’s consumer”.

Jenny said that she has a particular passion for helping clients to navigate the “higher standards” of today’s consumer and that one of the reasons she was attracted to working at CALLING was that the agency is “just so far ahead of its competitors in knowing what consumers expect and demand”. 

In her spare time Jenny mentors young creative and digital talent and said that another shared passion she had with the founders of CALLING was a belief in creating opportunities for marginalised creative talent. 

Rani Patel, MD and founder of CALLING, said, “Our first 12 months in business has been an incredible trip which we are so grateful for. As a result of some amazing new business opportunities we’re now able to welcome Jenny as Strategy Director, working closely with myself and Josh. Jenny comes with many gifts; super smart, culturally informed and highly self-aware, a beautiful blend of what today’s strategic brand thinkers need to have to create for our world. Josh and I have no doubt about the impact Jenny will make here in the business and on the work. What a great way for CALLING to start 2024.” 

With a key piece of new business landing in Q4, the start-up agency expanded its team by 30% at the end of 2023 and moved operations to The Bussey Building - at the heart of Peckham’s emerging creative community, South East London. The agency now has 17 members of staff and has an extended global collective of over 200 members. 

With the agency choosing to be based out of Copeland Park’s Bussey Building it joins a neighbourhood of independent creative businesses, who work together to sustain the area’s cultural diversity and vitality.