Janet Kestin and Nancy Vonk are leaving Ogilvy & Mather Toronto to launch a new, independent professional development business called Swim.
Kestin and Vonk have been co-chief creative officers at Ogilvy for 13 years, winning awards at every major national and international award show and producing high-profile work on clients such as Unilever’s Dove, and Kraft’s Maxwell House and Shreddies.
They will launch Swim in Toronto with Ogilvy’s U.S. operations as its founding client. Swim will train senior creatives in the industry who are looking to take on leadership roles within their companies.
“Back in March, AdWeek had a headline that said a barista gets more training than the average agency staff,” said Kestin, a problem the new company looks to address with methods that, according to press materials, will be “intense, fun, scary and transformative.”
Kestin and Vonk have long been seen as mentors in the industry. Ogilvy has had a reputation as a seeding ground for creatives who go on to more senior roles at other shops thanks largely to their influence. The duo has also taught at OCAD U, Humber College and VCU Brandcenter, written a book called Pick Me: Breaking Into Advertising and Staying There and produced a well-read advice column at IHaveAnIdea.org called Ask Jancy (an allusion to the nickname given to the inseperable team).
“We asked ourselves ‘What do we really want to do in the end?’ We’ve been very lucky, but the truth is what we love the most is the people and helping them do well,” Kestin said.
Vonk told Marketing that “being the creative director anywhere for 13 years is a really long time. Anybody with any common sense in this job is always thinking about ‘the next.’ We’ve been congnizant of what we’ve enjoyed the most for a long time. A lot of the focus of our day-to-day, Ask Jancy and the book has been grounded in a natural inclination to mentor.”
While the pair has been thinking about “the next” for a long time, Vonk said one thing contributing to the career change was a discussion with Rick Boyko, former chief creative officer and co-president of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and currrently director of VCU Brandcenter.
“He said to us at one point ‘Can’t you see what’s so obvious? You guys are destined to teach. That’s what you are.’ You have chats like that and it moves you more and more towards this idea.”
Ogilvy could not confirm who would assume the creative director role(s) at press time. An announcement is expected Monday.
