Having spent the summer looking to fill senior-level creative roles, John St‘s executive creative directors have hired Niall Kelly to oversee some of the Toronto agency’s biggest accounts.
Kelly was most recently a creative director at Taxi, where he oversaw work for Boston Pizza. Kelly had been with Taxi since 2010, having joined from Zig where he worked on the Molson, Mr. Sub and IKEA accounts.
“This was a really, really key hire for us and we wanted to do it right,” said Angus Tucker and Stephen Jurisic, co-ECD’s at John St., in a statement. “We spoke with a lot of great people and narrowed it down to a short list who spoke with many of our senior people across every department.”
Kelly’s position was previously shared by Nellie Kim and Chris Hirsch, who in June announced their departure for LG2, which is opening an office in Toronto.
“What separates Niall is his ability to do killer work on big brands – from Molson to Boston Pizza to Best Buy to IKEA to Viagra,” Jurisic said. “That’s the litmus test of great creative minds – can they solve the bigger problems?”
When Kelly officially joins his new agency on Oct. 14, he’ll also become part of the newly created “management team,” a recently struck group of senior staff who have tasked with day-to-day management of the agency.
