Last month, J. Walter Thompson New York followed a somewhat familiar pattern by parting with its chief creative officer after less than a year. Adam Kerj left the agency’s Manhattan office to be replaced by Brent Choi, who had been running creative at JWT Toronto for nearly three years and will now head up both offices.
Today we learned why Kerj left: he returned to the place where modern advertising was born, moving to Stockholm to run McCann Worldgroup’s office there while also serving as CCO for the entire Nordic region. (ICYMI, he’s from Sweden. His Twitter handle is @AdamSweden.)
Global creative chairman Rob Reilly (who himself moved from CP+B to McCann last January) had high praise for his newest hire, writing:
“Talent is everything. And when you have the opportunity to bring back somebody as skilled as Adam to one of the most creative regions in the world, you sure as hell take it.”
Kerj joined JWT in late 2014, leaving 360i after just under three years on the same day the shop announced that his replacement would be M&C Saatchi CCO/co-founder Pierre Lipton. Kerj himself succeeded Jeff Benjamin, who is currently running his own operation called Disco.
McCann’s newest chief creative co-founded the Swedish offices of both TBWA and Saatchi & Saatchi, spending a decade with the latter as it won “Agency of the Year” more than once. The release tells us he has won “over 100 international awards” during his career, which actually started at Leo Burnett in Chicago and Denmark. He’s also spoken and/or served as a juror at pretty much every major industry event and mentored his share of Miami Ad School students.
McCann Nordic includes the office in Stockholm, or “the largest market in the region,” in addition to locations in Copenhagen, Olso and Helsinki.