JWT Melbourne appointed Kieran Antill as executive creative director.
Antilll returns to Australia after around five years with Leo Burnett New York, where he arrived as an executive creative director, senior vice president in 2010 before being named a managing partner and executive vice president last year. (The office closed in February.)
While with LB, he led the Samsung Global account while also working with brands including Dewars Scotch, Chobani, Kelloggs, P&G and Gallo Wines. Before leaving for New York, Antill served as art director/head of art with Leo Burnett Sydney beginning in 2006 and worked on such accounts as Amstel, Heineken, Johnnie Walker, Samsung, Canon and McDonald’s. Antill is also an exhibiting artist and photographer, and over the past fifteen years has shown his work in Sydney Street Gallery, SOHO House, Concordia Gallery and United Galleries, Sydney, among others.
“Kieran joins us at an exciting time of positive change with new business wins, new hires across all departments and a range of new capabilities,” JWT Melbourne managing director Michael Godwin told LBB. “To have someone with Kieran’s boundless energy, his passion for creativity in all its forms and his belief in its ability to solve business problems is a real coup for us.”
“I look forward to a rewarding 2016 where it will be my role to add fuel to the already blazing fire of momentum at J Walter Thompson Melbourne,” added Antill. “At a time when brands need to find more ways to express themselves and involve people than ever before, I applaud J Walter Thompson for recognising this, as evidenced by the development of ‘The Cannery’ – a fully functioning in-house content studio, which allows our ideas to exist even closer to production, bringing greater speed, agility and creativity to all our clients.”