The Dublin-based creative agency Kick has made a number of key appointments as part of its expansion plans.
Nicola Wielopolski has joined the agency as its creative director while Rory O’Flaherty joins as head of planning and connections.
A native of South Africa, Wielopolski has over 20 years’ experience in advertising having worked with a number of South African agencies including Ogilvy and DDB. She also spent some time working in Dublin with Cawley Nea. Clients she was worked with in the past include McDonald’s, Honda, Converse, Skittles, Knorr, South African Airways, Durex, Sprite Zero, Mercedes-Benz, Irish Pride, The Irish Times and the Commission for Gender Equality.
Wielopolski has been honoured at Cannes, D&AD, New York Festivals, Clio’s and as well as at several local awards. She was the lead creative on the “Commission for Gender Equality” campaign which won silver at Cannes for ‘Ad of the Year’ as well as Gold at the Loeries Awards. In 2017 Nicola was awarded one of only 12 seats on the Phyllis Project, a global creative leadership initiative launched by DDB to increase the number of female creative leaders in the network.
The Dublin-born Rory O’Flaherty, meanwhile, will head up planning and connections at the agency. O’Flaherty recently returned to Ireland from New York where he spent more than 20 years working with a number of agencies including Tribal DDB, R/GA, Huge and Mekansim.
With a strong foundation in the integration of all media and technology adoption, he has developed programmes in various categories, including video gaming, consumer electronics and financial services. He is a guest lecturer at Columbia University in the City of New York and Temple University in Philadelphia.
According to Kick’s managing director Neil McKenna: “I’m delighted to welcome Nicola and Rory to the senior management team at Kick. Each bring a wealth of experience working with global brands in South Africa, the United States and Ireland. As an agile, independent agency, Kick’s philosophy is to make an impact, get results and simplify the process. We work as connectors, defining outcomes and outputs as well as providing stewardship over how, where and when campaigns come to life. All while giving our clients the ultimate competitive advantage – the ability to outthink the competition. The combined expertise of Nicola and Rory provide a diversity and enhanced creative package to bolster our offering to clients.”
