Award winning creative Liam Wielopolski has been appointed as Saatchi & Saatchi’s new Regional Executive Creative Director for Johannesburg and Africa. He is tasked with raising the creative bar at Saatchi & Saatchi and driving the creative agenda across Africa for global clients.
Wielopolski says he has always admired Saatchi & Saatchi for being a global ideas shop, and an agency with an unconventional DNA.
“I was drawn to their excitement, passion and focus in building brands not only locally but across Africa,’ he says. “The opportunity in this rising emerging market is astounding and our clients definitely want a piece of that double-digit growth. Having learnt a lot about the local market, I’m really excited about working with the teams within Africa.’
He believes that life revolves around ideas and loves the fact that at everyone at Saatchi’s is encouraged to have them ensuring they put more of them in front of their clients more often. “Our ideas don’t have to be big, they just have to change the world,’ he says. “Great ideas ignite emotion, which then ignite business decisions. The things that make audiences go “Ooh!’ make our clients go, “I love you’ and make our rivals go “Aargh, I wish I’d done it’.’
Over the past 20 years Wielopolski has produced great results with great creativity from great creative departments he has been a part of, and built, in many cases, from scratch.
Having been fortunate enough to have worked at some of SA’s top creative agencies, including The Jupiter Drawing Room, Ogilvy, and most recently Y&R, Wielopolski has worked on many global brands such as Guinness, Land Rover, LG, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Colgate Palmolive and Proctor & Gamble.
As a creative, he has collected several hundred pounds of “hardware’ along the way, including Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD, Andy’s, Clio’s and other international and local shows. He is particularly proud of the fact that he has been awarded at Cannes Lions, The One Show and London International every year since 2004.
Saatchi & Saatchi group CEO, Gail Curtis, says that she spent over a year looking for the right person to lead the agency creatively. “Our global mandate is to be revered as the hothouse for world-changing creative ideas that transform our clients’ businesses, their brands and reputations. Liam is a highly awarded creative who lives and dies by “the IDEA’,’ she says.
She points out that you can’t hold the business card for “the most famous name in advertising’ and not be known for something in South Africa. “Liam has the ability to win awards, but it his “walker not talker’ approach and the fact that he is not scared to get his hands dirty and get into the sandpit with his creative team and harness our young talent is what really sets him apart,’ she adds.
