Adrian Kemsley has lured Rob Kitchen to be head of art at Collett
Dickenson Pearce. It is Kemsley’s first major hiring since becoming the
agency’s creative director.
Kitchen, 44, freelanced for several agencies after leaving Delaney
Fletcher Bozell, where he was a senior art director, in April.
He will work independently at CDP, in line with Kemsley’s new policy of
allowing creatives to choose partners for each project.
The move reunites the pair, who first met when Kitchen was creative
director at what was then Still Price Lintas. Kitchen hired Kemsley
shortly after his departure from Cowan Kemsley Taylor.
Kitchen left Still Price in April 1994 after overseeing a department
that produced award-winning work for Peperami and Crisis.
He has won many awards as an art director in his own right, including a
gold and a silver D&AD pencil in 1983, while he was at FCO, for an
Araldite poster that featured a real car stuck to a poster site.
Kemsley said he was delighted to be working with Kitchen again: ‘He’s
clever and very good in front of clients, which is the kind of person I
want.’
Kitchen said he’d had the chance to test many agencies while he was
freelancing, including CDP.
‘I know the run of the place from freelancing there and I know I like
it,’ he said.
‘I also know Adrian inside-out from our Still Price days. We’ll make a
good team.’
Kitchen began his career at Leo Burnett in 1978, where he cut his teeth
on accounts for Cadbury’s Flake, BP and Perrier. His ‘I’ll have a
Perrier and water please’ ad picked up Campaign Poster and Creative
Circle silvers.
He moved to FCO in 1981, where he produced work for Barclays, Nike and
Mentos Chewy Mints as well as Araldite.
He joined Hedger Mitchell Stark in 1984 for five months, until it was
folded into Saatchi and Saatchi.
He stayed there until 1989, before moving to Still Price.
