Kelly Putter

Background

About Kelly Putter

Kelly started his career by writing menus and shooting his own scripts, one of them being an ad for Volkswagen. Ogilvy South Africa loved it and so did the jury at The Cannes Advertising Festival. In 1997 he was the youngest person to win a Cannes lion. In with one award and a bunch of menus in hand, he landed his first real job at Berry Bush BBDO. This was followed by a stint at Bester Burke D’Arcy and then Lowe Bull. In 2004 he was headhunted by Ogilvy Singapore. As a regional writer, he worked on South-East Asian brands like DHL, The Economist, HSBC Bank, Nestle, Nike and Tiger Beer. After moving to Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore, he placed 3rd in The Young Guns awards, for the most creative people under 30. Two years later Ogilvy called him back to Cape Town. He worked as a senior copywriter alongside great people on blue chip brands like VW, Audi, Castrol Oil, Carling Black Label, Old Mutual Investments, Multi-Choice cable TV to name but a few. In 2009 he was asked to work as Creative Director at The Campaign Palace, in Sydney Australia. Here he won the Westpac business and headed up Dominos, Panasonic and Bonds underwear. After a decade of working around the world, Kelly decided to start his own business. It was called Bletchley Park, “The home of beautiful problems”. Kelly and business partner Jonty Fisher, grew their agency to 25 people before merging with some mates to form OFyt. OFyt is a bunch of wise, very experienced advertising people working with some very smart, younger, slightly better-looking people. Old Friends Young Talent is both a full service agency and graduate program designed to fast track young talent into the industry. Over the next 8 years Kelly and his partners grew OFyt to 65 people with 2 offices in Jo'burg and Cape Town. Kelly is Kiwi by decent and has spent a lot of time growing up in New Zealand. Now he has returned to Aotearoa with a family of his own. Here he continues to service brands and grow business with disruptive ideas and channel agnostic thinking. Ideas that have the power to change the world, have profound social currency and his 5-year-old son is what gets him up in the morning.