ACDs Nellie Kim and Chris Hirsch are moving up the ranks at John St. It was officially announced last week to agency staffers that the two have been promoted to creative directors, says Stephen Jurisic, co-ECD and partner at John St.

“One thing about Chris and Nellie is that they are very innovative from the get-go,” he says. “They’re such a strong ideas team, [from] the simplest little print ad to Stanfield’s ‘Guy at Home.'”

The two will continue to work on clients Mitsubishi, ING, Kruger and Stanfield’s, but in the creative director role, and will help free Jurisic and co-ECD Angus Tucker to better manage all of the agency’s clients, he says. “This is a balance where they can run these brands and still do the creative that made them famous, but also oversee more projects and grow into that role,” adds Jurisic.

Both have worked on award-winning campaigns for brands such as Wiser’s, Cashmere, AutoTrader and Stanfield’s, taking home a collection of hardware from “pretty much every show but the Oscars,” says Tucker, including the CMAs and CASSIES, as well as Cannes, One Show, the Webby’s and SXSW.

Jurisic notes that John St. will not be filling the roles left by Kim and Hirsch just yet, but the agency is actively looking for creatives to join the agency in more intermediate roles. “We’re playing it day by day,” he says. “Right now our creative department is very robust in the sense that we have a very healthy deep [team, but] we are still in the process of looking for more people.”