WPP’s AKQA and Grey are merging to form a new network model, AKQA Group. Grey is known for creative storytelling and global brand-building at scale, while AKQA is recognized for its world-class innovation and experience design skills. With heightened demand for digital transformation and technology-driven capabilities, the combination will create a powerful new proposition for clients as a creative solutions company with a worldwide footprint.
The AKQA Group will have 6,000 people in more than 50 countries and a blue-chip client roster that includes more than half of the Fortune 500’s top 20. It will provide a full range of brand experience capabilities across all communications platforms, strengthening the skills and services of both companies for clients.
AKQA founder Ajaz Ahmed and Grey Worldwide CEO Michael Houston will partner to lead the new Group. Ahmed will become CEO and Houston will become global president and COO of AKQA Group. The AKQA Group will launch with the AKQA and Grey brands, which will be integrated over time into a single company based on client and market needs. The management team and creative leadership will be announced in the coming weeks, comprising leaders from AKQA and Grey.
AKQA and Grey have highly compatible creative cultures and share a common belief in the power of creativity. Between them they have won nearly 600 Cannes Lions in the last decade. The two agencies have complementary, non-competitive client rosters. The combined AKQA Group will have expertise in the media, entertainment and technology sectors as well as packaged goods, healthcare and financial services.
Ahmed said, “Our goal is to expand horizons, combining the curiosity, ambition, imagination and pioneering spirit of a startup with the reach of a global enterprise. This is an unparalleled opportunity for AKQA and Grey to bring our shared assets to life into a modern, creatively-led company, building upon our inspiring and useful work to create value for our clients, people and communities.”
Houston stated, “This exciting new partnership begins with what consumers expect, clients value, and brands need. Forming a new company that can deliver culture-driving ideas through technology at speed and scale is a potent proposition for our clients, large and small, and will allow us to offer the most powerful creative solutions in the industry.”
Mark Read, CEO of WPP, said, “Our clients want outstanding creativity, powered by technology expertise and delivered at a global scale. This new company is designed precisely to meet those needs and is another important step forward in building our future-facing offer for clients.”
Over the past five years, Grey has received top industry accolades for creative effectiveness, including the Grand Effie, Effie Agency of the Year, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Agency of the Year with 395 Cannes Lions. Grey’s growing global Health & Wellness practice counts many of the world’s largest pharma and health-related companies as clients.
AKQA, recognized as a digital pioneer and a creative innovator, has won over 60 Agency of the Year awards; led Gartner’s independent evaluation of Global Marketing Agencies for three years in succession; led IDC’s quantitative and qualitative assessment of success in Customer Experience Design; and won two Grand Prix at the most recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The move follows the successful combination of other WPP agencies to create Wunderman Thompson, VMLY&R and BCW, which have been among WPP’s best-performing companies by addressing client needs for more integrated, creative and technology-driven solutions.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More