Inside the AKQA Group and why the market won’t be losing WhiteGrey
Five months after the ‘merger’ of AKQA and WhiteGrey into the AKQA Group was announced, CEO of the creative agency Lee Simpson wants the market to know that the agency isn’t going anywhere. Here, Simpson and newly-appointed chief strategy officer Simon Wassef chat to Mumbrella’s Zoe Wilkinson about forging the path ahead for WhiteGrey.
Since the November merger of AKQA and Grey Group was handed down from global to WPP AUNZ questions have remained over what the local structure looks like and what it means for the Australian outposts of AKQA and WhiteGrey.
Put simply, the two brands sit beside each other in the AKQA Group. Much like the recently created Ogilvy Network, there is no one leader at the top; AKQA Asia Pacific managing partner Brian Vella and WhiteGrey CEO Lee Simpson sit alongside each other in the group, and key decisions on new business are traded between them.
“The thing that unites us, I think particularly locally is we want to win. So when there’s a big pitch and there’s some great competition in the saturated market, we want to pitch against the Clemenger Group or we want to pitch against TBWA or wherever it might be, we’re stronger if we can partner up in the right way. So that means we come to the conversation going ‘what do we want to do together to win?,” Simpson explains.
“And sometimes that will be let’s go with the AKQA Group or actually that feels like a AKQA or WhiteGrey, and so that’s where the conversation starts. So what’s right for the client, and how can we win and gives us the best chance of doing that.”
