WPP’s digital marketing consultancy Switched On to merge into AKQA
WPP AUNZ has announced that digital marketing and media consultancy, Switched On, will be merging into the Australia arm of experience design agency AKQA.
Switched On will continue to be led by managing director, Chris Hitchcock, who will be joining the AKQA executive team and reporting to Asia Pacific managing partner Brian Vella.
Both agency brands will continue, while Switched On is integrated into the AKQA team, and it will transition to the AKQA brand in the future.
Switched On MD Chris Hitchcock (L) will join the executive team and report to AKQA managing partner Brian Vella (R)
This is a really clever tie up (Chris is great as well). Mostly as it plays to the future — convergence of media and technology to improve operational performance for clients. Can see media playing a much bigger role in the agencies.
Much better than the JWT / Wunderman merger, which basically merged two assets that were fairly incompatible in ways of working and don’t get a huge amount out of the merger (as they have to both rework their processes to deal with politics).
Good stuff.