By Stephen Foster on April 26, 2013
He’s a veritable babbling (or burbling) brook that Martin Sorrell. This morning he was on the airwaves again; promoting (or defending) WPP’s first quarter results and referring inter-alia to a world economy with a ‘corrugated’ bottom, bumps here and there presumably. But at least he didn’t replicated last year’s howler when he said that paying [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Creative, Finance, Media, News, PR, Research | Tagged advertising, akqa, digital, Hill & Knowlton, market research, PR, publicis groupe, Q1 2013 results, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP
By Stephen Foster on April 24, 2013
What are we to make of Maurice Levy’s musings about his and Publicis Groupe’s future? Levy hosted a confab in London (significant in itself as PG is really an Anglo-Saxon company these days) at which he promised two things. The first was that he would have stepped down by 2018 (by which time he will [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Finance, Media, News | Tagged ad exchanges, akqa, digital, emerging markets, Jean-Yves Naouri, lbi, london confab, Maurice Levy, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP
By Stephen Foster on April 19, 2013
Investors prefer companies to be boring when it comes to announcing quarterly results and the marcoms gang looks unlikely to disappoint them. Omnicom has followed Publicis Groupe in announcing more or less ‘as you were’ figures for the first quarter of 2013; as you were in the sense of little or no overall growth compared [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Finance, News, Research | Tagged akqa, digital, europe, John Wren, kantar, lbi, market research, Maurice Levy, omnicom, publicis groupe, Q1 2013, results, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP
By Stephen Foster on December 19, 2012
OK, here we go: after a not very scientific analysis of the ruminations of Paul Simons, Giles Keeble, Jerry Judge, George Parker, Stuart Smith and myself we come to: Agency of the Year Wieden+Kennedy London. For lots of good stuff, TV, online, posters and print. The big test, for W+K London, as we’ve said before, [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative, Finance, Media, News | Tagged 2012, 72andsunny, ad of the year, aegis, agency of the year, Ajaz Ahmed, akqa, bbh, dentsu, grey, Jerry Buhlmann, Neil Christie, network of the year, person of the year, samsung, Tesco, wieden+kennedy london
By Stephen Foster on December 18, 2012
These are my choices for ad/campaign of the year, agency of the year and person of the year. Tomorrow (or maybe the next day) we’ll try to reach a consensus about the ultimate top dogs of 2012. So to ads: BBH’s Three Little Pigs for the Guardian was undoubtedly the tour de force of the [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative, Finance, News | Tagged ad of the year, agency of theyear, ahab, Ajaz Ahmed, akqa, audi, cravendale, facebook, London, person of the year, portland, southern comfort, Tesco, venable bell, wieden+kennedy
By Staff on November 9, 2012
AKQA is opening its 11th office, in Tokyo, hard on the heels of its tenth, in key client Nike’s home base of Portland. AKQA has opened four new offices so far this year. The digital agency, which was bought by WPP for $540m earlier this year, will hit the ground running in Japan with two [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media | Tagged Akaz Ahmed, akqa, japan, nike, nissan, Rei Inamoto, Sir Martin Sorrell, Tagu Kato, tokyo, WPP
By Angie Dean on November 2, 2012
Anheuser-Busch InBev has named AKQA as its US digital agency for Budweiser, Bud Light and Stella Artrois, replacing Heineken at the WPP-own company. Heineken is in the process of moving its digital work to above-the-line agency Wieden+Kennedy. In US terms AB InBev is much bigger than Heineken although Heineken is one of the fastest-growing imports. [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, News | Tagged ab inbev, akqa, bud light, Budweiser, cavalry, coors, ddb, heineken, mcgarrybowen, Paul Chibe, Tom Bedecarre, wieden+kennedy, WPP
By Stephen Foster on October 2, 2012
You can imagine the conversation can’t you – Ajaz Ahmed of AKQA (left) and Sir Martin Sorrell (not for the first time). “Look Ajaz, come in with us and we’ll back AKQA to be the biggest and best digital network in the world.” “It already is.” “Well even bigger and better than it is now.” [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Finance, News | Tagged Ajaz Ahmed, akqa, atlanta, lbi, nike, portland, Sir Martin Sorrell, Tom Bedecarre, wieden+kennedy, WPP
By Angie Dean on September 27, 2012
It looks like we’re going to have a to add another agency account to creative, media, social media etc – mobile marketing. Mobile is, as you know, the next big thing (or maybe current big thing) as our phones get smarter and bigger. It’s easy for even sceptics about some of the wilder forecasts for [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Media, News | Tagged akqa, Guy Wieynk, hotels, mobile marketing, Sheraton, starwood, travel
By Stephen Foster on September 26, 2012
Digital network AKQA was bought by WPP for $540m a weeks ago and now Rei Inamoto (left), who helped to found AKQA’s New York office in 2004, has been made its boss. He was previously CCO but now takes over the rest including client services and, presumably, finance. AKQA is important for WPP as the [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Finance, News | Tagged Ajaz Ahmed, akqa, lbi, publicis groupe, Rei Inamoto, WPP
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