Ajaz Ahmed (under) is stepping down as CEO of WPP’s AKQA Group, which now consists of Gray. Ahmed based AKQA, arguably the world’s greatest and most inventive massive digital company, 30 years in the past.
WPP purchased AKQA, then a world community, for a reported £300m in 2012. WPP chief know-how officer Stephen Pretorious takes over within the meantime.
Ahmed says: “Serving AKQA’s crew, shoppers and values over the previous 30 years has been the best honour of my life. Founding AKQA at a younger age was the beginning of an unimaginable journey, and if future permits, I look ahead to one other 30 years of significant work and making a distinction. I’m tremendously energised in regards to the adventures forward and the alternative to do one thing new.”
WPP CEO Mark Learn says: “Below Ajaz’s management AKQA has turn into one of many world’s most recognised and extremely regarded businesses. It’s an excellent enterprise with many extraordinarily proficient individuals world wide. With its distinctive world crew, capabilities and experience, AKQA is well-positioned for continued success and we thank Ajaz for his imaginative and prescient and contribution to the enterprise.”
AKQA was rolled in with Gray a few years in the past within the a part of the reorganisation of WPP inventive businesses that led to JWT, Y&R and Wunderman, three storied company manufacturers, turning into a part of VML. AKQA and Gray all the time appeared one thing of an afterthought; primarily the 2 had nothing in frequent other than possession.
A decade in the past Gray was the shining mild in WPP’s inventive line-up underneath CEO Jim Heekin and CCO Tor Myhren, who give up for Apple in 2015. Within the UK it had escaped its once-dowdy repute to thrive underneath EMEA boss David Patton, CCO Nils Leonard and his colleagues Natalie Graeme and Lucy Jameson. Leonard, Graeme and Jameson give up to type Unusual Inventive Studio in 2017 whereas Patton was briefly world CEO of Y&R earlier than, to his shock, it was rolled into VML.
As an train in worth destruction it was spectacular and it’s no shock that Ahmed, after 30 years earlier than the mast admittedly, has given up on the unlikely process of welding Gray into AKQA.
Ahmed stays an influential and charismatic presence within the higher echelons of enterprise and can likely resurface elsewhere. Promoting can little afford to lose such individuals.
