AKQA

AKQA was founded in the United Kingdom in 1994. Ajaz Ahmed launched the firm at age 21 after leaving university before graduating, as he wanted to start a multimedia business quickly while interest in the web was increasing. He was joined by co-founders James Hilton, Matthew Treagus and Dan Norris-Jones in 1995. The agency initially focused on digital projects, including product development. One of AKQA's early clients was Virgin, for which the agency designed the first website capable of broadcasting live radio over the Internet for Virgin Radio. Other initial clients included Microsoft, McDonald's, BMW, and Coca-Cola. By 1999, it was ranked as the largest independent new media agency in the United Kingdom, and had been valued at £26 million. The London-based agency, then known as AKQA New Media, merged with Citron Haligman Bedecarré in San Francisco, Magnet Interactive in Washington, D.C., and The AdInc in Singapore. The merger led to the formation of AKQA as an international marketing agency. Private equity firm General Atlantic acquired a majority stake in AKQA in early 2007. Media reports valued the deal at approximately $250 million. with approximately 700 employees and revenues of around $99 million. The firm was listed as one of AdAge's agencies of the decade in 2009. AdAge noted that AKQA had weathered the bursting of the dot-com bubble, growing its staff and remaining independent. At the time, there had been a trend of marketing holding companies purchasing digital agencies, and AKQA had been considered the largest digital agency that was still independent. AKQA became an autonomous subsidiary of WPP, with Ahmed as its CEO and Bedecarré as chairman. The firm received the Queen's Awards for Enterprise in 2014, in the "Innovation" category for "consistent contribution and outstanding achievement". In November 2014, James Hilton stepped down as Chief Creative Officer of AKQA after creatively leading the company for 20 years. The following year, the agency won four gold Cannes Lions and had received the most awards of any other UK digital agency at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2015. In November 2020, WPP consolidated its agency portfolio by merging Grey Group with AKQA, forming AKQA Group while retaining the AKQA and Grey brands as distinct entities. The combined businesses employed approximately 6,000 people across 50 countries and had collectively received around 600 Cannes Lions awards since 2010. In October 2024, Ajaz Ahmed stepped down as Chief Executive Officer of AKQA Group, 30 years after founding the company. The following year, WPP announced that Grey would separate from AKQA and realign under the Ogilvy Group, ending the five-year integration while retaining the Grey brand. Baiju Shah, formerly Chief Strategy Officer at Accenture Song, was appointed Chief Executive Officer in July 2025. ==Operations==

The agency is majority owned by WPP and operates as an autonomous subsidiary. It is managed by founder and chief executive, Ajaz Ahmed, The agency's services include experience design, including web and mobile app development, e-commerce and interactive campaigns. As of 2020, prior to the merger with Grey Group, AKQA had approximately 2,000 employees globally, in around 30 studios. The agency's locations included studios in: Europe in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, in the US, and El Salvador; India, and in Africa and the Middle East in Egypt, the UAE and South Africa. ==Major work==

In 2005, the agency designed the user interface for the Xbox 360, creating a dashboard and guide for users to navigate the gaming and entertainment functions of the console. The site was called "Now Hiring" and led visitors through a virtual application to become a pretend employee at the Happiness Factory and learn about the characters from the advertisements. The site was animated and represented the imagined world inside of a Coke vending machine. As the site was intended to be accessible to visitors from different countries, AKQA created a new language for the Happiness Factory that was then translated using subtitles for the respective language for each of the 40 different markets where it was available. In 2011, it developed an updated version of the iPhone fitness app for Nike, the Nike Training Club app. The agency undertook research into the app's target audience and then developed a new app design and interface. The app was marketed towards women, as a "personal trainer in your pocket", providing guided workouts and functionality to sync the user's own music from their iTunes library. Within the month of its launch, the app was the top free health and fitness app in the iTunes store by number of downloads. According to Nike, by December 2011, the number of downloads exceeded 2.8 million. As of 2016, the project had received the most awards of any of AKQA's work to date, including three Cannes Gold Lions awards in 2015. In 2019, the agency won the Cannes Lions Media Grand Prix for their Air Max Graffiti Stores campaign for Nike in São Paulo. The company worked with graffiti artists in the city to add Air Max shoes to graffiti characters to showcase the street art as part of the city's culture and promote the shoes. Visitors to the murals could then buy the shoes, using geolocation technology. The campaign was prompted by an effort by the city's governor to remove graffiti from the streets; the governor was later convicted for damage to the city's culture. Also that year, the firm used AI to develop a new sport called Speedgate as a project for Portland Design Week. The company entered data for around 400 sports into a neural network, then worked through a process of reviewing and refining results to create a feasible new sport option. In 2021, AKQA won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix and a Fast Company "World Changing Idea" award for its design of "Looop" for H&M, an installation of a fabric recycling machine at a H&M store in Stockholm that customers could use create new items from old garments. ==References==