AKQA
 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (December 2010) |
| File:Akqa.Logo.png | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Advertising |
| Founded | San Francisco, California (March 2001) |
| Founder | Ajaz Ahmed  |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Tom Bedecarré, CEO Ajaz Ahmed, chairman Jim Rossman, pres and COO Lester Feintuck, CFO |
| Products | Interactive experiences CRM E-commerce Technology services Media, search and analytics Interface design Content creation Content distribution |
| Revenue | 98 Million USD (2006)[1] |
Number of employees | 800 |
| Website | www.akqa.com |
AKQA is a creative agency specializing in interactive marketing. The privately held company is based in London, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C, Amsterdam, Berlin and Shanghai and has 800 full-time employees.
Philosophy
Since its creation, AKQA has stated its company values to be: Innovation, Service, Quality and Thought.
The book The On-Demand Brand quotes AKQA’s CEO Tom Bedecarré: “There are a lot of advertising people who want to hang onto the past, want to hang onto 30-second television commercials and full-color magazine ads. [But] you [now need to] have software engineers and technology people as part of the creative team if you want to connect with what people are doing.” [2]
History
AKQA Inc. was founded in 2001 as a merger between AKQA New Media (London), Citron Haligman Bedecarré (San Francisco), Magnet Interactive (Washington, DC) and The AndInc (Singapore). The new company took a $71 million investment from Francisco Partners and formed a strategic alliance with Accenture.[3].
From 2001-2003, building on its identity as an all-round “ideas-led” agency rather than a strictly digital practitioner, AKQA began undertaking work that also had a significant offline component.
In 2004, a New York office was opened.
In 2006, AKQA setup a dedicate mobile practice. It also created the Future Lions competition in collaboration with the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The competition focuses on university-aged students of all disciplines (“You could be majoring in Advanced Plumbing or Paper Science for all we care, as long as you have great ideas and are hungry for innovation” explains the rules for the 2010 contest).
The annual competition challenges students to “advertise a product from a global brand in a way that couldn’t be conceived five years ago. This is an opportunity to shatter conventional thinking and leave us with tingly chills down our spines.”[4]
2007 was a year of expansion. New offices were opened in Amsterdam and Shanghai, SearchRev was acquired and turned into a dedicated search engine marketing practice[5], and revenue grew 45%.[6]. General Atlantic replaced Francisco Partners as the new majority stakeholders.
A Berlin office was announced in January 2010 and opened its doors in June 2010. The company cited Germany's position as Europe's biggest e-commerce market, and Berlin's reputation as a hotbed of creativity and talent (making it, among other things, a great place for current staff to rotate through for fresh, "cutting-edge" inspiration), as the prime motivators behind the decision to set up shop there.[7]
Notable work
Volkswagen 2010 GTI car launch; the first car launch in history to be done without any paid media, and the first to happen in Apple’s iTunes Store.[citation needed] Based on an engine by Melbourne developer Firemint, AKQA created the free “Real Racing GTI” games app (released on October 15, 2009).[citation needed] It became the #1 app in 36 countries, with over 4.3 million downloads.[citation needed] Users could find nearby dealers using the GPS function, and within days of the app’s release dealers were reporting sales directly linked to the game.[8]
Fiat eco:Drive; If you own a new Fiat 500 (or one of a few other models), an AKQA-devised setup called eco:Drive collects your real-world driving data on a USB stick you plug into the dashboard.[citation needed] When you plug that stick into your computer, a proprietary algorithm analyses your gear changes, acceleration and braking habits and calculates your eco:Index – a scoring of your carbon footprint. It then offers advice to improve your driving style and quantifies how much good you’ll do for the environment, and how much money you’ll save in the course of a year, with the increased fuel economy you’ll achieve by adopting the program’s suggestions.[9]
Awards and recognition
Between 2005 and 2010, AKQA garnered more than 100 industry awards, including at least one agency of the year award every year. In 2010, AKQA took home Agency of the Year for the second year running at the Revolution Awards [10] and Agency of the Year awards from New Media Age and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. In 2009, the company won five separate agency of the year awards, a feat unprecedented in the communications industry.
AKQA had previously been named Revolution’s Agency of the Decade (for 1997 to 2007).[11]
When Advertising Age’s Creativity magazine created its inaugural Interactive Agency of the Year award (2006), it gave it to AKQA, recognizing the agency's “global culture, creative hires and technological muscle.” Said the magazine’s editor, Teressa Iezzi, “We thought AKQA embodied the spirit of the big-idea-first approach.”[12]
References
- ^ Top 50 Interactive Agencies. Advertising Age Magazine. Retrieved on July 20, 2007.
- ^ "AKQA CEO Bedecarre on making a break with advertising's past." Retrieved April 12, 2010.
- ^ "AKQA, a New Global Marketing Company is Launched - Creates Strategic Alliance with Accenture".
- ^ Future Lions official web site
- ^ "AKQA Acquires Search Agenc".
- ^ "AdWeek 2007 Digital AOY: AKQA".
- ^ "Berlin is an incredible city at the cutting-edge of creativity" states AKQA as it plans a new office in the German capital.
- ^ ”“No 30 second spots”?” Industry forum Ihaveanidea.com marvels as a car is launched entirely via an iPhone application.
- ^ ”Behind the scenes: AKQA’s Grand Prix winning Fiat campaign” Marketing Magazine. Retrieved April 25, 2010.
- ^ "Comparethemarket.com, Spotify and AKQA triumph at Revolution Awards." "BrandRepublic." Retrieved April 11, 2010.
- ^ "The Guardian's Media 100." "The Guardian."
- ^ "AKQA is Creativity's First-ever Interactive Agency of the Year."
External links
- Interview with co-founder and chief creative officer James Hilton on how the word ‘relevant’ has guided AKQA for more than 13 years.
- Growing Business meets AKQA's founder and chairman Web pioneer Ajaz Ahmed reveals how he built the £73m turnover creative agency big brands use to reach out to the Internet generation by "taking a stand against 'multimediocrity'".
- Feature article in Campaign by Ajaz Ahmed on neuroplasticity, cultural activism, and the inexorable and beneficent rise of video gaming.
- AKQA on Facebook (the company's official and exclusive newsfeed)