AKQA

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AKQA Inc.

Type	Private
Industry	Advertising
Founded	San Francisco, California (March 2001)
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	250 Million USD (2012)[1]
Employees	1,200[2]
Website	www.akqa.com

AKQA is a creative agency specializing in interactive marketing. The privately held company has offices in London, San Francisco, New York, Paris, Washington D.C, Amsterdam, Berlin, Shanghai and San Salvador, totaling roughly 1,000 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.” ^[3]

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.^[4]

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.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004, a New York office to increase its access to East Coast clients and talent.^[5]

In 2006, AKQA Mobile was launched as a specialist division.^{[citation needed]}

The same year, AKQA also created the Future Lions in collaboration with the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The annual competition challenges university-level students to "advertise a product from a global brand in a way that couldn’t be conceived five years ago."^[6]

2007 was a year of expansion. New offices were opened in Amsterdam^{[citation needed]} and Shanghai^{[citation needed]}, SearchRev was acquired and turned into a dedicated search engine marketing practice,^[7] and revenue grew 45%.^[8] Despite aggressive acquisition of digital agencies by advertising holding companies, AKQA remained independent and private as General Atlantic replaced Francisco Partners as the new majority stakeholders.^[9]

A Berlin office was announced in January 2010 and opened its doors in June 2010.^[10]

In January 2012, AKQA added a Parisian office to their roster.

Notable work

The Priority Mail Virtual Box Simulator designed by AKQA uses augmented reality to help US Postal Service customers choose the right sized container. The customer prints the Post Office eagle logo onto standard paper and holds the printout in front of their computer's built-in camera. A sequence of life-sized box holograms are "projected" into the space; the proper box is then ordered online and delivered free of charge.

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.^[11]

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.^[12]

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 ^[13] 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).^[14]

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.”^[15]

References

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)