AKQA’s frontier model: embedded teams, prototypes and pricing

What do you actually say when someone asks what AKQA does?

That's the question Episode 31 opens with, and Bianca Dordea , Global Client Lead at AKQA , answers it.

Before AKQA, Bianca was CEO of DDB Berlin , and before that, EVP Client Service Director at Energy BBDO in Chicago. Her career spans three very different definitions of what an agency is supposed to be: a traditional creative shop, a full-service network office, and now a business that refuses to call itself either.

📺 Why AKQA calls itself a "frontier agency" and rejects the labels of creative agency, consultancy, and design firm 📺 The real story behind AKQA's founding relationship with Nike , and what being "embedded in a client's business" actually looks like day to day 📺 How WPP's OpenX model works for Coca-Cola , and whether capability-based (not geography-based) teams are genuinely more efficient 📺 Why AKQA is moving away from slide-deck pitches toward working MVPs and live demos 📺 The exact type of client AKQA works best with , and the type that should never walk through its doors 📺 Whether Accenture Song, Deloitte Digital, and McKinsey Design are a real threat to agencies , or whether culture is the one thing that can't be acquired 📺 What happens to agency pricing once Gen AI commoditises execution