In a bold move, Accenture Interactive is bringing on veteran agency creative leader Neil Heymann as the company's first-ever global chief creative officer. The appointment reunites Heymann, who had previously served for more than a decade at Droga5, with his former boss David Droga, the founder and creative chairman of Droga5 who stepped into the post of Accenture Interactive CEO and Creative Chairman in September.

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Heymann will officially start his new role in mid-February of 2022. His charge will be to unite, enhance and amplify creativity across Accenture Interactive's creative and brand agencies. The news arrives a little more than nine months after he co-founded Publicis Groupe’s Le Truc, which the French company billed as a center of creative excellence that unites the more than 600 creatives, producers and strategists from the holding company’s New York agencies in a single space. 

“Creativity is one of the most potent competitive advantages that we have to help our clients grow and stay relevant today and in future,” Droga said in a statement. “For us to make the biggest impact, we need to continue to be obsessed with our creative output across all our offerings. And with that, I’m delighted that Neil Heymann will be joining Accenture Interactive as our first Accenture Interactive Global Chief Creative Officer.”

Heymann has served as chief creative officer at Le Truc, which has started to see traction in recent months with wins such as a global creative campaign for TikTok.

When asked for comment, Publicis Groupe issued this statement attributed to the Le Truc Collective: “We are sad to lose one of our partners at Le Truc but are happy to see our friend rise into the top echelons of the Accenture conglomerate. We wish Neil the best and if he ever wants to get into the work and the making again, he will always have a special place in our open and fluid creative community.”

Prior to Le Truc, Heymann had served as Droga5's first global chief creative officer and was charged with helping to position the much-decorated agency for worldwide expansion and to build on the ties developed after Accenture Interactive acquired it in May of 2019. He had started there as a digital associate creative director in 2009 and helped to steer groundbreaking integrated campaigns, such as Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning efforts for Mailchimp and JayZ/Microsoft Bing, working his way up the ranks to New York creative chief and then the global role.

In his new post at Accenture Interactive, Heymann enters familiar terrain rejoining with the former Droga5 crew, but he'll also have oversight of the many other agencies that now make up the Accenture Interactive family. Those include Rothco in  Ireland; Karmarama in the U.K.; The Monkeys in Australia; SinnerSchrader and Kolle Rebbe in Germany; Hjaltelin Stahl in Denmark; Storm Digital in the Netherlands; King James in South Africa and others.

Part of the global consulting giant, Accenture Interactive since 2013 has acquired more than three dozen agencies and marketing-services ventures spanning creative, digital, data, design, e-commerce and other disciplines, according to the latest Ad Age Agency Report.

Ad Age Datacenter ranks Accenture Interactive as the world’s fourth-largest agency company behind WPP, Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe based on 2020 revenue.

Accenture Interactive also ranked as the world’s largest digital agency network for the sixth consecutive year, according to Ad Age’s report. 

Creativity at the forefront

The appointment of Heymann is yet the latest signal that Accenture Interactive is doubling down on creativity. Its acquisition in 2019 of Droga5, one of advertising’s most creatively celebrated independent agencies at the time, was the first prominent move in that direction.

Though many in the industry questioned whether the acquisition would effectively end Droga5’s run as one of advertising’s most innovative players, it only seemed to bolster the shop’s firepower, leading to continued innovative work and major client wins. Last year, Droga5’s revenue grew 17% and the agency racked up 20 new clients, including Petco, Paramount+, Maserati and Allstate—success that earned it the honor of Ad Age’s Agency of the Year.  

Accenture Interactive seemed to further bank on creativity when earlier this year it named Droga its creative chairman and new CEO, succeeding Brian Whipple in the latter. Droga has been charged with driving “creative excellence, customer experience and business innovation” and he said in a statement at the time that “I look forward to putting further emphasis on our creative excellence, coupling it with our world-class ingenuity and proven expertise in Interactive and experiences.”

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