How Wieden+Kennedy is acting more like a network as it drives ‘diverse as culture’ approach

Only about one month into her tenure at Wieden+Kennedy, Jiah Choi found herself at one of the most poignant events in the history of the 40-year-old independent agency. Choi—who had just taken over as president of W+K’s New York office—was at a memorial service on Dec. 1 of last year for agency Co-Founders Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, who died about a year apart in late 2022 and 2021, respectively. The event, called “A thank you Dan+David reunion,” was held at the agency’s flagship Portland, Oregon, office and drew 2,500 current and former Wieden employees, including some of the biggest names in the industry who went on to found agencies including 72andSunny, Anomaly and Cartwright. See all of Ad Age's 2023 Agency A-List winners here For Choi, it caused a moment of reflection about what the two men meant for the agency, while serving as a reminder of the responsibility she was taking on as a W+K leader: “This wasn’t about ads. It was about people and the environment that they were trying to create for people to come and do, and discover and explore, and win and lose, and fuck up and cry and rejoice and all of those things,” she said. In 2022, the agency did a lot more winning than losing, even as it entered a new post-Dan+Dave era. The shop added 40 brands to its client roster, including its Portland office winning the big-spending Allstate account in December from Droga5. While its U.S. annual revenue held steady at about $300 million, the agency set itself up for future growth by expanding relationships with Ford, McDonald’s and Anheuser-Busch InBev to include more international work. Those expansions show how the agency, traditionally known for the strength of its individual offices, is acting more like a network, as employees work together across its 10 offices—from Portland and New York to London and Shanghai to the newly opened Mexico City office. “We've started to get more regional in our approach,” said Global CEO Neal Arthur. That includes giving leaders of individual offices more regional oversight, as well as naming global leaders for big clients who are “responsible for making sure that the brand shows up consistently across the network,” he said. Bringing home the Bud The approach paid off with its “Bring Home the Bud” campaign for Budweiser. The effort was quickly assembled after organizers behind soccer's World Cup in Qatar banned the sale of alcohol on stadium grounds, delivering a blow to sponsor Anheuser-Busch InBev. W+K helped the brewer make the best of a bad situation by orchestrating a campaign that promised to send its Qatar beer stockpile to the winning country for free. It was hyped by dropping giant crates of Bud across the world including in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil and South Korea. “Even though it was really tactical and fast, it involved four or five offices because we were dropping those crates everywhere,” Arthur said. W+K did suffer a loss with AB InBev when the brewer moved the Bud Light account to Anomaly and The Martin Agency. But Wieden said it has still managed to grow the account with global work—which includes Corona and Modelo in addition to Budweiser—as well as domestic work for Michelob Ultra, for which it produced two 2023 Super Bowl ads. Wieden also grew its business with Ford—in October it took over lead global creative and brand strategy work from BBDO after serving as the automaker’s top U.S. agency since 2018. Michael O’Brien, Ford’s director of global marketing, credited W+K with infusing more emotion in the automaker’s marketing, while also finding ways to reach different audiences. That included using a horror film trailer aesthetic to plug the off-road F-150 Raptor R via an ad that ran nationally in theaters last year in advance of the Jordan Peele horror movie "Nope." “It was culturally interesting and appealing … and it wasn't something we had ever done in the past,” O’Brien said. Buy your ticket for the Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards Gala here. ‘Diverse as culture’ Choi, who joined W+K after a stint leading Anomaly’s Los Angeles office, leads the New York office with Scott Dungate, who took on the New York chief creative officer role after serving as the top creative at W+K Tokyo. Their mantra has been to make the agency’s work “as diverse as culture.” “We have great people from a wide, diverse range of backgrounds here,” Dungate said. So “let's use those voices here to sort of tap into different parts of a diverse range of culture.” The approach fueled one of W+K’s biggest hits of 2022: Cactus Plant Flea Market Box for McDonald’s, the limited-edition food and merchandise boxes created for the U.S. market in partnership with the buzzy streetwear brand that was positioned like a Happy Meal for adults. The chain credited the promotion with driving increased traffic and sales. At McDonald's, the agency’s influence extends way beyond advertising. “Wieden has helped us put a culture of creativity and risk-taking and the consumer at the center of everything we do,” said Global Chief Marketing Officer Morgan Flatley, noting that she leans on the agency for advice in her newly expanded role of exploring new business ventures for the chain. Getting involved in strategic thinking for brands is a priority for the agency’s leaders, including Global Chief Creative Officer Karl Lieberman. W+K wants to be known for “not just being an anthem agency,” he said, referring to big, sweeping traditional ads, he said. The agency now tries to “cover every surface area” of the brands it works for with “more work in more spaces,” Lieberman added. Partnering with Cactus Plant Flea Market—a brand that has a loyal following but is not mainstream—is an example of how W+K taps into subcultures to fuel ideas even for the largest of brands. “The old-school way is going after the masses”—but that leads to “very generic work,” Choi said. So Wieden takes a targeted approach by tapping into specific trendsetting communities, mining ideas that “will inevitably resonate with the masses,” she said. Read more: The strategy behind Cactus Plant Flea Market The approach relies on having a diverse employee base that is in touch with such trends—and W+K has made progress on that front. It boosted its BIPOC representation in its U.S. offices by 14% last year, with people of color now accounting for 46% of its 949-person U.S. workforce. The agency encourages diverse thinking by funding passion projects pitched by employees that are not tied to client revenue. Last year that resulted in a video W+K distributed featuring two Black people discussing the true meaning of Juneteenth. Giving employees the freedom to pursue passions has been in W+K’s DNA from the start—a theme that speakers at the memorial service for Dan Wieden and David Kennedy repeated over and over, said Arthur. “It was just so consistent—the drumbeat that this place is always been about … giving people space to have a voice and to have a point of view in the world,” he said. “It was such a good reminder of what makes this place amazing, and what those guys have built.” See all the winners of Ad Age's 2023 A-List Awards here.

How Wieden+Kennedy is acting more like a network as it drives ‘diverse as culture’ approach

Featured Stories