Tara McKenty Leaves BMF to Become ECD at AKQA Australia

Tara McKenty will join WPP agency AKQA as executive creative director in January, LBB can reveal, as it continues its integration with whiteGREY.

Tara takes on the role after 18 months as chief innovation officer and co-ECD at BMF. At AKQA, she will have an Australian remit across AKQA’s Sydney and Melbourne offices, while partnering with APAC ECD Tim Devine on regional innovation.

“I didn't expect the AKQA call,” she told LBB. “I was pretty happy and content at BMF, we'd had a few big wins with Endeavour, and started to do some really good work off the back of that. And we're also getting momentum with innovation, so we're starting to peel a lot of innovation work off the back of traditional TV. The vision of transforming to a modern marketing agency there was very much underway.

“But when I met Tim Devine, I just instantly believed in his vision ... he is a very unique and special creative mind, and I just want to work under his vision. That was the first appeal, and then being introduced to the rest of the AKQA leadership team and what they're trying to achieve is probably a little bit more aligned to what I love doing."

Tim said of Tara’s hiring, “2025 will be the most impactful year since I joined the company 15 years ago. We’ll grow our clients, teams, reputation, and commercials.”

Tara was drawn in by global clients like Nike, Uber, LEGO, Netflix, and Wimbledon, plus diversity, equity, and inclusion projects like Action Audio - a system to give visually impaired people the ability to follow sports. 

She will work closely with chief strategy officer Iona Macgregor, who joined whiteGREY last October from Saatchi & Saatchi, before whiteGREY was absorbed into AKQA early this year. While at Marcel, Iona worked on Tara’s “favourite campaign ever”: 'Inglorious Fruits & Vegetables'.

“I just want to design Inglorious Fruits, or the next version,” Tara said of her creative ambitions for AKQA. 

“We're craving experience and connection and community and the privilege we have as advertisers is we can inform culture, and that responsibility is one I think often as creatives, we don't take as seriously as we should.”

AKQA’s APAC managing partner Brian Vella was promoted to APAC CEO last week as part of a new global structure, which creates three P&Ls: Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Iona said Tara’s addition is “hugely energising and inspiring” and continues the agency’s momentum.

“I have also been a huge admirer of her work from afar,” Iona said. “So I’m very excited that we get to dance together on this one. There aren't that many senior creative leaders who can speak so fluently to marketing, strategy, technology, creativity, and also have that sensibility to the power of storytelling and human emotion.”

AKQA entered the Australian and New Zealand market in 2017 through a partnership with DT Digital, which was ultimately subsumed into AKQA. Tara, who spent 11 years at Google leading the local creative team before returning to adland via BMF, argued this digital foundation means the business “doesn't have to build backwards, like a lot of agencies are scrambling to do.”

“I actually don't think AKQA is really an agency,” she said. “When I was the head of creative at Google, we were a creative team within a tech company, and then you had engineering essentially in a different building. The incredible strength AKQA has is that integration of having engineers in-house that can build with you and build with your clients.

“Tech companies do technology really well, but in terms of when they partner with agencies [and] it's a story tell … it's really rare they get it right. An example of when that has been done right would be something like Sound of Honda from Hakiro, years ago, that's the last time I've probably seen amazing tech and storytelling really brought together in a highly crafted, sophisticated way.”

AKQA can attract talent with a skillset who wouldn’t end up at other agencies, she continued, because it doesn’t feel like an agency and “it doesn't feel like going to a tech company. It actually feels like going to the best of both.”

“In an agency in Australia, you're having to start to build the tech offering from scratch and pair and curate those people, and unfortunately, our talent pool in Australia, a lot of those people have already been poached to Canva, and you're competing with share packages and salaries that are unattainable. 

“Whereas AKQA just doesn't have that reputation. If you look at the work that AKQA does globally in digital experience, it's the work that every creative and anyone ever interested in innovation strives to do at the pinnacle of their career.”

Last week, WPP hired Elav Horwitz, McCann Worldgroup’s former head of AI, as EVP of strategic partnerships and solutions, and partnered with Universal Music to connect brands with artists.

“There's some really interesting pieces globally happening at a holding company level,” Tara said. “As they trickle down to somewhere like AKQA, you've just got more tools in your toolbox to support clients with.”

With that toolbox, Tara will work with Iona to help brands “co-create” the future, versus predict it, Iona explained. Their job is to help clients “invent what the next stage of their marketing is going to be,” Iona said, adding in an uncertain market, marketers are looking for honesty and care.

“That's something that you can't fabricate … and that involves being honest and being vulnerable at times,” she said. “Culturally, that's something that clients expect, because otherwise they might as well in-house everything.”

Tara hopes to also make work that makes “more people feel included in what we’re making”, given there is a gap between the world’s population and who we see represented in advertisements. In 2017, Tara founded D&AD RARE, a global initiative to support underrepresented groups in the creative industries.

“How do we make someone smile on behalf of the brand? How can we create an experience or a piece of utility to make someone's life a little bit easier?” she said. “I don't think it needs to always be these mega world-firsts.”

BMF CEO Stephen McArdle thanked Tara for her work at the agency, and wished her the best for her new role.

"Since joining BMF 18 months ago, Tara has played an important role in evolving our modern marketing capabilities and building a world-class innovation team with depth of talent, energy, and creativity, leaving us with strong foundations to continue driving work of a different shape,” he said.

 

“It’s been a pleasure having Tara in the business and we wish her every success in the future.”