25 AKQA Employees Moving to SET as Verizon Consolidates Shopper Marketing

By Patrick Coffee 

This week reliable parties tell us that Verizon has made yet another change in its agency lineup by consolidating the in-store shopper marketing portion of its business with the New York office of WPP unit SET Creative.

As part of this shift, approximately 25 staffers who had been working on that assignment for AKQA will be moving to the latter shop in over the next few weeks/months. Since both are WPP organizations, this is not really a loss for the holding company or either agency. According to more than one party, it also doesn’t affect AKQA’s larger relationship with Verizon in an adverse way as the agency will continue to work on a wide variety of projects focused on apps, digital design and UX.

SET (which is headquartered in Portland and has been working with Nike for several years) will now handle all in-store print, spatial design and shopper experience work. This is a significant remit given the sheer number of Verizon locations across the country, and SET is scaling up quickly in a New York office that was relatively small before this win. We also hear that the shop is further developing its digital capabilities after adding Verizon to its client roster.

Advertisement

We first caught word of the change in June, when various parties told us that the agency in which WPP acquired a majority share just over a year ago had begun a relationship with the telecomm giant.

Reliable sources have given us a few more details: There was a formal pitch with AKQA and SET Creative participating together on behalf of WPP. Other agencies were also involved, but we don’t know at this time which ones wanted the business.

SET and AKQA both declined to comment on the most recent development, and Verizon reps haven’t responded to our queries about changes in the shopper marketing portion of their business.

Advertisement