Gavin McLeod has become the fourth top creative to leave his job in a major agency in just over a month.
The creative, who begins his LinkedIn profile with the statement, “I count myself lucky that I’m working in such a rapidly evolving industry as it constantly offers new challenges and opportunities,” has resigned his position as executive creative director at R/GA Sydney after four years.
He will become executive creative director at AKQA San Francisco and a member of the Executive Leadership Team, working with managing director, Simon Jefferson.
According to Jefferson, McLeod’s passionate and entrepreneurial approach clinched the deal.
“He’s collaborative and has built strong teams with an incredible work ethic and a proven track-record of creating award-winning work,” he added.
McLeod commented, “I’ve admired the work that AKQA has been doing for many years. As a company, they’ve always struck me as being fearless in pushing the boundaries. I look forward to helping the San Francisco team push these boundaries even further.”
Gavin McLeod
AKQA’s most recent work has included The Cut:
And a book for children, The Snow Fox that uses Sirikit to help them learn to read:
This is not the beginning of an international career for McLeod. He started his career at Addison Want Stroebel Gorin JWT in Cape Town, South Africa in 1996, and worked as a senior art director at Publicis Dialog/Rainger Direct in New Zealand for two years after that.
McLeod joined M&C Saatchi in 2000 in Sydney and in 2006 was asked to start Mark, M&C’s digital, direct & data agency as executive creative director with managing partner, Dave Whittle.
Mark was ranked in the top three international creative agencies by the Won Report in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and McLeod was chosen by B&T magazine as the digital creative head of its 2010 Agency Dream Team.
He became a creative director at Whybin\TBWA in 2011, where he won the Grand Prix at AWARD, the Grand Effie, 8 Lions at Cannes and 16 awards at Spikes, while TBWA picked up seven Agency Of The Year titles, including Creative Agency Of The Year at ADMA and AWARD.
McLeod has chaired juries at AWARD, AdFest and ADMA and judged at D&AD, The Caples and Cannes.
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