LONDON — WE Communications has hired its first director of corporate reputation and brand purpose in the UK, in response to increased demand from clients for work in this area.

Kemi Akindele joins the agency on 5 January from Freuds, where she had been an associate director since 2019, working with clients including Prince William’s Earthshot Prize and AB InBev, as well as projects focused on the UN General Assembly, the World Economic Forum and COP26.

Akindele was previously digital and social media lead at regeneration developer U+I and head of digital at Hanover Communications. She has also worked at Portland and Edelman.

In her new role, Akindele will work across WE’s business, including consumer, technology and healthcare clients. She will report into London managing director Ruth Allchurch and will also work closely with Hannah Peters in the US, the agency’s global lead on corporate reputation and brand purpose, who joined from H+K Strategies in January.

Allchurch told PRovoke Media: “We’re coming off the back of enormous growth in the UK of 44% last year and heading for 22% this year, and that has been driven by organic growth in executive communications, sustainability, purpose and thought leadership work with the likes of Intel, Microsoft, Cap Gemini and Amcor, where we operate at c-suite level.

“There are so many requests coming from our technology and healthcare clients that touch on corporate and brand purpose work, and it was the right time to find someone who would be hungry to create a roadmap for developing our corporate purpose offer in the UK.”

Allchurch said the search had taken around six months: “It’s a challenging market from a talent perspective regardless of level or specialism, but because this is a new role in the UK it was vitally important that we found someone who was at the right level to come on the next stage of their personal journey, who was ambitious to grow an offer within the agency, and who was entrepreneurial rather than from a traditional corporate agency background.”

She said it had been a “meeting of minds” when she and Akindele met: “Kemi is a natural communicator and connector. She brings amazing experience from Freuds, and having that in our stable will excite our existing clients and inspire our teams.

“It’s rare to find someone who really understands the inner workings of client organisations and can immediately have very natural conversations with executives across the private, public and NGO sectors. We’re breaking new territory and I’m really excited about the next few months and Kemi building her vision with our support.”

Akindele said she had also spent some time considering her next move after two years working on sustainability, purpose and executive thought leadership at Freuds: “I had a lot of conversations with different people and only heard good things about WE. When I met Ruth, she understood what I was looking for.

"Building a corporate and brand purpose team is an amazing opportunity, and there’s not a lot of places where you can do that. For me, the ambition and pressure to grow a team and bring in new business is the point of being in agency, as well as delivering great client work. It’s a great challenge for me and it feels like I’m in a good place.”