McCann UK’s CSO: Embracing Change and Canadian Culture

Last October, AJ Jones became McCann UK’s chief strategy officer. This was the latest step in a career that has proven to be truly global – with roles that have seen her work across the advertising network in locations from Manchester to Bucharest, Tanzania to Toronto.

She spent five years as the CSO of McCann in Canada, helping lead it to win the Effies Agency of the Year  in 2024 along the way.

Now six months into the latest role, and this time based in London, Jones returns to her native country with a new challenge as the business begins life as part of the Omnicom Advertising Group, post IPG takeover.

“AJ is one of our people, shaped by our people, and this is the next step on our journey together,” shared Harjot Singh, global CSO for McCann and McCann Worldgroup.

With a dedication to effectiveness and an openness to embracing the changes taking place for brands and businesses, Jones discusses why she has taken up the UK position, her views on strategists and AI, as well as how the McCann platform ‘Truth Well Told’ influences her.

Creative Salon: Previously you spent five years at McCann in Canada – why make the move to the UK?

AJ Jones: Why not? As strategists we spend our lives wondering why and sometimes we need to take a chance on why not. Plus, the UK has some of the best people, talent, clients and communities to get stuck into. Not to mention a few meaty cultural problems, and the greatest football team in the world.

I’ve learned a lot from being in CEE and Canada and I’m excited to apply those learnings back here in the UK market.

What do you hope to achieve as UK CSO?

I mostly hope to do justice to the wonderful strategists we have up and down the UK and the ‘hell yeah’ ideas we have bubbling away, and to run headfirst into the biggest problems our clients and their audiences are facing.

What’s on your to do list as you begin in the UK?

Immersion to begin with, to understand the current state of play in the agency, the industry and the culture.

I’m really excited to be forging new partnerships with my creative counterparts and to be building our strategic community across all of our offices, helping to share learnings and spark interesting conversations. We were recently awarded Agency of the Year by Effie UK and they say retaining the title is harder than winning it so I’ll be getting stuck in to all things Effectiveness too.

Have you had to consider the differences between UK and Canadian audiences in general in taking up this new role? What have those been if so?

There are definitely similarities and differences between Canada and the UK. As things in common, we’ve both got inter-city rivalries, the power of community and the hard commitment to sporting fandoms are present both sides of the Atlantic.

As you’d expect cynicism and sarcasm are a touch more prominent here… More than differences in audiences, I think there are different communities to explore and connect with.

How does the agency’s ‘Truth Well Told’ philosophy guide your work?

Truth Well Told is many things but for me it is both demanding and liberating. You can’t phone it in, but you can deliver it in a plethora of ways. I love (and occasionally hate) the challenge of contributing work that delivers on our Truth Well Told promise.

I love having a guiding philosophy that can start and end anywhere, it has strategic decision making at the heart of it and is so grounded in the real world.

How are you utilising AI – why is it a technology strategists seem to be becoming obsessed by?

I don’t think strategists are obsessed with AI by any stretch, but I think they’re obsessively curious and AI is another thing to be curious about, as well as being a place to explore curiosities.

Is there one campaign, in particular, that you are particularly proud to have been involved with? Why? 

This might be recency bias but the work we did for Kind launched as an OOH campaign that highlighted the product benefit (nuts) by showing their irresistibility to squirrels. I love the simplicity of it. I love that it is so purely the truth well told.

What has been your proudest moment, so far, on the way to becoming CSO? 

Any time anybody in the real-world comments on some work you've been a part of, preferably in a positive way! 

What excites you most about the industry right now? 

Change. There’s so much opportunity in the change. From the way we work, the inputs at our disposal, the next generation of talent, the things we actually get to make. I love the chance to forge new paths and unlock new ways of doing strategy.

That, plus the work. It’s easy to look at the worst ads and think advertising has never been worse, but the top 5 per cent is as exciting as it’s ever been. There’s amazing work out there that makes me jealous, that gets me excited to better it or to match its ambition.

If advertising has never existed - is there another career or interest that you might have taken up instead? 

The honest answer is I’d probably be doing something in Sport Business as that’s what I studied and was interested in. But the answer I’d give now is being a radio producer, I love the companionship of radio, I love the silliness of it at times, I love the casual nature of it and working in that world would be pretty fun, I think.