McCann London Hires Droga5's Aaron Harridge and Appoints Head of Strategic Product

McCann London is delighted to announce Aaron Harridge as the agency’s new head of strategy, and long-standing McCanner, Jonathan Brown, as head of strategic product. Aaron and Jonathan are the first leadership appointments made by McCann London’s CSO Mel Arrow since her arrival at the agency in June 2023. 

Starting at McCann London in February, Aaron will work in partnership with Mel to build the strategy department, playing a pivotal role in talent acquisition, resource management, and fostering a culture of continuous development. 

Arriving from Droga5, Aaron is a progressive and multi-disciplinary brand strategist, having previously worked at agencies including R/GA across London and New York. Over his 15-year career, he’s delivered diverse ideas for brands such as MailChimp, LEGO, Spotify, Uber Eats and American Express. These include in-game experiences, digital services development, and Super Bowl communications.

Notably, his recent career highlights include winning a Gold Global Effie for P&G’s “The Name” in Social Good (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion/Positive Change), bringing home a Webby Award for Uber for Best Integrated Campaign with “Vaccinate the Block” and multiple D&AD pencils for ESPN and The Ad Council. Beyond his strategic prowess, Aaron is a DJ and radio host.

Alongside Aaron’s appointment, McCann London has promoted long-standing McCanner, Jonathan Brown to head of strategic product with immediate effect. Previously planning partner, Jonathan has played an instrumental role in Aldi’s successes leading them to replace Morrisons in the UK’s ‘big four’ supermarkets, spearheading the agency’s creative accelerator Atomic Soup which led to four Cannes Lions winning pieces of work in 2023, and building McCann’s global relationship with Reckitt through ground-breaking campaigns directed at closing the Gender Pain Gap. 

In his new role, Jonathan will be responsible for designing new ways to leverage the proprietary data and insight tools within the McCann Worldgroup network, creating new strategic products that unlock growth, and ultimately, serving our clients in broader ways.

Both Aaron and Jonathan will report into CSO Mel Arrow. 

Commenting on his new role, Aaron said, “McCann London has mastered the ever-so-hard-to-achieve magic formula of populism and cultural edge. From world famous, wildly entertaining and category leading work for Just Eat and Xbox - through to shining a light on the realities of youth violence with a posthumous Depzman music video launched on SBTV. I am in this industry because of the inspiration I get from work like this. I can't wait to start building with this incredible team.

“Aaron is a brilliant new addition to McCann. He is ambitious, fun and a magnet for modern ideas. I'm made up that he is (literally and metaphorically) crossing the road to join us. I’m also extremely pleased to be promoting JB into a new role that makes even better use of his entrepreneurial and innovative mind. This is a new leadership formation that I’m excited about, designed to expand the remit of strategy and attract the best talent.” said, Mel Arrow, CSO at McCann London.

Commenting on his new role, Jonathan said, “I couldn’t be more excited about this new role. I’m keen to make even more use of the diverse array of talent across the McCann network to find new ways to solve more of our clients’ problems. We’ve got great plans for our Atomic Soup accelerator to help us solve problems in new ways as well as putting our audience data and Truth Central capabilities at the heart of helping brands build their ecosystems around their customers. My goal is to find fresh ways to help our creativity accelerate client growth”.