Advertising luminary Dame Annette King has died at 57.
In a statement, King’s husband, Henry Stevens, said: “On Wednesday, we said goodbye to our Annette, my AK, Dame Annette. A deeply loved and loving wife, mother, friend, and peer to so many of you.”
Thanking people for their condolences, Stevens continued: “As anyone who had the privilege of being in Annette’s world will know, there was nothing she loved more than people. She cared deeply about her work and the advertising industry at large, but nothing lit her up like being in the company of the people she held close.”
One of the U.K. ad industry’s most prominent figures, King started her career 35 years ago at Wunderman, where she spent eight years, largely in New York.
In the 2000s, she started at WPP’s Ogilvy, where she remained for 17 years in various leadership roles, including head of new business, where she led the team to reclaim British Airways’ creative account. She was later the managing director of OgilvyOne and, finally, U.K. group CEO.
In 2018, King joined Publicis Groupe as U.K. CEO, leading agencies including Publicis.Sapient, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Zenith.
King left Publicis in 2023 to join Accenture Song, leading its global marketing practice. In the same year, she was recognized as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to advertising and the creative industries.
In January 2025, she stepped back from her executive career to focus on her health.
At the time she said: “To those who know me, it’s no exaggeration to say that this industry has been one of my great loves. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have been embraced by it.”
‘A leader like no other’
Stevens stated he could not let the agencies King “led and loved” over the last 35 years go unmentioned: “It was no secret how much Ogilvy meant to her. How proud she was of what she achieved at Publicis. And her delight at working alongside David Droga at Accenture Song.”
He said these chapters had given King some of her “closest friends and most cherished moments in life.”
He described King, who also chaired the Advertising Association since 2022, and sat on the board of broadcaster Channel 4, as well as being a member of the UK Investment Council and a mentor for the Marketing Academy, as “a leader like no other.”
“She had the rare gift of seeing opportunities where others felt fear and somehow, bringing everyone together despite whatever the odds were. It was this unwavering self-belief that gave so many people the chance to achieve incredible things,” he said.
