Mission Group merges Krow into Bray Leino as creative chief Darryl George leaves

The Mission Group is merging one of its agencies, Krow, into another, Bray Leino. A London agency name that has been around for twenty-one years will disappear, and two of the group’s biggest businesses become one. The joined-up agency will keep the Bray Leino name and will employ 328 people. Kate Cox will be chief executive and Wayne Deakin chief creative officer. Deakin joined the group at the start of 2026 and was already working across Bray Leino, Krow and the group’s Story agency.

Darryl George, Krow’s group executive creative director, is leaving as part of the change. Other senior people from Krow are staying. Ashika Chauhan, Paul Wallet and Matt Watts all move into bigger roles inside the larger Bray Leino. Every Krow client moves to the merged agency, whose clients now include Aviva, BMW, Bensons, the Post Office and Thatchers Cider.

Mission says the move is part of a plan to bring its agencies closer together, with fewer but larger units. The group is listed on AIM, the London stock market for smaller companies. It has spent the past two years simplifying the set of agencies it owns.

Mission bought Bray Leino, founded in 1973, for £24.5 million

The two agencies come from very different backgrounds. David Morgan founded Bray Leino in North Devon in 1973, and Mission bought it in 2006 for £24.5 million. Krow started in London in 2005, and the group bought it in 2018 in a deal worth up to £14.5 million. Krow also had a large office in Leicester, which is why people in the East Midlands are following the deal closely. The combined business covers strategy, creative work, customer experience, digital, media, social, CRM, meaning the software a company uses to keep track of customers, plus data, activation and production.

Choosing which name survives is often the hardest part of an agency merger. Mission picked the older and larger name, the one less tied to London. That suggests the group sees more value in Bray Leino’s regional, do-everything model than in Krow’s position as a London creative agency.

Mission has announced no job cuts alongside the merger

Something similar is happening on a much bigger scale across the industry. Large owners of agency groups, from Omnicom to WPP, are folding agency names into fewer and bigger units. For Mission’s clients, the first questions are whether their teams stay the same, and whether the Leicester and London offices keep separate roles. Mission has not announced job cuts alongside the merger. Even so, the departure of George, one of the group’s most senior creative leaders, will often be read as a sign that the leadership team has been cut to fit one agency rather than two.