AKQA Tokyo hires former Uber marketer as GM

AKQA has hired Yoichiro Basso as general manager for Japan.

Basso was most recently head of marketing for San Francisco at Uber. Before that, he was VP of marketing at GE Capital, also in San Francisco. Basso grew up in Japan but moved to the US to attend NYU and Berkeley. He began his career at Ogilvy & Mather in New York. He was not available for comment on the new role.

Basso replaces Dan Inamoto, who served as AKQA’s business director in Tokyo. Inamoto will now head up BBC World’s Japanese outpost. A spokesperson for the BBC noted that Inamoto’s background was “quite unique for our business”. Inamoto worked at AKQA from 2012.

BBC World is counting on Inamoto to grow its digital activities in Japan while maximising traditional TV revenue, according to a statement from the organization. The BBC launched a Japanese-language news site, BBC.jp, in 2015.