Robert Dwek meets some of the big leaguers at BBH and is told; never
mind the size...just feel the quality
‘If we were looking for expansion, we’d start doing creative pitches. We
could double the size of the company overnight.’
Mark Cranmer, the managing director of Motive, Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s
media arm, is convincing me that the BBH group, famed for its fierce
independence and firm creative principles, is not about to change its
spots in the name of integration.
I’d asked whether BBH - fresh from its pounds 20 million Club Med win
last month - wasn’t in danger of entering an expansionist phase that
might sit uneasily with its highly focused past.
Consider the recent evidence: the establishment in February of a
subsidiary called Educational Communications, exploiting the
accelerating trend towards sponsorship in schools, and the formation of
Motive as a separate entity rather than an in-house department in July.
Combine all this with the current frenzy over integrated communications,
and you can’t help wondering whether the BBH group, which already has
direct marketing, sales promotion and design arms, isn’t about to recast
itself in a more aggressive role.
Well, after an hour with the agency’s senior management, the answer
seems clear enough: certainly not. Remember, this is an agency which has
just resigned pounds 6 million worth of Cadbury business because of
irreconcilable differences over everything from creative approach to
remuneration.
‘We’ve turned down three times as many pitches as we’ve actually done,’
Martin Smith, the deputy chairman of BBH, claims, adding to Cranmer’s
earlier comment.
It becomes clear talking to BBH that its obsession with creative quality
and its wariness of becoming bigger but bland mean that the agency is
unlikely to do anything drastic in the foreseeable future.
In reality, the agency puts teams together from all parts of the group
to solve particular marketing problems.
‘We absolutely have to be able to get on with the people we work with,’
Smith says. ‘Sure, we’ve got loads of ideas for new companies, but we’re
not going to do anything unless we know it’s going to work on a personal
level.’
The few companies there are under the BBH umbrella were all backed by
BBH from the start. ‘If you begin with a like-mindedness, you’re much
more likely to work well together,’ Smith explains.
This, for BBH, is what true integration is all about. As far as
integrated strategies are concerned, the agency is firmly in the don’t-
believe-the-hype camp.
According to Charles Garland, BBH’s group development director and the
founder of its successful below-the-line outfit, Limbo, integration
should be something that concerns only the brand. ‘The way agencies are
structured is of no relevance,’ he says.
But it’s not just agencies who are to blame for all this sound and fury
signifying nothing. Clients are also at fault, Garland says, for cutting
staff and corners in the recession and now falling under the spell of
agencies spinning the one-stop-shop spiel. All this focus on company
structures merely reflects the sorry state of the client-agency
relationship, he asserts.
Declining advertising budgets have left agencies transformed from
partners to mere suppliers. As a result, they are scrambling to offer
add-ons in a desperate bid to maintain revenue.
It is ‘far more interesting’ to talk about the brand. Introducing the
only piece of sloganeering to feature in this conversation, he refers to
something called ‘brand liberation’, which means maintaining enough
flexibility to do whatever is necessary to keep a brand buzzing with
personality.
This, he asserts, is unlikely to happen in an agency weighed down by the
‘process’ of integration. ‘They have solved the wrong problem,’ he says
of agencies who try to turn their structure into a usp. Smith concurs:
‘It always amuses me how agencies go to such lengths to emphasise their
uniqueness, but then, amazingly, they manage to find other agencies just
like them when it comes to integration.’
Juliet Timms, the managing director of Limbo, agrees: ‘There has to be a
commonality of culture.’ She was previously at Rapp Collins, the founder
of which, Stan Rapp, takes a rather adversarial view of all things above
the line and has declared the 90s ‘the database decade’.
‘At the time, I probably thought it was a pretty great war cry,’ Timms
admits, ‘but it’s absolutely not the way forward, it’s so small-minded.
Coming here was a major learning exercise for me and has made me see how
it all revolves around the brand.’
She concedes the growing importance of the database, but says it is not
becoming an end in itself in the way that Rapp seems to be saying. Smith
points out that the agency has no problems with databases. BBH has just
won an unnamed account which ‘we realised we could only work on if we
sorted out the client’s loyalty programme’, he says.
‘We have no problem looking at that kind of thing,’ he explains, ‘but
what we’re saying is we’re not hung up on the fact that we absolutely
have to persuade the client to do it all under one roof, and nor do we
try to make everything we do fit into some rigid process.’
Smith adds that Tango, BBH’s design consultancy, attends all the
meetings between the ad agency and its most famous client, Levi’s. This
has nothing to do with structure and everything to do with having the
right company culture, he argues. ‘We’re focused on what that brand’s
problems are and out of that drops a number of things.’
This flexibility and focus means that clients are beginning to explore
BBH’s services in more adventurous ways.
‘The entry point to getting the problem solved is no longer necessarily
the advertising agency,’ Garland says, noting two recent examples where
Limbo and Tango clients are now considering above-the-line services.
It boils down to brands, not integration, Cranmer stresses: ‘The brand
has an aura about it if you get it right. There’s much more to it than
simply trying to make everything look the same just because you want to
be integrated. You don’t get brownie points from the consumer.’
As the world continues to fragment, the benefits of having a powerful
brand are going to become more and more obvious. ‘There are a lot of
opportunities for invisibility out there,’ Cranmer warns.
Smith puts it more emphatically: ‘Integrated crap is still crap.’
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Selected BBH clients
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Advertiser Ads DM SP Design
Audi UK yes yes yes no
BBH’s first win when it opened for business in 1982
Heineken yes no no yes
The agency handles the international umbrella branding
Levi Strauss yes no no yes
The agency’s most high-profile and award-winning account
NatWest yes yes yes no
BBH won the account from JWT, CDP and Saatchis in 1990
Polaroid yes no no yes
Pan-European account prized from BDDP in Paris in 1994
Source: Campaign
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Group companies
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Bartle Bogle Hegarty Advertising
Motive Media specialist
Limbo Direct marketing and sales promotion
Tango Design
BBH Futures Brand futures
Educational Communications Educational sponsorship
Cutting Edge Studio
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