Don’t Be Boring
Written by Phil Shipley, Annie Little and Josephine Kiernan Everyone knows that other people’s dreams are boring, but that you’re going to get told them anyway. The same is true about conference recaps. My half-baked reconstruction of the fascinating talks from last night’s Interesting conference is nothing compared to the joy and passion shared by →
Bits to Blogs to Bots – Goodbye from @Melex
A few weeks ago Mel Exon (yes, that @melex), BBH Labs co-founder and BBH London MD, broke the news that she was leaving the Black Sheep pastures for, er, pastures new. It’s taken us a while to get over the trauma but we’ve managed to prise this piece from her, covering Labs, nineteen years at →
The End of Words? Let’s Hope Not
Author, Jeremy Ettinghausen, Innovation Director, BBH Labs and BBH London Working at Penguin Books in 2000 I recall plenty of excitement about a brand campaign featuring black-and-white documentary photography with the caption ‘be here’ in Penguin orange. The striking images and absence of any actual books certainly made the work stand out from the mass of →
Brexit, or What Happens When You Don’t Have Big Ideas
Author, Richard Cable, Content Director, BBH London There’s a post being shared on social media that shows a scene of Armageddon under the legend ‘If we leave the EU’. Beneath it is an identical image under the legend ‘If we remain in the EU’. It’s a perfect expression of the dire predictions emanating from both →
A Very Virtual Bedtime Story
Authors: Jab Borgstrom, Creative Director, Samuel Bowden, Producer and Jeremy Ettinghausen, Innovation Director, BBH London Doing something for the first time is a great feeling, but doing something so new that you don’t have the set of references, the criteria, to judge the work you’re doing is a wonderful, intimidating and educational experience. When Samsung offered us the opportunity to →
All Together Now
Watching the music industry wrangle with disruption and try to redefine its offer *and* its revenue stream has →
Chats with Bots
Author, Jeremy Ettinghausen, Innovation Director, BBH London and Labs AI bots are everywhere. Or at least, chatter about chatbots →
The Last Click is not a New Jerusalem
At the end of last year, strategists at BBH London were ‘invited’ to compete for The Write and Black Sheep Prize, an internal writing competition. Answering the question ‘If I were a marketer today what zag (general or category specific) would I make?’ in 400 words didn’t faze their planning brains – there were many brilliant entries. Here’s →
Write and Black Sheep – Pt 1
At the end of last year, strategists at BBH London were ‘invited’ to compete for The Write and Black Sheep →
On the Beach pt 2 – Awesome People Talking
Last week we sent Alana King, Strategist and Tom Willner-Reid, Commercial Finance Manager, to Silicon Beached. Here, Tom tells us about what he learned about creativity. Part 1 is here. At BBH I’m in Commercial. I’m not a creative. I observe creativity happening from a distance; I greatly admire the genius of those who sit in an →
On The Beach pt 1 – A Conference for Everyone
Last week we sent Alana King, Strategist and Tom Willner-Reid, Commercial Finance Manager, to Silicon Beached. Here, Alana writes on the significance, or not, of a conference where all the speakers ‘happened to be’ women. Part 2 is here. Something strange happened this week: I attended a conference (Silicon Beached) where all ten speakers were women. →
The New Mission Control
Until about three hours ago, I thought that the people who sent rockets into space looked like this. Or him. or them. These guys maybe. But not *these* guys. Or this guy. And definitely not her. And these two? No way. (actually, I’m still not sure about these two) Watching SpaceX’s PR video (above) showing the →
Black Sheep Wanted
It’s thrilling to think that one day we might be looking to hire ‘Avatar programmers’, ‘Chief Drone Experience →
A Year of Linking Dangerously
Wow. That was a year. Below a month-by-month selection of the linking and thinking that kept us ticking in 2015. Thanks, as always for reading and sharing so generously and thanks in particular to the many many thinkers, makers and doers who have inspired us this year. Happy Holidays. ************************* January kicked off with some →
tl;dr – some recent longreads
Yes, we know that it’s all about video these days and streaming boxsets and hashtags and old people marooned on the moon, but for thousands of years humankind has used words to convey complex ideas and so here are lots of words, with a roundup of some of the best longreads that have recently crossed →