BBH – Labs

November 23, 2018

FORGET HUMAN TRUTH, BRANDS SHOULD BE TALKING HUMAN FICTION.

In an industry obsessed with human truth, surrounded by a world in love with fiction, does advertising need to leave the facts behind? Asks Mel Arrow, Strategy Director and Partner at BBH. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States of America. Meanwhile in England, poor old Lord Sugar is still...

advertising/culture/strategy Comments: 4

November 16, 2018

THE WORLD CUP OF ADS

It’s time to settle the big one: the greatest ad of all time. Not measured by effectiveness, efficiency or Lions, but rather by how beloved it is by both the public and the industry. To achieve this, we want to hold the largest, most comprehensive poll ever. In other words, we need your help, write Harry Guild , Data Strategist & Data...

advertising Comments: 2

November 8, 2018

DEAR BLACK SHEEP: HARVEY WEINSTEIN WAS MY FIRST BOSS.

Earlier this month, I hosted a panel discussion on the progress and pitfalls of the #MeToo movement. As I sat down with screenwriter, producer and former Weinstein employee Lucy Shuttleworth and co-founder and CEO of Truth Media Agency Mary-Keane Dawson. Not surprisingly, I found there’s still a lot of work to be done, especially in Adland, writes Sofia Bodger, Strategist...

Uncategorized Comments: 0

November 8, 2018

DEAR BLACK SHEEP: AN INTRODUCTION

A brief introduction to this new recurring feature on BBH Labs. Mostly white. Straight. Liberal. Male-led. Affluent. Urban. Able-bodied. Cisgender. Under-40. ‘Creative’. For an industry that prides itself on fresh thinking, we’re a pretty homogenous bunch. It’s our job to know our audience better than they know themselves. But we’re not representative, and it’s holding us back. With the best...

Uncategorized Comments: 0

October 25, 2018

STRATEGISTS KNOW NOTHING ABOUT PEOPLE

Earlier this month I went to the APG Strategy Conference: On the Contrary which sought to bring together speakers on ‘the power of contrarian thinking to challenge convention’. Rather surprisingly they all came with one very similar observation, writes Clémence Lépinard, Strategist at BBH London. That observation? If you think you know people, if you think you know your consumers,...

advertising/strategy Comments: 3

October 18, 2018

HOW TO WIN AN IPA EFFECTIVENESS AWARD (IN 24 SIMPLE STEPS)

Tom Roach, multiple Gold IPA Effectiveness Award winner and head of effectiveness at BBH, the IPA’s Effectiveness Company of the year 2018, gives some simple, practical tips on how to succeed in advertising’s most rigorous effectiveness awards. Writing an IPA Effectiveness Awards entry is probably the hardest thing you can do in advertising. 4000 people have climbed Everest. But only about...

creativity/data/Effectiveness/strategy Comments: 2

October 12, 2018

DOES YOUR STRATEGY EVEN LIFT BRO?

As well as winning Agency Of The Year, we were delighted to pick up the IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix last week writes Will Lion, Managing Partner, Strategy and author of the winning Audi paper as he explains how weights and sweat might have helped. When you win an IPA Grand Prix for Effectiveness you get a lot of messages asking...

advertising/Effectiveness Comment: 1

October 8, 2018

FAME FACTORY: STRATEGY IS TIMELESS BUT EXECUTION MUST BE TIMELY.

Earlier this year I went to Bucharest to attend the tech conference icee.fest. I saw some fairly breathtaking presentations from production companies Happy Finish and Hammerhead, on the capabilities of VR, AR and AI. If you want to see how this tech is impacting creativity (as opposed to just hear these buzzwords being thrown around the ad industry…) I’d recommend you go...

advertising/creativity/culture Comments: 0

September 28, 2018

UNLEARNING ‘ME.’ JAMES SOWDEN’S 10 YEARS AT BBH SINGAPORE.

Most Western thinking ignores the fact that 70% of the world’s population live in collective societies, writes James Sowden, reflecting on his tenure as Managing Partner at BBH Singapore. Last week was my ten year anniversary at BBH Singapore. I should write a book about what I’ve learned, but I probably won’t. Instead I’ve sketched out a few lessons that I’ve learned...

advertising/Asia/BBH/Singapore Comments: 0

September 5, 2018

WE ARE IN AN EFFICIENCY BUBBLE

Following on from Thomas Wagner’s piece on the race to efficiently average 15 seconds ads, it seems marketing as a whole is in an efficiency bubble, writes Will Lion, BBH London’s Head of Strategy 2015-2018 and now Head of New Products. Be careful in the funnel where you focus Modern marketing is defined by perfection of means and confusion of...

Business/Marketing Comments: 6

August 20, 2018

THE FUTURE OF STRATEGY: BE LESS COMPLICATED

WARC’s 2018 Future of Strategy report, based on a global survey of senior strategists, reveals a discipline in need of direction and interpretation as competition for strategic services is growing, writes Ben Shaw, Head of Strategy at BBH London. N.C. Wyeth The Discoverer, 1926 When Europeans set sail for the New World, there were two key tasks explorers needed to plan for:...

strategy Comments: 4

August 13, 2018

SOMETHING IN THE AIR: WILL LION & LILLI ENGLISH ON CONTEXT AND LEADERSHIP

Writing the last instalment in this series of leadership advice for a Head of Strategy is not unlike the feeling we had taking on the department a few years ago. We were keenly aware that we were standing on the shoulders of giants. And that’s a nice feeling. We felt we could see much further for talking to and learning...

Leadership/strategy Comments: 0