June 15, 2012

Dance Lessons

Author: Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH London I attended a talk by the top Royal Ballet choreographer and dancer, Liam Scarlett. He is only 26, but he has already choreographed two exceptional ballets for the main stage at Covent Garden. And he still finds time to dance in the company. Scarlett was discussing how he approached creating his 2011 work, Asphodel Meadows, around a particular piece...

culture/strategy Comments: 0

May 21, 2012

Commercial Karma

Author: Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH London Memories light the corners of my mind Misty,water colored memories Of the way we were. ~ Barbra Streisand, The Way We Were I attended the Damien Hirst show at the Tate Modern. Flies and fags, butterflies and bling, spin and spots, drugs and death… There. You don’t need to see it now. I walked away somewhat...

Brands/culture Comments: 3

April 19, 2012

That’s Entertainment: #wywo online films

(click above image to view them all now) Earlier this month we released a nifty little iPhone specific web app for the connected set. While we were off building it, (you see what we did there) we decided to produce some quirky promotional films to support the app’s launch. We crafted short narratives that extended the comedic tone of the...

BBH Labs/culture/online video Comments: 2

January 13, 2012

I Feel For You

Author: Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH London I was watching the splendid Truffault film, Jules et Jim. There’s a scene in which Jules, courting the mercurial Catherine, endeavours to impress her. ‘Catherine, I understand you’, he says. Catherine replies,’ But I don’t want to be understood.’ I paused for thought. Don’t we spend our lives trying to understand consumers? What if, like Catherine, they...

culture/strategy Comments: 0

November 23, 2011

Missing Texture

Wouldn’t it be nice to smell the internet? Well, thanks to the clever chaps at Mint Foundry this might soon be possible.Their concept product, the punningly named Olly (details at ollyfactory.com!) will convert tweets, checkins, likes or other digital notifications and blast out an arduino-powered whiff across your keyboard. So now every William Gibson tweet can smell like a long-chain...

culture Comments: 0

November 11, 2011

99% Attitude

Author: Nicky Vita (@stellavita), Strategy Director, BBH London A few weeks ago, I was at the Temple Synagogue in Krakow’s historical Jewish district, Kazimeirz. It was the closing night for Unsound, an avant-garde music festival with the central theme of “Future Shock”. As a whole, Unsound deliberately defies expectations – about how music should sound, how music genres should/ shouldn’t fit together, who...

culture Comments: 0

October 24, 2011

I ♥ the echo chamber

We regularly fear living in an echo chamber (this is especially true for us because our blog serves as a feedback forum from regular participants, even if many of the inputs driving its content originate from industries unrelated to marketing). In fact, the foolish, mutual reassurance of ad folks is one of the most common criticisms of our industry. But...

culture Comment: 1

June 29, 2011

Is That All There Is?

Author: Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH London ‘Is that all there is, is that all there is? If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball If that’s all there is.’ I remember the first time I heard Peggy Lee singing the classic Leiber and Stoller number, ‘Is That All...

Brands/culture Comment: 1

May 27, 2011

The Birds That Sing At Night

Author: Jim Carroll, Chairman, BBH London Sometimes recently I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and there have been birds singing in the street outside. Two or three o’clock in the morning, well before sunrise and they’re chirping away, casually, confidently. I’m no ornithologist, but shouldn’t they be saving it for the dawn chorus? Inevitably one is troubled...

culture/Social Comments: 0

February 7, 2011

Can brands shift from co-presenting to co-viewing?

For those who don’t live in the UK or haven’t heard of it, Skins is a scripted show that promises a real depiction of Teen lives including the drugs, sex and rock-n-roll. This was a very popular show with Millenials 18-24 in the U.K. and appears to be just as popular here in the States. I’ve been fascinated by the advertisers who...

Cross-platform/culture/Participation Comments: 2

November 10, 2010

A short post about long form

For years we’ve been talking about and developing communications for the shortening attention spans of consumers. We are bombarded with statistics about the average dwell time on a web page (43 seconds according to Comscore) or the lifespan of a tweet which, if it isn’t retweeted within 60minutes, will never be, according to Sysomos. Today, we’re ascending the slopes of Mount...

culture/media/mobile Comments: 6

October 20, 2010

Why Our Misuse Of Metrics May Be A Cultural Issue

We’ve discussed “wind tunnel marketing” quite a bit recently. As a result, we’ve been thinking more and more about one particular facet of the issue: the misuse of metrics and data. Few industries more regularly confuse their objectives and metrics than marketing. I’m referring to when marketers take digital proxy indicators of progress, and make them the destination, even when they’re...

culture/data/People/transformational change/Uncategorized Comment: 1