They're now one of the most renowned creative agencies in the world, but BBH was once just another small agency wanting to make its mark on the world.
Here's how they started to gain notoriety.
Even while small, their work was great, but no one knew who they were. They needed press but didn't have anything to talk about—they hadn't won any new work recently and didn't have any campaigns about to go live.
They needed something to make them stand out and show off their creative skills.
So one of their founding members came up with a plan and decided to insure their creative department for £1M. This was in the 70s, so that's the equivalent of £10m today!
And he said if anyone wanted to poach one of the team, they'd have to pay a transfer fee as you do for football players.
He found an insurance company (a friend of theirs) who agreed to just say they'd insure the team. They then took a photo of them all on a park bench in Soho, and the story got into the Sunday Times business news section.
It was just a story, but it worked!
And it did three things:
Don't wait until your product gets into the press. Go out and make your own news.
A few ways to do this:
BBH 👉 bartleboglehegarty.com
And a book by John Hegarty that may help you: There are no rules.
Keep being an outlier 💪
J + K
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