As British advertising agencies go, BBH is almost a household name. But even legends need retelling now and then, and the agency recently got a smart new visual identity, championed by UK and Ireland CCO Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes. Felipe comes from a visual design background – we’ll get to his full story later – so the project was close to his heart.
“I’ve been at BBH for coming up to 15 years now, so obviously I have a lot of love for the place,” he says, “and I’ve seen it go through a lot of different versions of itself. I felt like the work had evolved, but the way the agency showed up was a bit static. I wanted to see if there was a way of bringing the brand into the now, and what that would look like if we kept the pillars of what makes it great.”
The identity was inspired by the agency’s founders (John Bartle, Nigel Bogle, and John Hegarty), its black sheep logo, and its mantra, “When the world zigs, zag”. To cite just one element, the brand now has its own typeface, based on the founders’ signatures.
“I thought it was mad that we didn’t have our own typeface, and the founders’ signatures were a huge part of the brand’s identity. It was something ownable, but it hadn’t been turned into something usable now they’re no longer working here. In those signatures there was a story: like the way Nigel was sitting in the middle, because the other two chose their places, so he signed with a fatter pen.”
The primacy of instinct
Felipe also drew on his experience in the fashion world for BBH merch; and not just any merch. “So many agencies do average merch – totes and books and things that don’t mean much. I wanted to do it properly. That’s why we made the fleece. It’s only for BBH people, and it should feel like something you’re proud of. It’s really well made, and there are small details on it: the yellow tag at the bottom referencing the sheep’s ear tag, the embroidered black sheep inside the collar. Little things you only notice if you have one.”
An agency’s image is nothing without its work, and Felipe wanted to bring fun, recklessness and a “rock star” attitude back into the business. “My whole ethos is just getting shit done. I’m very instinctive. Even when I restructured the department, I didn’t overthink it. If we got on, you were in.”
Advertising is still a “taste and relationships industry”, he observes, and instinct matters. “That ties into the whole rock star thing. There’s a quote, I think one of the Gallaghers said it: People didn’t know they wanted Jimi Hendrix until they got him. So it’s about putting things out that we think are right, or we go with our gut and see what happens. When Flat Eric came out, no-one would have thought it would work. But it had the right kind of madness to it. And I like running the agency like that.”
He’s been running the agency for a year and a half now, and the attitude is beginning to show. One breakthrough was Burger King’s “Bundles of Joy” campaign (pictured) featuring new mums enjoying a burger. “It sparked a whole conversation around gender that we never predicted. That’s the thing: you can’t plan for that.”
A recent example is the Tesco “Fruit Giant”. “It’s purposeful, but there’s irreverence in the writing and the tone. It’s big and anthemic, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
Then there’s “Chupa Chups Impossible”. “It was a bit of madness to say, ‘Their main problem is that people find it hard to open. So let’s just make it impossible to open!’”
Behind Felipe during our interview is an image from “Fizzooka”, which injected Mentos seamlessly into Fortnite. “Again, it was an insight into culture. Putting the brand in a gaming collaboration felt like the right fit.”
He’s particularly proud of the campaign for non-profit Missing People, inspired by the rise of true crime as entertainment. The agency created a charter, now backed by the Prime Minister, which is influencing the ethics around content based on real life events.
Overall, he says, “It feels like we’ve found our place in terms of how we land in culture in a different way. We’ve really pinned down what we’re like as an agency now.”
Not your average CV
BBH’s present is influenced by Felipe’s unusual past. The original plan was to be a tennis player. He started playing at the age of 6 and was eventually due to go to Rafa Nadal’s tennis academy in Spain; his dad even took a job in Italy so the family could be closer to it. Then suddenly it was all over. He became “kind of an angry teenager” and metaphorically threw down his racket. “I got to a point where I felt overwhelmed by it. Plus I just wanted to hang out with my friends and have a girlfriend.”
A friend at school in Italy introduced him to his next obsession: skateboarding. When he moved back to London he got into university, but was hardly there. “I’d hand in an assignment and then go back out and skate.”
One of his skater friends was a painter and illustrator. “We’d skate during the day and in the evening he’d teach me how to do Photoshop and stuff. Skate is aesthetically really interesting, with the graphics on the the boards and the magazine covers. I was immersed in this visual world and I thought, ‘Maybe I can do something with this’.”
He graduated from university – barely – and tried to become a full-time skateboarder via sponsorship. “But unless I ate my skateboards, I couldn’t live on that.” Instead he signed up for a design course in Falmouth. “It was a Master’s, so my dad was like, ‘Oh, this is progression.’”
I was immersed in this visual world and I thought, ‘Maybe I can do something with this’.
The course led to a work placement at BBH. Initially he’d pictured himself at Wieden + Kennedy, and had a whole strategy for getting the agency’s attention. But he was politely told by NABs, the advertising industry charity, that it didn’t work like that – you went to whoever would take you. They gave him a booklet with the names and contact details of all the agencies. He started from the beginning and at “B” he lucked out.
“BBH at the time felt like about six different agencies,” he says, from the stylish work for Johnnie Walker to the quirky experimentation of David Kolbusz. Felipe threw himself into interactive, non-traditional work, at an agency that was still centred around film and print. It made him a bit of an outcast, but also indispensable.
Stitches and labels
While all this was going on, he had a parallel life in fashion. He’d gone to have some clothes made at Clothsurgeon, a remarkable brand that brings the tailoring expertise of Savile Row to streetwear. He immediately wanted to work with its founder, Rav Matharu, so during his last fitting, “I kind of tore the guy’s brand apart and told him what he was doing wrong.”
This earned Felipe the chance to art direct and shoot for the brand. “By the end of it we did six or seven collections together from beginning to end: all the garments, the look books, everything.”
But life at BBH was getting busier, and he had to choose. The agency took precedence. The fashion world still inspires him, though. Bearing that in mind, I wonder if BBH’s heritage as “the Levi’s agency” is important to him?
“Massively. There was a point where it felt like BBH was behind more number one hits than record labels. But if you look at the agency’s work, it’s never gratuitous. There’s always a relationship with how people feel, act, or look like right now. Levi’s was a big part of that, but so were brands like Axe and Johnnie Walker. These brands always had a foot in culture, which resonated with me.”
There was a point where it felt like BBH was behind more number one hits than record labels. But if you look at the agency’s work, it’s never gratuitous.
Even today, with Tesco’s F&F, he’s interested in how you can make a supermarket fashion brand feel cool. He cites T-shirt labels like Hanes, used by influential streetwear brand Supreme, or Fruit of the Loom, whose quality has long been admired. “Just because you’re inexpensive, doesn’t mean you can’t be culturally relevant.”
For example, BBH has worked with the artist and director Alex Prager on F&F, pushing the brand well beyond its expected territory. “It excites me to keep fashion in our mix. I think that’s always gonna be part of the BBH DNA – which may sound like a cliché, but it’s true.”
Never forget the audience
Meanwhile, Cannes is around the corner. How does he feel about awards? “They’re very beneficial for teams,” he says. “No matter what, hiring an award-winning team is a shortcut to knowing they’ve made some good stuff.”
He recalls the time, in his second or third year at BBH, when he and his creative partner won four Lions at Cannes. The ECD at the time, Nick Gill, basically shrugged. “’Cause everyone else had won more than we did. We were surrounded by geniuses and BBH was killing it. So I felt like, ‘Oh, this is what you do. You make an ad and it’s always great and it always wins.’ But I soon realised it’s not like that. It’s not easy, and it’s not something you can take for granted.”
He emphasises that BBH has never been about making work for awards. “The work that wins has always been real brand work.”
That’s perhaps the essence of BBH, going right back to Levi’s: enthral your audience first, and the awards juries will follow.
This was originally published over at Epica Awards.
