It's 40 years since the founding of one of the most famous and iconic advertising agencies; BBH or Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty. Today I speak with founder, Sir John Hegarty to find out what it's been like to be at the helm of one of the world's most successful ad agencies for 4 decades.
We take a look back over a long history of advertising to see what's changed, what we can learn and maybe what new techniques today are worth investing in. We touch on many of the great campaigns that come out to BBH, two of my favourites in particular being Levi's from the early eighties and more recently, Audi, which was in fact, one of their founding clients and spanned the entire 40 year history of the agency. As you would expect an amazing storyteller full of wit and wisdom and lots of great advice.
Here's what we covered:
- How Sir John got into advertising
- What advice he would give after 5 decades in Advertising
- Why you should entertain rather than inform
- How advertising followed cultural trends
- Why advertising appears to be making worse creative but expect better results
- The lack of evidence for brand building via social media
- How BBH turned Levi’s around and inspired their own agency positioning
- The making of Levi’s iconic Laundrette advert
- Why the model ended up wearing Boxer shorts
- How Levi’s ad revitalised famous music tracks
- The longest running BBH client
- How the ‘factory visit’ inspired one of the most famous taglines
- Why being illogical can be the right thing to do
- Being defined by your work
- The importance of creative people at the top of the company
- How creativity helps solve business problems
- Advice to clients for how to get the best out of their agency
- How the audience ended up coming last in our priorities
- Why we are all making creative decisions and how to be more creative
- The importance of being Fearless and not being afraid to fail
- Advice for selling in creative ideas to clients
- The one piece of creative work John is most proud of
- Why purpose gets you on the pitch but doesn’t win you the game
- Advice to a 20 year old John
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