• ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER

“There Must Have Been Something in the Water back in 1982″, wrote Stephen Foster referring to the almost contemporary foundation – exactly thirty years ago, just a few days apart – of Wieden+Kennedy and Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the two agencies that have contributed more than any other to redefine creative excellence in the last three decades. On 2 October of the same year, while the newborn agencies were struggling to start up, Bill Bernbach died. He left at least two seminal masterpieces (VW Beetle and Avis), totemic ancestors of almost all the great campaigns to come, along with a radically refounded and upgraded trade, which was discovered to have more to do with shaping public opinion than just providing serial business ads, and a large group of highly creative shops that were following DDB example and were struggling to outclass the giant yet fragile network of Madison Avenue.

It took great courage on the part of a new indie agency to compete with Ally & Gargano, Scali McCabe Sloves, Fallon McElligott Rice, and especially with that hectic and brilliant source of creative methodological and structural innovation that was Chiat\Day. In order to do it from London, thousands of kilometers away from the heart of the Empire, lacking even an equipped office, one had to have an ac in the hole. An unconventional weapon. A battering-ram, maybe.

Levi’s was the second client BBH acquired – after the acquisition of such a prestigious and demanding global client as Audi was – and it provided the agency with the best passport to enter the most competitive advertising market in the world, and thus, indirectly, to global market, since advertising industry was going global in those years (and would soon go hunting in Italy too).

But Levi’s was not just a client. It was also the honoured, ever present brand in the phantasmagoric thematic exhibition the Centre Pompidou dedicated to the evolution of the habits of Western youth, summarizing everything that was going on in urban subcultures from the Second World War onwards. Levi’s was Marilyn’s butt and James Dean with his hands in his pockets, Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking side by side on the cover of The Freewheelin as well as overexposed images of Pasolini and Maria Callas in Sabaudia, Monterey “Summer Of Love” club card, Aquarians’s uniforms at Woodstock, Bruce Springsteen falling on his knees at the fourth encore,  Kurt Cobain’s poisonous smell like teen spirit, the forbidden dream of millions of Soviet young people, the shroud of the Tiananmen Square massacre victims. It was a master key to a world where financial and commercial globalization were following to a universalization of Western – American above all – mythologies. A rock world dressed in denim.

BBH chose to speak in a language as vivid as this world was:  constantly changing, varied, a language made up of many slangs, all of them understandable, attractive and meaningful, taking their strength from rock culture. A language opposed to the language of marketing and classical advertising (though it must be said that sometimes even the most ground-breaking agencies prefer continuity to innovation in language).

In John Hegarty’s hands, the Levi’s brand throws a sparkling bomb on planet Earth: Levi’s world, always changing and yet recognizable, extremely cool, diverse, and ground-breaking. Just think of “Laundrette” dazzling collection of vintage typography, “Swimmer” Technicolor hypnotizing mood, “Flat Eric”  contagious camp taste, “Toilet” wicked transgression, “Creek”  monumental black and white cinema (Hegarty’s favourite), “Mermaids” enchanting dark suggestions, “Drugstore” sublime counterpoint between video and audio (inspired to an urban legend popular in the 40s) to the disquieting “Twisted” Ballardian spooky choreography, “Odyssey” white epics, an hundreds of other ads everyone remembers, frame by frame, even if seeing them only once on Youtube.

For twenty-eight years in a row, instead of forcing reality to fit under the ideological umbrella of the brand, Hegarty and his colleagues took the brand to a trip to the newborn  slangs of the urban world,  showing that Levi’s was capable of  depicting reality in all its contradictions. Stuart Smith effectively expressed BBH vocation to produce a “creative re-invention of the pop-culture”. Hegarty himself confirmed it by stating that the main goal of each BBH campaign was to turn as fast and smoothly as possible into pop culture. That implies purifying the message from any unnecessary artificiality and instrumental aftertaste in order to make it consistent and create a suggestive  microcosm, the message as polished and precise as a bullet, aiming at the core.

What if Levi’s had to face the last crucial thirty years – in which it faced not only  financial crisis but also the assault from “cold steel” Diesel, one of its more determined and less predictable challengers – without an ace in the hole like BBH. I’ve made up my own opinion, and I think Sir John would agree with me.

Sir John must know something about Ego. His first job as a junior art director – at the infamous Benton & Bowles, where the “If It Doesn’t Sell, It’s Not Creative” motto hung down on the entry hall (Bernbach turned it upside-down: “If It’s Not Creative, It Doesn’t  Sell”) – ended with a dismissal for insubordination. At twenty-five y/o he was already junior partner in Saatchi & Saatchi, at twenty-eight he was TBWA top manager. He belongs to a generation of British advertisers – the same as  Charles Saatchi, Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne, Ridley Scott – who became rich, powerful and famous early. Many of them had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth, who generously rewarded  professionals of the few productive fields (mostly related to art and communication) that reinvigorated the stricken British economy in those years. Few extraordinary talents are not associated with a hypertrophic ego. But the ability to boost  self-esteem while competing with equally exuberant egos – instead of staying in the comfort zone, surrounding oneself with yes-men – is  itself a – very profitable, yet not so popular – form of talent.

But what really is at the base of the magnificent three decades of BBH is its uncanny ability to handle complex operations without departing from the principle of pursuing all the aims. Harmonizing and channeling the energy from literal brainstorms is a specialty not every manager owns. It’s art. An art that implies having the guts to do so. Otherwise, why hiring creative directors such as John O’Keefe, Russell Ramsey, Kevin Stark, David Kolbusz, Dominic Goldman, Ty Montague, Rosie Arnold and Mick Mahoney as well as creatives such as Nick Worthington and John Gorse (former Abbot Mead Vickers / BBDO creatives, respectively art director and copywriter of Levi’s “Creek” and “Drugstore”), Fred Raillard and Farid Mokart (talented and nasty creators of X-Box “Champagne” campaign, today best known as Fred&Farid) or managers such as Simon Sherwood and Neil Munn (not just a brand manager eager to advance his career, but Unilever Global Brand Coordinator, responsible for the triumphal march of Axe and Lynx)? Why shoot yourself in the foot?

Time has passed since 1982, a year of inflation, and here we are in this 2012 of gloomy recession. It’s been 30 years, but in the field of advertising it’s like a century has passed – and not the most innovative century. But as for innovation in advertising, I guess one may say that a considerable part of it was produced – or at least deeply influenced – by BBH, its work and its way of working. It was a clear and precise planning. BBH selected creative ideas basing on its ability to resonate in society and to trigger reactions – not just some “great idea” that seems bold but ends to be dull. Sleek perfect execution, mostly amazing. The medium gets a strategic role. Length is extended as much as the idea requires (just think of the 6-minutes tracking shot of “The Man Who Walked Around the World” for Johnny Walker), or, vice versa, incredibly compressed (see the 12-seconds stories for Vodafone Prepay Maxi Cap). Length itself can make the difference in how the message is perceived. The stubborn determination to  take all the time needed, despite the client’s agenda, to realize the campaign at its best. The habit of using the web – instead of ridiculous focus groups – to test the most controversial campaigns to be planned on TV. And so on.

The result? If we close our eyes and consider what struck us in those last years of advertising, it’s physically impossible not to think of Manchester cream, Vodafone dragonfly, the baby launched to orbit only to fall into a X-Box tomb, fish-men landing on the mainland for Johnny Walker, or Axe fallen angels.

But BBH style has more to show, something – of course – unusual. Much attention is paid to preconditions that stimulate and spread creativity on all levels and functions of the agency. First of all, showing the awareness that one has to take risks and mistakes may occur, while rejecting the “no pain, no gain” motto which won at Chiat\Day the nickname “Chiat Day and night” (and which is still worshipped in the International Empires of Mediocrity).

In 2009 – faced with a negative final balance – BBH tried desperately to prevent staff reductions and suggested to its employees to reduce their wages by 3.5% to avoid layoffs: they all voted in favor. It proved to be not enough but just trying is what distinguishes a  healthy business from a neoliberal sweathouse.

In the letter (yes, it is so well written that it can hardly be called an e-mail) sent to all the agencies on the occasion of the Thirtieth Anniversary, Nigel Bogle stresses: “It’s all about the work”. If one would count how many times John Hegarty says “industry” and “business” during all his interviews and conferences, I’m pretty sure you’d be stunned. But it’s no surprise. In the “real world”, the most brilliant and influential advocates of “the power of creativity” are not accustomed to tell the power of communication from the attraction it generates toward the brand. That’s why BBH prefer Euro-Effie (an award given to campaigns that proved to be successful in two or more European markets) to Cannes Lions. That’s why BBH website focuses on effectiveness, starting with the headboard “They’re Called Commercials for a Reason”. That’s why John Hegarty, when asked what he thinks about fake ads shrugs his shoulders and dismisses the question as one who finds the subject irrelevant, an old-fashioned topic. In his adult world one has to “make mistakes as a professional” (as Italian singer Paolo Conte says). No risk, no gain. Guys, am I envy!