The story
The agency's first ad was for Levi's and it showed a black sheep going against the herd. It became the agency icon and spawned the phrase, "when the world zigs, zag". The Levi's black sheep poster was not an easy ad to buy because at the time all jeans ads had people in them, but it proved successful.
Over the next 28 years, BBH went on to produce many award-winning films for Levi's. "Launderette" featured Nick Kamen and was set to Marvin Gaye's recording of 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine'. Levi's sold over 2 million boxer shorts in one year. In 1991, BBH cast the then-unknown Brad Pitt in the Levi's commercial titled "Camera." Other classic work includes "Drugstore", "Creek", "Flatbeat" featuring Flat Eric – a small yellow puppet, "Clayman" and "Odyssey" which was directed by Jonathan Glazer. The 28-year relationship resulted in a total of seven number one singles in Europe.
Beyond Levi's, the company been responsible for creating long-running campaigns for other global brands, such as "Vorsprung durch Technik" for Audi which John Hegarty coined in 1984, "The Lynx Effect" for Unilever which propelled the male body spray into the number one spot globally and "Keep Walking" for Johnnie Walker which bought the brand sales up from 13% of the global market when the campaign broke in 2000, to over 20% at the end of 2013 according to IWSR.
In 1997, Leo Burnett Worldwide purchased a 49% share in BBH; that share was then held by the Publicis advertising group. In July 2012, a final 51% share in BBH previously attributed to the agency's co-founders was bought out by part-owners Publicis.
BBH has also worked with brands including Google and Absolut.
In 2006, the agency launched ZAG, a branding and venturing division and in 2014 the agency created BBH Sport, bringing BBH brand strategy and creativity to the world of sport. Also in 2006, BBT's deputy chairman Guy Murphy left the company to join JWT as global planning director.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bartle Bogle Hegarty, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5