BBH’s picture perfect approach to out of home

When I took over as ECD my first thing was trying to bring out of home back to BBH.”

So says Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes who, along with the agency’s Chief Production Officer, Stephen Ledger Lomas, is explaining BBH London’s recent and concerted success with its out of home work for brands including Tesco, Häagen-Dazs, Burger King, F&F, Audi and more.

"We are really spoiled because we have Häagen-Dazs, Audi, Tesco, Burger King. Not every agency has these household names."

Sitting in Guimaraes’ office, surrounded by images from recent campaigns, many of which are in the medium we’re here to discuss, what’s immediately clear is the agency’s bold but simple visual approach to its out of home offering. This aesthetic, explains Guimaraes, is largely possible because of the clients BBH has. “Out of home is usually for big, iconic brands, and we are really spoiled because we have Häagen-Dazs, Audi, Tesco, Burger King. Not every agency has these household names, where you can basically take the whole product off and still know [who it is].”

Above: Recent work from BBH for Häagen-Dazs and Chupa-Chups and F&F. 

Out of home advertising seems to have had a renaissance in recent years, with a host of brands – like B&Q, British Airways, Irn-Bru and Maynards – alongside BBH’s roster of clients, producing eye-catching work. “I think it probably has a lot to do with the state of the world,” Guimaraes says of the increased creative output of the medium. “Brands probably have less cache [now], but they want to have just as big an impact. I think out-of-home is such a big, iconic medium that if you do it properly it is easy [to get] traction and put that piece of work everywhere as opposed to, back in the day, having to do a five-million-pound film to put it on every cinema screen. I do think brands have cottoned on to the power of big, iconic out-of-home to drive fame and scale.”     

“It’s like a confidence algorithm, with brands being able to see that [OOH works] and see the effectiveness of it."

Confidence, too, is a driving force for great work in this medium explains Ledger Lomas; “It’s like a confidence algorithm, with brands being able to see that [OOH works] and see the effectiveness of it. Because this industry, at its worst, is navel gazing, doing performative things just for the sake of doing them. But if [the work] is not communicating something to the customer and doing the job the brand needs it to do, then it’s not doing the job of advertising. And [OOH is] a great thing because it enables big, bold, brave ideas to happen.”

Above: Burger King's Bundles of Joy campaign won at The One Show, D&AD, the British Arrows, Cannes Lions and the Creative Circle, to name a few. 

The thorny topic of people’s attention spans arises and whether, in this time of infinite-scrolling and dual-screening, out-of-home executions are a time-saving salve for both brands and consumers. “It is such a fractional audience now,” says Ledger Lomas. “This medium is a lower dwell time medium. You have to grab someone immediately, and you’re rewarding someone very quickly with this very simple, beautifully executed idea.”

But much of BBH’s out of home work, while certainly eye-catching, is more complex than simply being a collection of pretty pictures and bold colour schemes. “I think most of the work we’ve done that has been successful,” says Guimaraes, “leaves a bit of space for you to finish something. You want that kind of ‘ah!’ moment, or a space for you to be put into the ad as opposed to just seeing it and thinking, ‘Yeah, that looks cool’.”

“I don’t believe in the concept of bravery. It’s more a trust thing than a brave thing. Icons was surprisingly easy to get through, partly because we’d done loads of work with Tesco."

Examples would include the Tesco Icons campaign, which use various food items to spell out the store’s name. Or the same brand’s upside-down Pancake Day poster. Then there’s Häagen-Dazs’ sensual, ice-cream-free images of completely eaten products, and Burger King’s Bundles of Joy campaign, which shows women who have just given birth tucking into a well-deserved meal. So, are clients braver when it comes to out of home work?

“I don’t believe in the concept of bravery,” answers Guimaraes. “It’s more a trust thing than a brave thing. Icons was surprisingly easy to get through, partly because we’d done loads of work with Tesco. We were on a journey [and] when that was put in front of them, they went, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ And I think that’s what great work looks like. I think when you see agencies – like Wieden’s with Nike – [who’ve] had relationships forever, that’s when brave work comes out because you go, ‘We trust each other’. [Those brands] know that to cut through, to make this thing that’s more disruptive, you must feel like you’re in safe hands.”

Above: BBH has worked with Tesco for 10 years, creating a relationship of trust that is able to produce clever, impactful and award-winning work. 

BBH has worked with Tesco for 10 years, Audi for 40 years, Burger King for seven years, and while the Häagen-Dazs account was only won in 2024, BBH was the agency which launched the brand in the UK in 1990. So, past triumphs service the future successes of many of their client relationships. 

While we’ve already established that the agency’s work is more than simply bold colours and great design, there’s also no escaping the fact this it’s also those things too. “Selfishly,” says Guimaraes, “it’s what I like. And when it comes to design, I’m a bit of an oxymoron in the sense that I am a maximalist – I like colour – but I am also reductive. So, I think the idea needs to be, ‘Can we take anything more out of it?’ and ‘Let’s just throw everything at it’. So, I want things to be maximalist and beautiful and in-your-face, but the essence of it needs to just be… nothing.

"When it comes to design, I’m a bit of an oxymoron in the sense that I am a maximalist – I like colour – but I am also reductive."

Guimaraes goes on to explain how the process of creating and designing the Burger King Bundles of Joy campaign was a huge one which included “months of us doing absolutely everything”. They threw lots of things at the idea, trying different approaches and methods, before scaling back to the most basic but impactful design.

If the idea for out of home work, and advertising in general, is for it to be iconic, then you only have to look at Tesco’s appropriately named and previously mentioned Icons campaign. “I don’t think you get to be in charge of such an iconic brand very often,” explains Guimaraes. “And I wanted the advertising to be more iconic, because how many brands can you take the logo off and still go, ‘Oh, it’s Tesco!’. It’s just such a gift.”

Above: Tesco's Bags campaign was the perfect accompaniment - or 'matching luggage' - to its TV work.

Tesco being so iconic as a UK brand is exactly what the Icons campaign tapped into. “The other day I was watching a Fred Again video and there was a Tesco bag just there on the table,” says Ledger Lomas. “Or you’ll be watching Eastenders and you’ll see one. It is omnipresent.” And while that’s currently true, the agency wanted to make sure it remained as such, which is where the bags idea came into play.

The ’matching luggage’ comment is a reference to Ledger Lomas’s assertion that out-of-home had become a lesser, subservient element to a brand’s filmic work.

“Just before we launched the film [It’s Not a Little Thing, It’s Everything] we had these bags and said [to the client], ‘Just remind people the role you play in their lives’,” says Guimaraes. “The food they carry is way more than just apples and pears and pasta, it’s Tesco helping them laugh, and helping them feel better, and helping them say thank you. So, we did these reportage, caught-in-the-moment type pieces. This is probably one of the best examples of matching luggage actually being the right approach.”

The ’matching luggage’ comment is a reference to Ledger Lomas’s assertion that out-of-home had become a lesser, subservient element to a brand’s filmic work. Not creative or boundary pushing in its own right, but something that looked like it went with the TV spot and not much more, rather than something to be celebrated for itself.