BBDO and the Biggest Pitch in Advertising History
Advertising used in the correct way has a profound affect. Just ask the folks at BBDO, who in the past few years have been responsible for the resurfacing of General Electric, and all of the Advertising for AT&T (the 2nd biggest Ad budget in the United States). Matt McDonald, ECD of AT&T has a lot to say about using ads-correctly. “Our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter” he says. “There was a study done that showed that teens scroll through their New Feeds 2x as fast as adults. 2x as fast! Now imagine how that attention span responds to an unwelcome ad-not well.” The solution? To give “the biggest pitch in Ad history; and combine our creative departments with our media departments.” To do this, AT&T had to go through enormous amounts of change, how could media and creative departments work together when they hadn’t interacted in over 30 years? According to McDonald, sometimes one needs to “ignore all the data and create something better.” While the merger ended up being one of AT&T’s most brilliant moves, it did come with some challenges. “People who used to have tighter working circles are now being forced to branch out and work with a ton of people they were probably not exposed to before” says McDonald “but the majority of people found they enjoyed it, and it brought a whole new level of excitement to our office.”
Caden Bohn