'The need to move to a different model was paramount and I would do it again' - British Airways head of marketing defends lengthy pitch process as BBH retains ad account

“I didn’t take on the review lightly, but it was necessary for us to do it to remain competitive within the marketplace and our sector…I wanted the business to carry on the trajectory it has set out in the last two years and make it smarter. The only way to do that was to go out to the market and understand what was on offer,” she explained.

Though it took numerous months to reach the final decision, BBH’s CEO Ben Fennell, also defended the lengthy pitch process which saw the ad agency team up with 7 Seconds owners Simon Hall and Warren Moore to fulfill all BA’s requirements.

“We were tasked with a very, very difficult brief, one which many people have tried and failed to deliver. I would argue that, even though the transition period will take time to do properly, there will be very few questions that haven’t been asked or answered during the pitch process. It was all about kicking the tyres on a model that I don’t think has really been put to work yet,” said Fennell.

Commenting on the agency’s experience of the process, Fennell revealed pitching as the incumbent threw up a number of challenges. “You can’t drop any of the balls in running the existing day-to-day business,” he said.

“We tried to run two parallel but connected teams throughout the pitch. Excelling at the day-to-day was one of the ways we planned to win and retain the account…there’s a careful balance as putting all of our energy into the pitch would have been too much of an own goal, and too much focus on the day-to-day would have been equally as flawed. It was a lot of pressure.”

Fennell said pressure had paid off for the agency, though the account this time was vastly different from the original won in 2005. “When your remit suddenly stretches to things like executive club and CRM you tend to look at the idea in a fresh way. We looked at how ‘To Fly. To Serve.’ could live and drive business like ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ and ‘The Lynx Effect’. We took the decision early on to reach out and find a partner and in our 32 year history we’ve done that very rarely as we mainly try to do it ourselves,” he added.

When asked about the decision to re-appoint the incumbent and if the whole process was worth it Comber said this version of BBH “doesn’t feel like the incumbent” and instead added that it was a dynamic and new model for BBH which just happens to come under the same name”. And in discussing SapientNitro, who lost out on the accoun,t she added: “BBH came with the best of both worlds and can build on this superbrand status we’ve achieved in the last few months. SapientNitro are extremely smart people, I love their style a lot and they played a very hard and smart game but the bias of having the best of both played out for me in BBH more.”

Though sure the right agency won, Comber did not expect new work any time soon as the crux of the review “wasn’t to come out with a new campaign next week but to have the right structure in place for a transition into smarter communications and not just new communications.”

BBH and British Airways will now work together to produce “performance driven and commercially winning work” that will run across all assets and outputs, something which Fennell describes as “ the holy grail for marketers”.