Creative Director's Choice: Tosh Hall of Jones Knowles Ritchie buzzes on Bumble Bizz's billboards in NYC
Creative Director’s Choice gives creative directors a chance to highlight the current work they think is the best out in the ad world – the ads and campaigns they believe are making a difference.
Bumble Bizz OOH in New York City
This week, Tosh Hall, global executive creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie, gives a nod to the New York outdoor campaign for professional networking app Bumble Bizz. The campaign, by Preacher, also took over billboards, buses and buildings in other cities around the US.
As I first tried to recall a piece of recent work that resonated with me, nothing came to mind. The reason being, I live in Manhattan and am bombarded with advertising and branding all day long, particularly on my walk to work from my home in Noho to Soho where our office is. The reality is, most of what I see doesn’t cut through.
Recently though, one thing did catch my attention: the Bumble Bizz billboard on Lafayette and Bleeker. Their campaign features catchy and compelling copy to highlight the app’s competitive advantage over other networking apps and platforms; their advantage of course being that Bumble Bizz is following in the footsteps of its precursor Bumble, a dating app that is based on and driven by female empowerment.
In short, it’s a great example of a brand successfully using impactful design to do the right thing and boldly address an important social issue.
Visually speaking, they went to a different color palette than the Bumble yellow, while still using the same iconography, and the tone of the copy and the headlines in the context is amazing. One ad says “career advancements without the advances” — calling out in large letters that women are often approached on other professional networking sites for the wrong reasons, both an insight and a slight to the competitors in one fell swoop. The other sign, on top of a tall building, has the hive icon with “our eyes are up here” — a smooth reference again to an age old issue that women face in society, but also calling out that women are literally “up there” in the C-suite. It’s an excellent example of playing to the physical space with copy that both highlights the problem and gives the solution in a powerful, uplifting way.
This campaign featured right after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke this past fall. Whether it was just coincidental timing or a highly reactive move, it made a positive and lasting impression on me — and I’m aware I’m not the target audience here. So many brands try to deliver this kind of message in a “guerrilla marketing” style, but it can feel weak or pandering. This campaign is anything but that — it’s incredibly relevant and authentic.
Please click on the Creative Works box below to see more of the campaign.
Tosh Hall is global executive creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR) working out of the agency's New York office.
To see the latest creative ads and campaigns, visit The Drum’s Creative Works section. If you or your creative director would like to feature in our Creative Director’s Choice, please contact Kyle O’Brien at kyle.obrien@thedrum.com.
