Rafik Belmesk
Operations, AKOS
ihaveanidea

This year, BBDO Worldwide won Network of Year at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

“Ah, we win that every year.”

Do I detect a hint of smugness in the voice of Suthisak Sucharittanonta, BBDO Bangkok’s Chairman and CCO as I glanced at the oversized Lion that represents such an honour? If there is, perhaps it’s well-deserved, as the gleaming accolade sits in the middle of a whole goldmine of national and international awards.

BBDO Bangkok, one of the network’s proverbial crown jewels,  towers spectacularly over the city’s bustling Silom business district.  The breathtaking view is not theirs alone, as BBDOers share their morning elevator rides with HSBC and Reuters workers. But once you get off on their floor, as a hundred or so employees do each day, it’s a completely different world than the poor bankers and journalists elsewhere in the building!

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Okay, the reception area is pretty nondescript as far as advertising agencies go, but once you round the corner in any direction, you’ll notice two things. First, yes, they’ve won tons and tons of awards and many of them are on display, but what’s more interesting is that every single room and area of the agency looks completely different. Every BBDO staff member is asked to design his or her own workspace and express themselves by letting their creative juices flow. This makes for a very colourful and unique think tank environment. “We didn’t have money to hire an interior designer for redecoration,” jokes Suthisak. “Kidding aside, we strongly believe that an individual will create better work when he or she is in their own creatively unique environment rather than dull and boring cubicles. We also want our staff to show off their creativity regardless of their department, from finance to the maids and janitors. We’re all creative!”

To this end, BBDO houses a beach resort, a room that looks like a crime scene from CSI: Thailand, and rooms designed by people with rather unhealthy fetishes for Hello Kitty and Manchester United. Suthisak took it upon himself to go all out and give one of the meeting rooms a tennis theme. Surprisingly, his own office doesn’t have a special theme. Perhaps it’s because it would take too long to decorate, as it’s bigger than most small agencies’ entire creative departments.

At any agency in a global network, you’d imagine there would be a fair amount of non-too inspiring briefs as well as a decent share of great ones. At BBDO Bangkok, the interesting briefs are shared between everyone in the agency. On top of the regular global BBDO clients like Pepsi, M&M’s and FedEx, they also work on local brands like Homepro, The Bangkok Post and Central World. And if you fancy working for a conflicting client, you can do that too! BBDO has set up an agency within an agency named Xtreme BBDO, to handle all conflicting accounts. It’s a pretty smart way to do things, but I have trouble imagining how they convince clients to buy into it.

Two years ago, BBDO Bangkok set up an interesting creative exchange program with the Singapore office. They would send a team to work there for a few months, while their Singaporean counterparts made the short trip to Bangkok. Obviously national pride dictated that they select the most handsome pair for impression’s sake. You wouldn’t want to give a less than perfect image! I was told that sharing creatives is pretty common in the region, and it’s not limited to just Singapore and Bangkok; Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and Manila in the Philippines  are also often involved. More recently they expanded beyond Southeast Asia and brought in two creatives from India and South Korea to spend time there. One of those lucky souls went back back home to a creative director’s job at his local office.

This whole process speaks volumes about the value BBDO Bangkok places on  mentoring young creatives. The place has been a veritable breeding ground for young talent who go on to great success in their careers, perhaps most notably Creative Juice’s Worldwide Chairman Thirasak Tanapatanakul, who was one of Suthisak’s first disciples. How have they become so adept at spotting up and coming stars? “You see it in their eyes,” says Dahn. “You can tell from their looks which ones will stay up late and soldier through the night to make sure the standard of work is world class, and the others who will go to sleep.”

Nowadays, most people who get into advertising have gone to school for that very career choice, or at least something similar to it. Gone are the days when agencies are staffed by self-taught individuals who used to be taxi drivers and door to door salesmen. But amongst BBDO Bangkok’s ad-centric staff, there are a number of people who came from decidedly different occupations. The Titanium winner in that category would probably go to Tina Kelly, the agency’s head of planning. In a former life, Tina was an agent for the Australian Federal Police, and probably brings a lot of interrogation techniques and behavioural insights into the boardroom. Not to be outdone, Nittreeya Wongsa, the director of client services, holds a degree in French cuisine and had a stint managing a famous Thai restaurant in Vancouver, Canada. If BBDO Bangkok ever gets stuck on a desert island, Nittreeya will probably roll back the years and cater to the whole team to make sure nobody starves to death.

It’s these little idiosyncrasies that all add up to demonstrate just how BBDO Bangkok contributes to the worldwide effort to be Network of the Year. They work hard, they play hard (especially since the agency has its own bar/bistro that they use when the day is done) and they believe in nurturing the next generation of creative talent. After all, it’s that next generation that will be helping them earn another oversized Lion trophy in 2010 and beyond.

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