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As battles go this is going back a long way but, time was, when BBH (Bartle Bogle Hegarty) was being challenged by upstart Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury for the ‘hottest agency in London’ tag.
But HHCL crashed and burned (shortly after being named Campaign’s agency of the 1990s) whereas BBH didn’t.
One of the HHCL’s best-known campaigns was for fizzy drink Tango, one which seemed to sum up the agency’s punkish approach to life. These often featured an orange-hued football hooligan.
I can’t say they ever did much for me (maybe I was old even then) but they helped to make HHCL and, one assumes, Tango famous.
Now the account’s at BBH and the agency seems to be rising to an ancient challenge with this effort featuring odd behaviour in a corner shop.
I have to say that, while BBH clearly won the war of the agencies, maybe HHCL won the battle of the ads.
HHCL, whose creative duo of Steve Henry and Axel Chaldecott were reared in the bracing environs of undeniably punkish Dave Trott’s GGT, produced a series of unsettling ads for the horrible fizzy drink (the one above was banned of course) while BBH seems to be holding back a bit. Henry and Chaldecott (of that era) would have had blood, or fizzy orange stuff, on the floor.
Well there you have it: angels dancing on a pinhead.
