Does it matter where your office is? It does to creative agencies, thereby reinforcing their reputation among bean counters and others that they’re just delicate flowers who somehow found themselves embroiled in a business.
Adam&eveDDB, now the unlikely guardian of TBWA in the UK as part of the recent Omnicom rejig, is finally moving from its Paddington fastness, home to the celebrated agency in its various guises since 1971.
CEO Amanda Hipwell (bet it wasn’t her idea) says bravely: “Yes, it’s true we are leaving the good ship 12 Bishop’s Bridge Road. Although we have deep emotional ties to the creaking floorboards and legacy laden walls, it has been increasingly difficult to adapt the office to our ever-evolving needs, especially as we continue to grow. So the chance to move to a modern, more central space that better supports where we’re heading as a business feels really rather exciting.
“Adam&eve\TBWA is defined by our brilliant people, creative excellence and putting feeling first. None of that will change. What will change is the space around us, which is designed to supercharge this next chapter for us and our clients. They say people make the place and we can’t wait to make 16 Old Bailey our new home.”
Omnicom has previous in this: it shifted flagship UK agency AMV BBDO to Southwark from its beloved Marylebone home (Marylebone is much cooler and posher than Southwark although Southwark’s coming on.) At the time Omnicom planned to move all its agencies to its vast Southwark HQ but A&E, then helmed by James Murphy, in the midst of an earn-out, resisted as did TBWA affiliate Lucky Generals (still in Clerkenwell.) It could have been worse: among the sites Omnicom was looking at for everybody was in Croydon.
An agency called Boase Massimi Pollitt (comprised of refugees from Interpublic agency Pritchard Wood) set up home in Paddington in 1971. Two of its distinguished alumni, founder Martin Boase and one-time chairman James Best still pop in from time to time. BMP in short order became one of the few truly great ad agencies, rivalling CDP in the UK, with few peers worldwide. Creative director John Webster actually was a creative genius. Another founder Stanley Pollitt was one of the founders of account planning (some said he did it to justify Webster’s inventions, like Muhammad Ali for Unigate milk.)
Boase, often to be found in a fur coat on some wind-blasted racecourse, kept the whole, sometimes slightly mad, show on the road.
Great days returned to Paddington when BMP’s eventual owner DDB bought A&E, for a decade or so one of the all-time greats alongside CDP, BMP and BBH. That was then though and since then creative agencies have lost ground in the eyes of some clients and, especially, their holding company owners.
Will A&E translate to 16 Old Bailey without it seeming like a form of imprisonment? We’ll see. Mother translated successfully to Shoreditch although it started fairly nearby in Clerkenwell. BBH has stuck religiously to Soho and that must be part of the reason it continues to flourish under Publicis. Omnicom’s property wonks have quite a lot to answer for.
