Batten Barton Durstine and Osborn (BBDO)

Batten Barton Durstine and Osborn (BBDO) is Germany’s leading advertising agency for the last 16 years. On Wednesday, June 4, 2008 we were able to visit the agency at their Berlin office. In 1891, George Batten (the first “B”) founded one of the first ad agencies in the world in New York. In 1919 the other partners, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn joined in and in 1928 they merged to form BBDO. BBDO is a worldwide advertising agency. They are the fourth largest in the world, with 287 offices in 79 countries. The office in Berlin has five branches: BBDO Berlin, BBDO Düsseldorf, BBDO Stuttgart, BBDO consulting, and BBDO sales.

Visiting the agency gave us an inside look as to how advertising works in Germany. Although their strategies and tactics are similar to those used in the United States, they also have many interesting ways in coming up with unique ideas. One thing that all ad agencies around the world have in common is the fact that they “brainstorm” before any project and that is thanks to BBDO. BBDO is accredited with inventing brainstorming in the 1940’s. Some of BBDO’s clients include Braun, Hewlett Packard, Daimler, T Mobile Deutsche, Pepsi, Gillette, and Pizza Hut. Due to their quality of work, BBDO is able to provide their clients with top notch work. They have clients that have been loyal to them for the last 79 years; Pepsi has been loyal to them for the last 45 years in 68 different countries. The BBDO agencies have the most creative network today with the highest number of awards worldwide.

Although our visit was limited to a conference room, I was able to walk away with a lot of information about the agency and advertising in general. BBDO stands up for the highest quality of unique work. One way they achieve this is by not allowing anyone to enter their workroom. BBDO’s workroom is a private place only to be entered by people that work there. In the United States visiting an agency’s workroom would probably be considered public relations for the agency, but at BBDO this considered as an invasion of privacy or as a way for competitors to breach their work strategies.