BBH branches into brand creation with Zag launch

Nigel Bogle to run the venture with former Unilever brand director Neil Munn.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty is launching a brand invention arm. Called Zag, the
venture will be run by the former Unilever global brand director Neil
Munn and the BBH co-founder and chief executive, Nigel Bogle.

Zag will be a global initiative involving all BBH offices and is fully

funded by the agency. It aims to create and develop new brands, which it
will license or sell to third parties in return for a share of ongoing
sales revenues.

Munn, who will be Zag's chief executive as well as taking a position on
the BBH group board of directors, said: "The search for new ideas has
never been more important or more difficult. Many large corporations are
preoccupied by short-term delivery and are struggling to unlock new
brand opportunities. As a result, openness to external sources for idea
generation is becoming more common. This is an opportunity to exploit
our biggest talent."

The launch comes as agencies are increasingly searching for new
remuneration models that evolve the traditional client/agency fee-based
relationship.

Zag plans to ally BBH's creativity with its knowledge of consumer
behaviour.

It will focus on what the agency terms "brandlag" - areas of the market
where consumer activity is ahead of current levels of brand or
commercial activity, such as health and fitness and the ecological
consumer market.

The company is working on a number of brand-creation projects and is
understood to be in discussions with three of BBH's clients and two
external partners.

Bogle said: "A really powerful idea is the last remaining unfair
advantage in business. Our stock in trade for the past 23 years has been
the manufacture of intangibles. We manufacture ideas that become
components of brands. Most great brands begin with an idea."