Gillette - Bbdo

How would Gillette-BBDO relationship be impacted? Was the bake-off decision an appropriate for the Dry Idea problem?

• First of all, for BBDO, winning the bake-off will reinforce their commitment and reassure their position. The team will surely be more motivated for the future campaigns.
• Secondly, the bake-off announcement should have “shaken” BBDO’s team as their position had been questioned. They will be more likely to give more time and attention to Dry Idea.
• BBDO might be more careful about Gilette’s requests as it is the second time their relationship faced a bake-off. It might allow them to questioned themselves more frequently about their commitment and being more pro-actives.
• If BBDO had failed the bake-off, the agency would probably had reinforce their position on the other Gilette’s brands.

The bake-off was surely the right answer to Gilette’s problem. This was a real need to start from scratch as BBDO couldn’t find an appropriate commercial in a classic process. Being in competition with an other agency make them change the creative team, this bring fresh new ideas for Dry Idea and motivated them so that they won’t lose Gilette’s budget. This did not disturbe Gilette’s processes more than it had to be.

An other solution would have been to fire BBDO and hire a new agency but this would have taken a lot of time and money. By the time a new agency would have been operational many months would have passed without new ideas and campaigns on air.