From jeans to burgers: how BBH invented and reinvented ‘zagging’

In 1982 BBH, then a start-up creative agency with a team of eleven, received a letter from Levi’s that would change advertising history.

Seen as a rebellious marker of counterculture cool in the 50s and 60s, denim had lost its individuality as cities the world over became a sea of indigo. BBH’s role was to help Levi's sell its new black-washed jeans and ultimately regain clout.

The agency responded with the bold decision not to show jeans in its campaign poster. Despite pushback from the client, the team maintained that to stand out from the crowd they needed to focus on selling a sense of individuality. Co-founder John Hegarty was adamant that "everyone knows what a pair of jeans looks like".

The final result was a simple poster featuring a herd of white sheep with a solitary black sheep facing the other way. “When the world zigs, zag” the caption read. Along with the black sheep logo, the slogan became synonymous with BBH – and has shaped its identity ever since.

Now, the agency hopes to modernise the concept for its clients and put some proof behind its belief that lateral thinking is king with its new model, The Zig Index.

The Zig Index uses AI along with human input to generate a wilfully ordinary ad to highlight what it would look like if you adhered entirely to category norms.

According to BBH chief strategy officer Will Lion, this is steeped in the agency’s heritage. “We’ve always done this on the walls of BBH more informally. Now we’ve just strapped on some supercomputers to make it more rigorous,” he explains.

Lion adds that the reason why The Zig Index is so effective at communicating what it means to zag is because it “empowers clients internally when selling on work”.

Avoiding a ‘sea of sameness’

The Zig Index is based on telling clients what not to do in order to allow them to differentiate in a crowded category. It draws on data to showcase typical colour palettes for each category (for example lots of blues, whites and silvers for the automotive industry), as well as common visuals and tropes.                               

Lion explains that the agency uses the tool with clients at the start of a creative project to “establish the zig ratio to avoid”.

He adds: “If clients want something too close to it, it actually becomes a great new business tool, a sorting hat for creative ambition.

“Internally we’ve always had a box at the bottom of the brief for Zigs to avoid. Now we have a data-based visual accompaniment. It’s up on the wall during creative development to make sure we’re not falling into the gravity of conventions,” he continues.

The goal is to help brands go from a zig to a zag – creating an exciting path in their wake.

Just as black jeans took the place of indigo jeans as the uniform of rock-and-rollers, mods and counterculture movements – to zag is to choose a unique route and differentiate yourself from the category.

Discussing the purpose of zagging at MAD//Fest earlier this year, BBH joint CSO Simon Gregory describes the mundanity of an ordinary day filled with “a sea of sameness” starting with “a cup of the ordinary”. This “cup of the ordinary” might be reliable but is likely to be supplanted when a newer more exciting alternative turns up.

The Zig Index is derived from the understanding that “difference is the biggest driver of customer value,” explains Gregory.

Burger King: making a whopper of a brand

One of BBH’s clients making use of the agency’s propensity to zag is Burger King.

Joining Gregory on the stage at MAD//Fest earlier this year, Burger King UK CMO Katie Evans explained that when her team enlisted BBH to carry out some research on customer perceptions the findings revealed that the brand had become more known for nuggets and short-term discounts rather than its key selling point – The Whopper.

Burger King hadn’t put The Whopper on TV for over ten years, despite it being its most recognisable item on the menu since 1954.

“When you apply the Zig Index from BBH you can see that there are lots of clichés. Lots of fresh ingredients. Lots of Burger King. A fast-food value message was becoming quite recognisable and quite familiar,” Evans adds.

“We had to find a point to zag,” she continues. And while The Whopper was talked about it was never the central piece of any global campaign.

Re-shifting the focus back to The Whopper (its point of difference burger) meant the brand was able to put attention back on quality, leverage a distinctive asset, and play on culture.

It created a “Whopper Mandate” which declared it would only sell Whoppers for a day, and a 'Foodfillment' campaign that showed parents who had just given birth munching on a whopper.

Just as Burger King’s selling point is having the best-named burger in town, BBH is keen to keep ahead of the advancement of AI whilst keeping its own point of difference – the zag – at its core.

And the Zig Index does just that: “A subjective internal BBH process is now a more objective shared process with clients. It opens the kitchen up and includes clients on the journey of getting to 'different'", says Lion