Our Cul­ture

Who we are

If adver­tis­ing had its own Mount Rush­more, you’d find Bill Bernbach’s face carved onto the side of it. His taste for sub­tle­ty, hon­esty, and art­ful­ness con­tin­ues to dri­ve not only our work eth­ic here at DDB, but the indus­try as a whole.

Creativity
Inspired by Our Founder
Bill Bernbach

Bernbach’s career in adver­tis­ing start­ed through his own voli­tion. Work­ing in the mail­room of a dis­tillery dur­ing the great depres­sion, he took it upon him­self write an ad for one of the company’s whiskeys. Not only did the dis­tillery like it so much and ran it, but they pro­mot­ed Bern­bach to the adver­tis­ing depart­ment as well. From then on, Bern­bach made his way through dif­fer­ent agen­cies, ris­ing from copy­writer to cre­ative direc­tor. The cre­ative restraint on the indus­try is what led him to cre­ate his own agency with James Edwin Doyle and Maxwell Dane, form­ing DDB. (Doyle Dane Bern­bach).

Bill Bernbach

Bill Bernbach said...

“A dull truth will not be looked at. An excit­ing lie will. That is what good, sin­cere peo­ple must under­stand. They must make their truth excit­ing and new, or their good works will be born dead.”

“Nobody counts the num­ber of ads you run; they just remem­ber the impres­sion you made.”

“Be provoca­tive. But be sure your provoca­tive­ness stems from your prod­uct. You are not right if in your ad you stand a man on his head just to get atten­tion. You are right if you have him on his head to show how your prod­uct keeps things from falling out of his pock­ets.”

To Be Yourself

At its core, the Four Free­doms are about cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that is most con­ducive to bring­ing a team’s cre­ative tal­ent to its full poten­tial. For this to hap­pen, an orga­ni­za­tion must be com­mit­ted to both iden­ti­fy­ing and nur­tur­ing tal­ent

The Four Freedoms

Separator

Freedom from fear

To be free from fear means to dive head­first into the pool of cre­ativ­i­ty rather than dip­ping your toes for the first 20 min­utes. At DDB, con­fi­dence is some­thing that we help build with every new hire.

Freedom to Fail

There’s a big dif­fer­ence between a cre­ative who is too afraid to fail and one that wel­comes it with open arms. With the right mind­set, fail­ure can be treat­ed as a recourse to devel­op even more cre­ative ideas and exe­cu­tions.

Freedom from Chaos

For tal­ent to reach its full poten­tial, there must be a clear set of rules estab­lished first. With every­one on the same page, they’ll be less bumps along the way when you reach that cre­ative goal as a team.

Freedom to Be

Free­dom to be who you are is para­mount to DDB, with diver­si­ty and inclu­sion being the back­bone of what makes our teams so strong. It’s a free­dom that we will con­tin­ue to fight for, every sin­gle day.

DDB — Initiatives

Cre­ativ­i­ty is piv­otal to our suc­cess. And to reach the high­est peaks of cre­ativ­i­ty, diver­si­ty in its strongest form is need­ed. That’s why our suc­cess is dri­ven by a wide range of pro­fes­sion­als, regard­less of their back­grounds.

DDB cham­pi­ons those who advo­cate for inclu­sion and fight against the per­va­sive nature of racism and inequal­i­ties with­in the indus­try. We have made a promise on fur­ther­ing the progress on recruit­ing, rec­og­niz­ing, and retain­ing teams built on diver­si­ty.