Stefano Hatfield On Advertising

BBH flies high - but it won't be long before Saatchi takes off again

That business is estimated to be worth some $200m in billings, twice as large as British Airways - but it doesn't have the same emotional resonance, unless of course you happen to work at JWT or Lowe, the losing agencies. Persil is a hell of a loss for JWT London. It had created admirable and category-leading work on the brand over the years, particularly in the poster medium. Unilever also pays decent remuneration. These are the brands that networks such as JWT and Lowe are built on.

Suddenly, BBH, without a global network of its own, has some $500m of Unilever business, these new brands adding to the existing Surf and Lynx brands, among others. Unilever, which praised BBH's "strategic insight, creativity and vision for the future of the brands" will be hoping for creative work as good as that on Lynx (called Axe in other markets).

This Unilever success, coupled with BA, really takes BBH to another level - particularly in New York, where it now becomes an agency of real substance. And, in truth, unlike when other agencies land major pieces of business, there is relatively little resentment of its success.

BBH is many ad execs' second-favourite agency after their own. Nigel Bogle, John Hegarty (the retired, much-missed John Bartle), Simon Sherwood and co are generally regarded as being on the side of the good guys, always trying their best to create mould-breaking advertising that sells. It's an agency of rare integrity and commitment to core principles. It even has principles held by its original principals!

Its successes are legion: from Levi's to Häagen Dazs, Audi to Boddingtons, Xbox and Lynx, and many others too numerous to mention. Even its comparatively rare failures are spectacular: the NatWest soap opera, Allied Dunbar's dancing tramps.

Don't believe all the spin about the BA pitch being won on cost. BBH charges a premium price. I should know. It once pitched for our account when I was launching the free newspaper Metro in New York. It was twice as expensive as some of the other agencies, with insights twice as acute. Sadly, we weren't brave enough to hire the agency.

BA was always going to move, initially because marketing director Martin George and the incoming chief executive, Willie Walsh, wanted a break with the past, and to show there were no sacred cows, and subsequently because, by all accounts, BBH produced an outstanding pitch.

Similarly, the Unilever business was won entirely on merit. Like BA, it's BBH's insights that Unilever values as much as superb creative executions. In this respect, the likes of Nigel Bogle and the supersmart, superfunny global head of planning, Emma Cookson, in New York (a Unilever favourite), have roles as significant as, say, Rosie Arnold, creative director on the Lynx work here in London.

BBH will be gracious in victory - as M & C Saatchi certainly has been in defeat. It knows that there is a huge legacy of work on both new clients that it must live up to. BA, in particular, will be logistically and creatively demanding (day in, day out retail work is not regarded as BBH's strongest suit), and it knows that the likes of JWT's ultimate boss, Sir Martin Sorrell, vanquished in both pitches, does not usually take defeat lying down. But that's for another day. This week, to the victor, the spoils: discounted flights with bags of clean laundry.

WHAT WILL M & C Saatchi do now? Those writing off the brothers and their ad agency clearly do not know them. Between them, Bill Muirhead, Jeremy Sinclair, David Kershaw, Simon Dicketts, Moray Maclennan, Tim Duffy, Graham Fink and co have more airline experience than the average airline. They still have a major airline account, Qantas, in Asia, which might inhibit what they can target, but expect them to land another airline account here within six months of their contract being up with BA. And, no, not Virgin, for whom Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y & R has done an equally outstanding job - not that this seems to matter too much these days.

The M & C Saatchi double-page spread in last Wednesday's Times by James Lowther, pointing out BA's passage from "bloody awful" in 1982 to "the world's most profitable airline", was a compelling pitch, right down to the classy "Now taking new airline bookings" pay-off.

A WEEK after IPG pledges to hand back $250m to clients as part of a move to greater transparency, it appears Lowe London and Initiative Media is to give a cheque in the region of £3m to Tesco - as if Tesco really has the greater need! Stunning.

I cannot understand why this story is not getting more coverage. Previously, we were able to dismiss the repayments as largely a matter for the Turks, Greeks and other Mediterranean and Far Eastern countries, with their strange accounting practices. Now the issue of transparency in the UK is in the spotlight.

This is the topic of conversation around town - as it should be. The consensus seems that the affair would never have come out this way at an Omnicom run by John Wren, or a WPP run by Sir Martin Sorrell. It is difficult to find fault with this view.

The whole IPG restatement and subsequent repayment saga was handled in such a way as to only create more damaging headlines and arouse further suspicion. For about the sixth week in a row, I can only express sympathy with the poor staff on the ground who have to make sense of this mess. But it would be naive in the extreme to believe that this is an issue that applies to Interpublic Group agencies alone.

Hatfield's Best In Show: Renault Clio

It may seem strange to pick this ad, given that I don't really like it. The new Renault Clio campaign, however, which ditches Thierry Henry for that bloke off Holby City and a cheeky French babe, isn't designed to appease advertising writers. The ad, in which a couple compare the relative benefits of British and French culture, is aimed squarely at the public, taking no risks anywhere. The French girl/Brit boy schtick is hardly new, nor is the soap-opera advertising romance (think Nescafé Gold Blend). This spot manages to play off the old Papa-Nicole campaign while evoking Audi, as she says "French car" and he says "British designers". It is all very obvious, right down to the nudge-nudge ending, but I have no doubt that it will sell container-loads of the product being clearly advertised. And that - lest we forget - is what advertising's supposed to do.