Objective: Launch BBH’s new brand promise, “Partners in your success”, while empowering employees to share stories and supporting their internal video team to meet rising demand across the business.
Synopsis: We produced a cultural film featuring authentic stories from BBH teams in New York, London, and Krakow. Careful coaching and compliance expertise ensured powerful storytelling, and our ongoing partnership now provides BBH with dedicated production support and scalable video delivery.
Results: The film premiered to outstanding feedback at BBH’s global Town Hall, strengthening brand culture and engagement. Our continued collaboration supports regular series like 4×4 Future Focus and standout projects including a film series with ballet star Misty Copeland.
Background
Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) is the oldest private investment bank in the US known for its client-first, long-term, stable and partnership-driven ethos. With around 6,000 people across 18 offices globally, video is a key part of its internal and external communication strategies.
After months of dedicated work, BBH had developed its brand promise and was ready to share it with the world. Although they had their own internal video team, they were looking for an external video partner to deliver this campaign and help scale their video capacity.
The challenge
BBH came to Big Button looking to raise awareness of the new proposition — “Partners in your success” — and demonstrate what sets it apart in a crowded marketplace. It was a new approach for them, so they were looking for a video partner to help bring structure, clarity and confidence to a crucial campaign.
The campaign also had to equip and empower BBH employees to use new brand language and share memorable stories to engage clients and prospects.
But it didn’t stop there. This was the first campaign of many for BBH, and elsewhere their marketing and internal video team was getting more video requests than they could manage. With this campaign complete, the next challenge was how to meet this ever-rising demand for video content within the business.
The approach
As this was a cultural film, it was important to hear first-hand from the people at BBH. We filmed in three global locations: New York, London and Krakow. Discovery calls with contributors took place before the shoot to find out the best stories. We were looking for anecdotes and storytelling abilities as well as confidence and energy, and it became evident during filming that this step ended up playing a key role in the success of the campaign.
While the unwavering focus was on storytelling, we were also mindful of compliance and client confidentiality. Fortunately, we were able to use our experience in the sector to coach each contributor and work with them in the interview to tell the most impactful stories without breaking any compliance rules.
The project was a success (more details below) and so we moved onto how to boost the capacity of their internal team. Organisation was key, and a dedicated Big Button producer works with the team through constant communication and shared project management tools to manage and deliver every request — from minor edit tweaks to full filming days — in a cost-effective way.
The outcome
After a close collaboration in the edit to craft the story, the culture film was a huge success and received very well at its premiere at a company-wide Town Hall:
“I wanted to share that the video got excellent feedback. The segment that has been most memorable and earned the most love, based on polling, is the snow scene and story. The diversity represented in the video has also been well received.
Thank you for your insights and overall goodwill in producing the video and, ultimately, helping shape our culture.” — Kimberley Majury, Head of Firmwide Marketing and Brand, BBH
The support for their internal team continues to flourish. Following a change in their video personnel, we worked closely with BBH to navigate the transition and made sure they could continue to deliver quality video to their stakeholders including their regular series, 4×4 Future Focus. We have strong relationships with their teams and together we’ve established a reliable set of systems and processes to meet the large volume of video requests.
One recent highlight was working with pioneering ballet dancer Misty Copeland on a series of films in which she talks about her remarkable life, art, and life as a world-class ballet dancer:
It’s a constant work-in-progress and the partnership is evolving. Content is already being repurposed for different channels to ensure maximum reach along with closed captions for accessibility. There are conversations about consolidating everything into a single set of video brand guidelines for consistency across internal and external agencies.
Why Big Button is the right partner for BBH
Big Button helps BBH bring its brand to life through authentic creative storytelling, global production expertise, and scalable support — delivering effective films while empowering their teams to meet ever-growing video demands.
