Now, after a period of rapid expansion in which it opened three new offices and became 49 per cent-owned by the Leo Burnett ad group, BBH clearly is no longer a boutique agency. In fact, it has been on a tear, winning big accounts from the likes of Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, Microsoft and the World Gold Council.

Working for such heavyweights traditionally has been a job that belonged to large networks such as WPP Group's Young & Rubicam and J Walter Thompson, the sort of old-school agencies that BBH once aspired not to be. That has led some industry observers to wonder if BBH has lost its soul.

But members of the new management team in London all have been with BBH for at least a decade, and they say the agency's iconoclastic personality is intact. "We all know where this agency is coming from. None of us wants to change that," says Mr Jim Carroll, the 36-year-old head of planning. Adds Mr John O'Keefe, the 39-year-old executive creative director: "We have a creative track record created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and I'm not going to do anything to tarnish that."

Together with managing director Ms Gwyn Jones, 34, Messrs Carroll and O'Keefe are known within BBH as the "holy trinity" - and they are now aggressively wooing, and winning, some of the most sought-after multinational accounts. "It's like catching buses," jokes Mr Jones, in explaining how several big accounts arrived all at once.

To add to the agency's firepower, earlier this week BBH said it was hiring Mr Kevin McKeon, 43, from Interpublic Group's Lowe Lintas to become the agency's executive creative director in New York, a move that is likely to attract attention among advertising's heavy hitters. At Lowe Lintas, Mr McKeon worked for clients such as Heineken, United Parcel Service, DuPont and Sony.

Among recent campaigns for multinationals, BBH has created Johnnie Walker's global "Walking Man" ads for corporate parent Diageo, and also produced irreverent spots for Boddingtons beer on behalf of Belgian brewer Interbrew.

BBH also is expected to handle the $75 million account to launch Microsoft's long-awaited Xbox video-game console in Europe, a $150 million global advertising account for Ericsson and a $10 million account for the World Gold Council.

The winning streak at BBH comes after a stretch of introspection and management shake-ups at the agency. As recently as 1996, BBH had only a single office in London. Its strategy was to provide international advertising out of a centralised location-distinctly different from bigger competitors' far-flung advertising networks. But after months of discussion, BBH opened a Singapore office in 1996 and a smaller satellite in Tokyo to service its account with Levi Strauss in Japan. The next year, the agency sold a 49 per cent stake to Leo Burnett Worldwide, now a part of Bcom3 Group. In 1998, the agency opened an office in New York, and Mr John Hegarty, the agency's co-founder and creative director, left London to run it.

With the agency decentralised and not quite as independent, the flavour of BBH seemed to be evolving. London's notoriously gossipy ad community whispered loudly that the once-adventurous shop was getting too big too fast, and losing its bite. Six of the agency's rising stars left to form a new London start-up called Soul, whose name seemed to emphasise the contrast to BBH's perceived starchiness.

At the same time, BBH got caught up in Internet fever and pitched for dotcom business. That dispersed BBH's creative resources and caused staff members "to take their eye off the ball," concedes Mr O'Keefe, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, his feet propped up on a chair in front of him.So BBH took a hard look at what was happening inside and outside the agency.

With the high-profile departures, "all of a sudden, we realised it was down to us," says Mr Jones, referring to the management threesome. "This agency needed to build a platform for the next stage of development. We realised we needed to perform," and began the latest push to land lucrative multinational accounts.

The relationship with Leo Burnett has proved central to the new strategy, because BBH is now relying more and more on Burnett's media-buying agency Starcom Worldwide for distribution of its international business. Big clients seem to like the agency's new mix of creativity and clout.

"We were looking for a very innovative agency that has a high level of creativity, and a lot of support," says Mr Bo Albertson, marketing director for Ericsson. The agency's new global network, he adds, "was very important" in winning the Ericsson account.

Even defectors acknowledge that the agency is on a roll. "It's great that they are winning lots of multinational business," says Mr Bruce Crouch, creative director of breakaway agency Soul. "That is the kind of agency they want to become."

The Wall Street Journal