Creativity from a Social-First Perspective
Bianca Eglinton is a creative director at UK agency BMB. Ever since she was asked ‘do you know how to Facebook?’ she’s been creating content and sharing her social amplification wisdom with the people at the agencies and brands she’s worked with.
She has been to the Edinburgh Fringe every year since 2009 and was in two Harry Potter films (but doesn’t like to talk about it, so that didn’t make it into this interview). Professionally she’s worked for McCann Birmingham, TASTE PR, The Brooklyn Brothers and VCCP Kin, before joining BMB in 2019 as a social content manager. Since early 2022 she’s been a creative director there, working on campaigns such as Breast Cancer Now’s fourth-wall-breaking gut punch ‘Real Talk’ as well as the pioneering WhatsApp-based drama series ‘The Chat’.
LBB’s Alex Reeves caught up with Bianca to find out more about her perspective on the industry and the work she’s done.
LBB> You started your career in PR, moved on to social media and then last year became a creative director. That's not a standard creative career path. How do you think it shapes the way you work and what you're mostly concerned with?
Bianca> Starting my career in PR gave me a holistic view of the creative process. In PR you are the account person, the strategist, the producer and the creative, so it gave me a really great insight into the different roles I then encountered when I moved away from PR, into social content creation and later into advertising. It also means that my approach to briefs tends to be less traditional. I try to ensure that, when a brief and budget allows, the social element of a campaign is fit for purpose and is inspired by current trends, culture and platform capabilities. I’m highly allergic to a one-size-fits-all approach to campaign assets.
LBB> What projects or clients earlier in your career had the biggest impact on how you work?
Bianca> Before joining BMB, I worked at VCCP, where I really began to direct my career towards a creative path. I joined the editorial team and became the voice for Domino’s Pizza in the UK and ROI on social media. This was where I had my first real exposure to traditional advertising, and I worked closely with above-the-line teams to give their TV ads a social-first spin. This process taught me a lot about how campaigns fit together and this introduction to creative roles gave me a lot of the insights that inform how I work today.
LBB> Now you're a manager of other creatives, how would you describe your leadership style?
Bianca> One of the key things that influences my leadership style is that I try to maintain an element of objectivity when I’m feeding back on creative. I try not to become too prescriptive and avoid asking creatives to turn their ideas into my ideas, but rather look for ways to build on what they have and give them the space to maintain control over the work as much as possible.
LBB> What is the biggest shift that you've seen in how brands use social channels in the time you've worked with them?
Bianca> The biggest shift is in the way that brands have slowly, but surely, placed a much higher value on social channels and the role they play within their campaigns. At the start of my career, the use of social media for brands was in its infancy, and looking back it is amazing to think that the old cliché of branded social communications being the intern’s job was sort of true. The brands I worked with at the start of my career were perfectly happy having an entry-level PR exec in control of their channels, teaching myself week-by-week a new skill on Photoshop and using it to cobble together always-on content plans, with no real strategy behind them.
To let you in on a secret, the first pieces of content I made for a client consisted of fairly low-resolution, royalty-free stock imagery, which I copied and pasted into a Microsoft Word document and added PNGs of the client’s products to. I really was just making it up as I went along, and so was the rest of the industry. Thankfully, we’ve come on a lot since then, and there’s much more thought that goes into social content these days.
LBB> Is there a brand you've never worked with that you particularly admire for its use of social content?
Bianca> It feels like an obvious one, but Ryanair have pretty much nailed it on TikTok. They’re not afraid to acknowledge the things that people criticise them for and manage to turn those criticisms into virtues by tackling them with a sense of humour and a bit of a no f***s given attitude. They jump on trends without feeling cringy and put their own spin on meme culture and TikTok creativity.
LBB> What work have you recently been most proud of and why?
Bianca> I’m very proud of the work that we’ve been doing with the UK’s leading breast cancer charity, Breast Cancer Now. Last year, I wrote its TV ad, ‘Real Talk’, an exploration of what goes on inside people’s heads when they are experiencing breast cancer. In the ad, our protagonist breaks the fourth wall to express to the audience how she really feels when dealing with the well-meaning platitudes of friends and family. We were very pleased to pick up a Creative Circle Award for the ad earlier this year. I also acted as creative director on ‘The Chat’, the UK’s first WhatsApp drama series, which highlighted the importance of speaking openly about breast cancer through the messages, voice notes and videos of a friendship group, in which one of them is diagnosed with breast cancer. We were delighted to be awarded with two Cannes Lions for this work and I’m so excited to be continuing our relationship with Breast Cancer Now this year.
LBB> What's inspired you most recently?
Bianca> I recently made my annual trip to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I have been going every year since 2010 (excluding 2020, for obvious reasons) to fill up on arts and creativity. I am endlessly inspired by the determination of the performers; taking a show up to the Fringe is no mean feat, especially given this year’s rising accommodation costs. But I also find the content of the shows I see a source of invaluable inspiration. During my 12-day stay, I managed to squeeze in 63 shows and, whilst I can’t say what it will be, there will no doubt be a moment within at least one of those shows that will one day become an indirect spark for a future idea I have. I love not knowing yet what will become the source of my inspiration, but I always come away buzzing with the seeds of potential new ideas, and that’s a really great feeling.
