DDB is famously named after its three male co-founders - Ned Doyle, Mac Dane and Bill Bernbach. Our agency’s highly influential founding female copy chief, Phyllis Robinson however, is a relatively obscure figure along the advertising hall of fame.

For International Women’s Day 2017, we decided to champion Phyllis Robinson for the huge, but little known contribution that she and other female creatives made to the agency.

On March 8th 2017, DDB rebranded worldwide to become DDB&R in her honor. From New York, to Auckland, to Hamburg, DDBers and the industry as a whole learnt about Phyllis Robinson’s legacy and the iconic work she was responsible for.

In only 24-hours and in every office across the global DDB network, the signs, reception desks, meeting rooms, and social media accounts were rebranded from DDB to DDB&R.

The change was affected everywhere, from a huge 3D typographical installation outside of DDB New York, right down to individual employees’ email signatures.

Our new logo let everyone know about Phyllis Robinson while on digital and social channels we also informed them about her work. A selection of iconic DDB advertising from print ads to TV spots, were re-written to reveal that Robinson or other female creatives were behind the classics.

During that 24-hour period, the impact of Phyllis Robinson on DDB’s legacy was celebrated and promoted in a way that achieved global recognition.

DDB employees and industry colleagues alike discovered that some of their favorite, iconic work was written by Phyllis Robinson and other female DDB creatives. Cementing our belief that talent has no gender.

In just 24 hours:

- 10.8M media impressions drove 1.2K visits to the rebranded DDB&R site.

- An additional 141 mentions in social across 6 out of 7 continents (penguins don’t have Twitter unfortunately) drove an additional reach of 671K impressions.

- Articles about DDB&R featured on key media outlets including: Creativity, Adweek, Campaign US, Media Post, Adage, Agency Spy, and Brandchannel.

- Tweeted and retweeted by industry legends like Lee Clow and Jeff Goodby.

- Celebrated by employees in every DDB office across the globe, from New York, to Spain, to South Africa.