For an ad shop that hasn’t yet reached its tenth birth­day, 72andSunny is head­ing straight through the stratos­phere with its lat­est client, Google Chrome.  The inter­net leviathan is report­ed to have cho­sen the agency for a new cam­paign on its brows­er, even though much of its mes­sag­ing to date has come from Pub­li­cis Groupe’s BBH.

One shop’s loss is another’s gain

Both online adver­tis­ing agen­cies remain tight-lipped about the new devel­op­ment but it undoubt­ed­ly rep­re­sents a major coup for the SoCal-based shop, which recent­ly won AdAge’s 2013 “Agency of the Year” award.

Curi­ous art direc­tors, copy­writ­ers and account man­agers eager to know why Google chose the shop should note that BBH lost some key cre­ative tal­ent recent­ly, sev­er­al of whom had been work­ing on the Google account.  Ben Mal­bon, a Found­ing Part­ner at BBH Labs and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion at BBH recent­ly jumped shipped to join Google Cre­ative Labs; he’d played a major role in cul­ti­vat­ing the BBH-Google rela­tion­ship.  He was fol­lowed to the same des­ti­na­tion by BBH’s New York cre­ative Jesse Juriga.

Onwards and upwards

2012 turned out to be some­thing of a bonan­za for 72andSunny, with its ros­ter expand­ing mas­sive­ly through organ­ic growth and new busi­ness (billings soared by 66 per cent). The shop was behind the cun­ning “The Next Thing is Already Here” cam­paign for Sam­sung last fall, bril­liant­ly timed to coin­cide with the launch of the iPhone.  The ads fea­tured Apple fans queu­ing up for the new iPhone and drew atten­tion to the fact many of the most tout­ed fea­tures on the gad­get were already present on Sam­sung devices.  The mes­sage?  Don’t be an iSheep.

Its work on Activision’s most pop­u­lar game “Call of Duty” set the enter­tain­ment fran­chise record in 2011 – then broke it the next year.  It’s moved for­ward in leaps and bounds, despite the laid back Cal­i­forn­ian imagery (staff walk around in its work­space wear­ing flip flops, yoga pants, sweat­shirts and shorts, and there’s even a BBQ patio and a beer fridge).

From start­ing as a project agency, the shop grew to agency-of record for Activi­sion, then dig­i­tal-agency-of-record for Sonos, then ful­ly inte­grat­ed AOR on Carl’s Jr. burg­ers and Hard­ees.  And now it can claim Google as one of the big names on its assign­ment list, for whom it’s tipped to work on Project Re-Brief’s next incarnation.