BBH to poll staff on taking pay cut

BBH, the advertising agency, is hoping to avoid the mass redundancies facing many marketing companies by asking staff, in effect, to take a voluntary pay cut.

The agency behind Audi’s “Vorsprung durch Technik” and Levi’s campaigns has asked about 400 employees to vote on whether to take nine days’ unpaid leave this year, equivalent to a 3.5 per cent pay cut.

BBH froze board pay last summer and across the agency in January, budgeting for a 10 per cent fall in revenues this year.

The agency is also forgoing attending the ad industry’s biggest festival in June, the week-long Cannes Lions event, which awards creative excellence and is characterised by extravagant parties.

Publicis , the French holding company, has a 49 per cent stake in BBH. Founded by John Bartle, Nigel Bogle and Sir John Hegarty, it is one of the UK’s largest independently owned agencies with estimated 2008 billings of £236.5m, ranking it fourth overall after AMV BBDO, McCann Erickson and JWT.

BBH’s move is in contrast to swift headcount cuts at larger agency groups such as WPP and Aegis.

Ben Fennell, UK chief executive of BBH, described such moves as “hatchet” cuts. “We want to make redundancies absolutely our last option ... If you are accountable to the City, you have to take a hatchet to costs right now and make redundancies and divest in quality. We are going to go the other way.”