Brand agency BGG eyes expansion

The ATL-based experiential and digital firm leverages strategy, creative, design and production

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BGG is truly a creative agency. The company’s name stands for black, green and gold, signifying the co-founders’ Jamaican roots. Based in Northwest Atlanta, BGG works with local startups, billion-dollars companies and everyone in between. Co-creative director Ciera Tavana (of SOFIA XIV) has deep roots in the city’s creative community. She works alongside talents in the realms of music, art, design, and more. CL chatted with Tavana about the company’s new plans for expansion, some of upcoming projects and what else is on the horizon for them.

How did BGG Agency come about?

Mike McPherson and Hugh Francis are the co-founders of BGG, family members who came to Atlanta by way of Jamaica and then New York. ... Mike was a frustrated creative at The Home Depot and decided to take the leap into starting his own production company in August 2011, quickly grabbing Hugh, a banking executive from SunTrust Bank. This proved to be a brilliant move, creating a well-balanced dynamic of pragmatism and creative spontaneity made for a slow-growing, but healthy, company.  

How has it evolved from when it launched?

BGG began as a production company for video, photography and general digital content. The projects kept growing, and as a result so did their team, which is honestly just as much a community. BGG started off with the thought that the market for how-to and product videos would be able to sustain the new business because of the trend at the time, but over the years the company has evolved.

Over the past year, we’ve gone from product video to brand stories and now have expanded into experiential branding. This includes brand strategy, environmental design and set builds, pitch videos, music videos, photography art direction, graphic design, et al.

Who are some of the coolest projects you’ve worked with/on as of late?

Believe it or not, we make our most interesting work for the FinTech financial technology industry. This means digging into the future — what’s happening next, not what’s happening now. We’ve had week-long on location camping shoots for brand-aligned pitch videos, built replica branded environments across the East Coast for some of your favorite retailers, gone rogue in Central Park to grab the perfect shot with a moment’s notice from our client and, of course, flown drones while our subjects are fly fishing. None of this will ever be seen by the public, though — 90 percent of our work is highly private because the deals we are supporting are worth billions to our clients. It’s a creative risk we’re willing to take in order to do this work with fantastic clients.  

Tell me about the agency expansion.

We are expanding our 4,000-plus square-foot studio. We’re designing for our future. After about five years, lots of design iterations, and drive to support our creative community, we are expanding. We’ve knocked down walls to let in light, purging in the true sense of spring cleaning, refreshing our 30-foot cyc wall and converting our blue screen to a green screen. Hitchcock DB, our contractor we use for set builds, has been a huge help in the remodel.

What’s next for the company?

We believe in staying lean and agile while expanding our portfolio of work. This means keeping up the quality of our work, learning, getting better, meeting new talents, and most importantly, we’re ready to make some time and space or our own projects. We’ll likely be stretching our creative legs a bit more this year.

bggagency.com