Chris Beresford-Hill Loves an Idea That “Follows Its Fancy”

​Chris Beresford-Hill loves work that “does the one thing marketers are really uncomfortable with,” the Cannes Lions’ Entertainment jury president tells LBB. “The idea follows its fancy.”

That could involve going down a character development rabbit hole, pursuing a spin-off, or in the case of Timothee Chalamet and ‘Marty Supreme’, staging a 30-minute, “cringe-inducing” Zoom call that is “the most genius bit of branded entertainment” the global CCO at BBDO saw this past year. “Talk about an idea following its fancy.”

He’ll be looking for work that fully commits when he guides his jury room later this month. Because while ‘following fancy’ could be seen as “deeply indulgent,” it’s ultimately highly strategic: brands grow in fame and relevance when they give something to an audience, add to culture, and let the idea -- not the “marketer’s agenda” -- take charge.

“If you really want to be in a cultural space, then you need to play the right kind of role and you're not allowed to sit and enforce the 100 rules you have for a 15 second TV ad,” he says.

“The feats of engineering that TV commercials have become is really something. And so there's something very refreshing [that] in the entertainment world, you're a flop unless you're just magnetic. And to be magnetic, you've just got to be interested in what your audience desires. Do not overstay your welcome, do not overplay your hand, do not assume that anyone cares about your marketing checklist. If brands want to win in spaces like that, they're gonna unlearn a lot of habits and marketers are gonna get a lot better. So I think entertainment can sort of save us in a way.”

Unsurprisingly, he praises Netflix and other entertainment brands’ work in the space, musing perhaps they “don’t have the baggage of [other] marketers.” For non-entertainment brands, it’s “not even enough to do content that’s as good as Netflix” -- it’s a harder job again, because the brand needs to be subtly woven in, earn the right to play in the space, and deftly navigate playing its part while not obstructing the idea. “I realise this category is even harder as we talk about this.”

He was generous in his online voting, to “keep some things on the table that I’m not sure about”. But “the flag I want to plant is that if it has to be argued as entertaining, it isn't, and we move on. And it's gonna be harsh, but it's an important category and it can't just be entertaining ads. It's gotta be things that are really trying to survive in competition with Netflix and Spotify, podcasts and ‘New York Magazine’.

“I don't expect we'll be awarding nearly as many Lions as other categories, but I feel like we'll probably spend a long time debating and deliberating.”

Chris’ personal barometer for entertainment is “extreme”: he wants something that is “off the charts.”

“I personally don't have as much use for things that are funny. I have a lot of use for things that are hilarious. It's nice to feel a little something, but if I'm gonna feel something, I wanna cry and be reminded of childhood with my mother or something. So for me to be engaged and entertained on some emotional level, it has to be an 11 out of 10.”

In the context of his role as a CCO and jury president though, he can show more flexibility. Creative directors, after all, cannot only approve and make work exactly to their taste, or else “you’d be very, very limited.” The key, he explains, is understanding the ingredients of a good idea, “even if it’s not your cup of tea,” and trusting in others’ advocacy.

When he led the creative department at TBWA\Chiat\Day\New York in 2021, for example, he believed his ECDs when they were adamant Mountain Dew should recreate a lost Bob Ross episode. Chris wondered whether people still cared about the long-dead artist or if it was too kitschy. They convinced him. The PepsiCo project went viral.

So while the bar in the jury room will be incredibly high -- projects that compete against “shows on your watch list, events on your weekend calendar, something you've queued up on your iPhone for a long flight” -- he will be preoccupied with whether the work achieved what it set out to.

“I will place my extremism aside … sometimes I'm not the audience and therefore the tenor of the humour will be different. And so I can be a chameleon and shapeshift.”

Chris’ jury president biography on the Cannes Lions website is striking. It reads, “Chris is worldwide chief creative officer at BBDO, partnering with global CEO Nancy Reyes. Together they lead a network known for doing the most influential work with the biggest brands on the planet.” Why is it so important to introduce Nancy so immediately, as such key context to his own role?

“In my career, I've had two great partners,” Chris says. “One was my creative partner, Dan Lucey [now CCO and co-CEO of Havas New York], who I worked with for about seven years. He is my best friend. He's going to be over at my house in 15 minutes to come and hang out with me and my dog for an hour or two. It's like a marriage. We shared an office and knew everything about each other. We knew how to fight, we knew how to push each other's buttons, but we had the same drive, the same ambition.

“I just discovered a very different kind of partner in Nancy. Getting to the top of the organisation, you realise strategy is wildly important, our teams are wildly important, but a business mind and a creative mind hardwired together … it's just this dynamic that became the second great partnership of my career.”

The pair has reconfigured its global creative council to include the CEOs, in addition to its CCOs. That decision was born out of the business lens Nancy brings to creative conversations. And creative leaders ultimately need their CEOs’ buy-in to correctly value and protect creativity.

“I'm 46. I've known her since I was 23,” Chris continues. They worked together at Goodby Silverstein & Partners but didn’t know each other particularly well. Chris described himself as a “very hardworking but anonymous copywriter” and Nancy as “an account person at the same level, but everyone in the building knew she was the best.” A decade later, she hired him at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York. They clicked as a leadership duo. At the end of 2023, she hired him again, this time at BBDO. They act as “each other’s proxy.”

“It's great to roll as a duo. And for people to see that it's not creativity alone. It's not the money and the business alone. It's the magic of business and creativity.”