With considerable vision and foresight, Joseph 'JB' Brockdorff founded BPC in 1958. He envisaged that an organisation providing first-rate communications services could build mutually profitable long-term relationships with its client partners. This insight was the foundation stone on which BPC was built and since then, the company grew from a relatively modest advertising operation into Malta's leading marketing communications agency. Originally a one-man operation, BPC now employs a full-time staff of over 40 and has grown into an organisation with specialist skills in all aspects of marketing communications. Here, he reflects on the evolution of the company and the communications industry in Malta and shares some of his insights about the past and the future.
The digital, and increasingly globalised, world of the 21st century is characterised by pervasive communications, and advertising is very much a part of our everyday experience.
Malta is certainly no exception and as society becomes more media-oriented, all forms of commercial communication are in fact playing a crucial role in the free flow of information which, ultimately, enables consumers to make informed choices. Of course, we now take the advertising and marketing communications very much for granted, and it is almost impossible to conceive a world without the logos, brands, billboards and banners that surround each one of us.
In truth, advertising agencies as we know them today first appeared towards the end of the 19th century. Though the industry had made considerable progress by the middle of the 20th century, particularly in developed and industrialised nations like the US and the UK, this was not of course the case in Malta where advertising in the late 1950s was still in its early infancy.
Though there were indeed some branded products and services in Malta, many of which are actually still around, these were not marketed as intensively as they are today.
In any case communications campaigns, and even media bookings, for these branded products would have been handled by the exporting company, normally in the UK, rather than the distributor here. Therefore most advertising campaigns at that time were imported entirely from abroad - hardly surprising when one considers the largely import-oriented Maltese economy.
Exporting client companies, however, started to figure out that foreign campaigns were not always suitable and needed adaptation for use in the Maltese market.
Other social, cultural and historical factors were slowly and surely contributing to a new economic scenario. A number of Maltese companies gradually developed. Providing new branded goods and services, these had no foreign head office to turn to for marketing assistance.
All this fuelled the demand for modern marketing and selling techniques, knowledge that was locally relevant to consumers here, and a Malta-based communications capability.
And this in turn presented many companies in Malta with a problem, as there was very little external support they could turn to.
They say that every problem presents an opportunity if seen from the right perspective and I guess this was one of those situations, and that is how BPC was born. I suppose today, with our more sophisticated marketing jargon, we'd call it "identifying and satisfying a business need". Whatever one calls it, it seemed to work.
It was, of course, not always plain sailing, and sometimes it felt like we were a sort of voice shouting in the proverbial wilderness.
For a communications agency to be truly useful to client organisations, clients need to share knowledge about their particular market situation and future marketing plans, and this entails a high degree of trust.
We always realised that we would only grow and prosper if our clients succeeded and as the years passed, more and more people understood what we stood for and what we were trying to achieve, mutually beneficial relationships.
Our success was not limited to Malta. In what was then a major account "coup" we persuaded the US-owned Esso Libya, at that time one of the world's most profitable companies, to appoint BPC, rather than a London-based agency. We handled this client for many years, and at that time maintained branch offices in both London and Tripoli to support them.
In many ways, our agency's history traces the evolution and at times almost breath-taking developments which the marketing communications industry in Malta has witnessed. Naturally, the rapid development of the advertising industry in Malta occurred in parallel with the development in media in Malta.
Looking back, it's satisfying to observe that BPC is the only agency established at that time which is not only still fully operational, but also a leader in its industry. Perhaps a key contributing factor has been our single-minded focus on our core business ‒ we have, for example, shied away from what we thought of as conflicting areas, such as media ownership.
A communications agency is all about people, of course, and initially finding human resources to deal with our growing client list was quite a challenge.
In some cases we had to bring in expatriates to develop and train Maltese talent. Slowly but surely we set up the various departments providing the specialist skills clients needed, like market research and production of television commercials. Our work in the early days was truly pioneering and we produced the first-ever television commercial made in Malta, for example.
Of course much has changed ‒ tracing the development in the graphic studio and the techniques and media used for press advertising is enough to help one visualise the sort of developments experienced by the agency as a whole.
Way back in the 1960s, advertising was all in black and white. Early in the decade advertisements were mainly set in the letter-press by the newspaper concerned and at times included line work graphics using "blocks". Later on half-tone illustrations using zinc or plastic blocks were used.
In the late 1970s local newspapers introduced offset printing, but advertisements were still all in black and white. Meanwhile offset printing became available and this was used for brochures and point-of- sale material in colour.
In the 1980s full colour printing became fully established. Advertisers made full use of this in their point-of-sale material. Newspapers started by inserting colour advertisements printed separately from their paper. Daily and Sunday papers started using the so-called "spot-colour".
In October 1989 The Times started printing advertisements in four-colour, resulting in a full colour reproduction. This was soon followed by the two other newspapers publishing at the time. But colour advertisements were restricted to a few pages a day.
In the 1990s all newspapers were offering wider use of colour advertisements. During this decade we saw the introduction of magazines distributed with Sunday papers. During this decade computers became more widely used in graphic studios. All this gave more impetus in the creation of colour advertising.
More recent years have seen the introduction of online media, partly the "e" equivalent of the newspapers and partly a cross-over from the broadcasting media.
From black and white "letterpress" advertisements in printed newspapers to moving and full colour audiovisual banners and clips on online sites ‒ that sort of spans the change we've been part of over the past five decades. But significant as all these developments have been, I think the sort of change in store over the next five decades will totally eclipse them.
We now live in an age where technology is driving change at a rapid rate. And our own country, far from the relatively isolated backwater it was in the 1950s, is now very much part of mainstream developments.
Ironically the proliferation of new media, the fragmentation of the reach of traditional media, ever-busier lifestyles and expanding consumer choice may create communications problems for client organisations attempting to cut through the clutter.
But are these really problems or opportunities? Seeing things from the right perspective - the very spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship - is as important now as it was when we started.
Looking to the future and the communication dynamics that lie ahead, one thing is certain - it's going to be an exciting journey.
The digital, and increasingly globalised, world of the 21st century is characterised by pervasive communications, and advertising is very much a part of our everyday experience.
Malta is certainly no exception and as society becomes more media-oriented, all forms of commercial communication are in fact playing a crucial role in the free flow of information which, ultimately, enables consumers to make informed choices. Of course, we now take the advertising and marketing communications very much for granted, and it is almost impossible to conceive a world without the logos, brands, billboards and banners that surround each one of us.
In truth, advertising agencies as we know them today first appeared towards the end of the 19th century. Though the industry had made considerable progress by the middle of the 20th century, particularly in developed and industrialised nations like the US and the UK, this was not of course the case in Malta where advertising in the late 1950s was still in its early infancy.
Though there were indeed some branded products and services in Malta, many of which are actually still around, these were not marketed as intensively as they are today.
In any case communications campaigns, and even media bookings, for these branded products would have been handled by the exporting company, normally in the UK, rather than the distributor here. Therefore most advertising campaigns at that time were imported entirely from abroad - hardly surprising when one considers the largely import-oriented Maltese economy.
Exporting client companies, however, started to figure out that foreign campaigns were not always suitable and needed adaptation for use in the Maltese market.
Other social, cultural and historical factors were slowly and surely contributing to a new economic scenario. A number of Maltese companies gradually developed. Providing new branded goods and services, these had no foreign head office to turn to for marketing assistance.
All this fuelled the demand for modern marketing and selling techniques, knowledge that was locally relevant to consumers here, and a Malta-based communications capability.
And this in turn presented many companies in Malta with a problem, as there was very little external support they could turn to.
They say that every problem presents an opportunity if seen from the right perspective and I guess this was one of those situations, and that is how BPC was born. I suppose today, with our more sophisticated marketing jargon, we'd call it "identifying and satisfying a business need". Whatever one calls it, it seemed to work.
It was, of course, not always plain sailing, and sometimes it felt like we were a sort of voice shouting in the proverbial wilderness.
For a communications agency to be truly useful to client organisations, clients need to share knowledge about their particular market situation and future marketing plans, and this entails a high degree of trust.
We always realised that we would only grow and prosper if our clients succeeded and as the years passed, more and more people understood what we stood for and what we were trying to achieve, mutually beneficial relationships.
Our success was not limited to Malta. In what was then a major account "coup" we persuaded the US-owned Esso Libya, at that time one of the world's most profitable companies, to appoint BPC, rather than a London-based agency. We handled this client for many years, and at that time maintained branch offices in both London and Tripoli to support them.
In many ways, our agency's history traces the evolution and at times almost breath-taking developments which the marketing communications industry in Malta has witnessed. Naturally, the rapid development of the advertising industry in Malta occurred in parallel with the development in media in Malta.
Looking back, it's satisfying to observe that BPC is the only agency established at that time which is not only still fully operational, but also a leader in its industry. Perhaps a key contributing factor has been our single-minded focus on our core business ‒ we have, for example, shied away from what we thought of as conflicting areas, such as media ownership.
A communications agency is all about people, of course, and initially finding human resources to deal with our growing client list was quite a challenge.
In some cases we had to bring in expatriates to develop and train Maltese talent. Slowly but surely we set up the various departments providing the specialist skills clients needed, like market research and production of television commercials. Our work in the early days was truly pioneering and we produced the first-ever television commercial made in Malta, for example.
Of course much has changed ‒ tracing the development in the graphic studio and the techniques and media used for press advertising is enough to help one visualise the sort of developments experienced by the agency as a whole.
Way back in the 1960s, advertising was all in black and white. Early in the decade advertisements were mainly set in the letter-press by the newspaper concerned and at times included line work graphics using "blocks". Later on half-tone illustrations using zinc or plastic blocks were used.
In the late 1970s local newspapers introduced offset printing, but advertisements were still all in black and white. Meanwhile offset printing became available and this was used for brochures and point-of- sale material in colour.
In the 1980s full colour printing became fully established. Advertisers made full use of this in their point-of-sale material. Newspapers started by inserting colour advertisements printed separately from their paper. Daily and Sunday papers started using the so-called "spot-colour".
In October 1989 The Times started printing advertisements in four-colour, resulting in a full colour reproduction. This was soon followed by the two other newspapers publishing at the time. But colour advertisements were restricted to a few pages a day.
In the 1990s all newspapers were offering wider use of colour advertisements. During this decade we saw the introduction of magazines distributed with Sunday papers. During this decade computers became more widely used in graphic studios. All this gave more impetus in the creation of colour advertising.
More recent years have seen the introduction of online media, partly the "e" equivalent of the newspapers and partly a cross-over from the broadcasting media.
From black and white "letterpress" advertisements in printed newspapers to moving and full colour audiovisual banners and clips on online sites ‒ that sort of spans the change we've been part of over the past five decades. But significant as all these developments have been, I think the sort of change in store over the next five decades will totally eclipse them.
We now live in an age where technology is driving change at a rapid rate. And our own country, far from the relatively isolated backwater it was in the 1950s, is now very much part of mainstream developments.
Ironically the proliferation of new media, the fragmentation of the reach of traditional media, ever-busier lifestyles and expanding consumer choice may create communications problems for client organisations attempting to cut through the clutter.
But are these really problems or opportunities? Seeing things from the right perspective - the very spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship - is as important now as it was when we started.
Looking to the future and the communication dynamics that lie ahead, one thing is certain - it's going to be an exciting journey.