South African creative Bridget Johnson has joined Boys+Girls as executive creative director. Johnson has worked with leading agencies in the RSA over the past 20 years, creating work for global brands and winning many awards along the way, including gongs at the Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD and Clios. She has also sat on major show juries.
It was while Johnson was judging D&AD that she first came across Boys+Girls. In 2018, she joined the board of The Creative Circle EXCO, a body which is dedicated to the transformation of creative people, product and perceptions in RSA. Most recently, she worked at The Riverbed Agency, the top black, female-owned agency in Southern Africa.
Among the top agencies Johnson worked with in RSA are M&C Saatchi, BBDO, TBWA and O&M, where her clients included Vodafone. Among her most admired work are Harley Davidson’s Bikes for Women and ‘Million Comforts’, a campaign to supply sanitary pads to young girls in rural parts of South Africa who cannot afford to buy their own.
Boys+Girls’ clients include Three, Ulster Bank, Diageo, Skoda and Energia. The agency has a line-up of jurors at international awards. Johnson and creative director Rory Hamilton will both sit on Cannes Lions juries, while Laurence O’Byrne is on the creative effectiveness panel at The One Show and Margaret Gilsenan is a juror for Effies Global Best of the Best.
The agency recently rolled out a social campaign for PPE manufacturer the Good Mask Company. Called ‘Dress to suppress’, the ads highlight the need to wear a mask in a pandemic. Unlike cloth and surgical face coverings, the KN95 face mask protects the user and people near them. The ads feature three naked models wearing nothing but a mask.
The thought-provoking yet tasteful images were shot by 2017 Photographer of the Year, Alex Telfer. Observing social distancing protocols, Telfer worked closely with each model, to capture both their vulnerability and their inner power. The models are everyday men and women who, like most people, are worried about how Covid-19 might affect them.
