Rick Brim is no fan of agency mantras – the pithy descriptions the advertising industry tends to come up with to define itself. But despite finding them “really naff”, he realised it might be useful to articulate what adam&eveDDB, the agency he joined in 2013, stands for today.

The company is currently on something of a march, or perhaps a waltz, around the globe, adding offices in Berlin, New York and, most recently, San Francisco to its long-standing London space in the past two years. The New York office came about after a merger with DDB NY and perhaps holds the most significance for Brim due to its heritage.

“We merged with DDB New York last year. It was a strange experience as a creative. You feel this sense of romance as, historically, this is Bill Bernbach’s place. I’ve never been a person to look back and quote Bernbachian statements, but when we opened New York, I was inspired by his legacy. He founded the agency on principles based on putting humanity at the core of everything we create, work and interact with, and this is still very relevant.”

Before the expansion, Brim enjoyed the looseness that the London office had: “What I’ve loved about adam&eve is the chaos of it. We’ve never really sat back and tried to organise it, we’ve just sort of gone with it,” he says. “It was never a conscious decision to make it into a brand, although after a while we felt we had something.”