BFT'S MAJOR METROPOLITAN TALENT WORKS FOR REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS—AT REGIONAL RATES

BFT International is a full service branding, marketing, advertising and communication agency. The company's U.S. headquarters is in Portland, Maine, with affiliates in New York (NY), San Francisco (CA), Evergreen (CO), Topeka (KS), London (UK), Ottawa (ON), Montreal (QC), Saint John (NB), and associates across America. The agency was founded in 1992 by a Young & Rubicam team.

In addition to being a 'one-stop-shop' for all categories of products and services, BFT International is the only marketing communication agency in the United States with a specialization in Aviation Marketing—covering legacy airlines; independent airlines; regional, national hub and international airports; aviation suppliers and dealerships; aircraft manufacturers, and FBOs.

The Agency's senior management's pedigree includes key positions at the world's most prestigious agencies headquartered in New York, Chicago, London and Paris—agency names that are the gurus of our business: BBDO, DDB, FCB, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi, Y&R—and working with the world's biggest brands:

  • American Airlines
  • Air France
  • Apple
  • BP
  • British Airways
  • Cole Haan
  • Converse
  • Dupont
  • Foster Grant
  • General Foods
  • Gillette
  • GlaxoSmithKline
  • Honda
  • Jaeger
  • John Deere
  • Johnnie Walker
  • L.L. Bean
  • Lilly
  • P&G
  • Philips
  • Northwest Airlines
  • Ocean Spray
  • Selfridges
  • T.J. Maxx
  • Unilever
  • United Artists
  • Volkswagon

While advertising agencies often position and brand their clients in respective marketplaces, they are invariably bad at positioning themselves in their own marketplace. So when BFT launched it undertook a long and self-evaluating review of exactly what the new agency could offer.

We came to the realization that we had listened to U.S. marketers make sweeping assumptions about the U.K. believing that, because Britain and America 'broadly' speak the same language, both countries have pretty much the same values and perceptions. That can be true in some circumstances but mostly it is not. U.S. brands are promoted differently in different U.S. regions but when promoted abroad to English speaking nations that often does not happen. This is very odd as American brands are not usually promoted the same way they are in the U.S. to a foreign-speaking audience in, say, Germany or Italy.

Therefore, BFT was launched as the agency that specialized in assisting U.S. marketers to launch their products and services in the U.K. and Europe with (as was our claim) "as much confidence as they would have in America". As this was 1992, BFT positioning itself in this way was exactly right for the era—U.S. companies were buying U.K. companies and vice versa. This was a very successful positioning for BFT and no other U.K. agency took that market niche.....or has since. We launched and assisted major U.S. brands in the U.K.—for example, T. J. Maxx, United Artists Cable, and New England Tourism.

Much of our U.S. client base was in New England and so, in 1998, BFT moved its headquarter's office to Portland, Maine.

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