BBDO
advertising agency
BBDO is a worldwide advertising agency network, with its headquarters in New York City. The agency originated in 1891 with the George Batten Company, and in 1928, through a merger with Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BDO), the agency became Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. With more than 15,000 employees at 289 offices in 81 countries, it is the largest of three global networks of agencies (BBDO, DDB and TBWA) in the portfolio of Omnicom Group.
BBDO was named "Network of the Year" in 2005 by trade publications Adweek, Advertising Age and Campaign. In 2006, then-mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg proclaimed January 10 as BBDO day in recognition of the strength of its advertising, as well as its contributions to New York City. BBDO was named "Network of the Year" by The Gunn Report for thirteen consecutive years beginning in 2006, and it has won "Network of the Year" seven times since 2007 at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It was named "Global Network of the Year" by Adweek in 2011 and 2014.
Origins
The Barton & Durstine Company (founded by Bruce Barton and Roy Sarles Durstine) opened in January 1919, and when Alex Osborn joined the agency in July 1919, it was renamed Barton, Durstine & Osborn. In 1928, the George Batten Company (then managed by William H. Johns) merged with Barton, Durstine & Osborn to form Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, abbreviated B.B.D.O. or BBD&O, later BBDO.
History
1891 George Batten (1854–1918), 37, opened his one-room advertising agency at 38 Park Row, New York, with no clients and one employee.
1894 Batten's agency was the first one to install in-house printing.
“BBDO” enters the record as advertising agency. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what BBDO, advertising and agency can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q571438. VIAF identifies the subject as 259404276. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1928, 2005 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “BBDO” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.