After 25 years in business, Vanessa von Bismarck and Carrie Phillips have had their share of successes, laughs and struggles.
To celebrate their company BPCM’s silver anniversary, they threw a party Wednesday night at SOBs, the Varick Street bar that was a popular haunt in the 1990s, and like them has stood the test of time. The duo connected in 1999, after von Bismarck gave up a commodities trading job in Europe to try to get into public relations in the U.S. Remembering first joining Nike Communications as an intern, von Bismarck said Phillips, who was her boss, asked another employee who von Bismarck was. After Phillips declared, “’She’s much too old to be an intern.’ Von Bismarck recalled with a laugh how she replied, ‘I can hear you.’”
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After three months of working together at Nike Communications, von Bismarck suggested they partner in their own agency — using a cubicle in a friend’s office, which also had a fax machine. She informed Phillips that her father would invest $10,000 — most of which would be placed in the bank, “because we’re going to buy Bacon’s Media Directory,” [a book with journalists’ information.] With only one artist client committed for a Lot 61 event, Phillips said, “That’s not a business plan.” But the pair persevered, walking up and down Broadway “to tell everybody they were the new hot agency,” von Bismarck said.
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Opening Shanghai Tang (a deal that was secured through a friend of a friend that von Bismarck’s parents knew) made people take notice. Even more eyes were on the company, after Vogue’s Anna Wintour turned up for a fashion show for another client, the German brand Strenesse. After von Bismarck’s good friend Nadine Johnson sent Stella McCartney their way, BPCM was off to the races.
Now with 100 employees and offices in New York, London and Los Angeles, BPCM’s client base includes Hermès beauty and watches, Tata Harper, Glossier, Tag Heuer, VW, Amazon Fashion, Alexandre Vauthier, Officine Générale, Ritz Carlton, the St. Regis, Aman New York and Dom Perignon, among others.
As for memorable moments, Coty Inc.’s launch for Lady Gaga’s “Fame” fragrance at the Guggenheim Museum was pretty, indelible. Encapsulated in a glass dome throughout the party, the Grammy winner came out the structure for 15 minutes — of fame, get it. Phillips recalled chatting with a guest, who stopped mid-sentence to ask if Lady Gaga was peeing. “I said, ‘Well, there’s no toilet there.’ But yes she was peeing in a Champagne bucket.”
Whether that was part of the installation was a matter of debate. Phillips said, “She knew she was going to do it, I feel. We just didn’t know she was going to do it.”
Another hard-to-forget moment was a red carpet occasion for IWC in Los Angeles, where torrential rains caused the red carpet outside of the venue to float away. The pair have weathered it all though successfully. Von Bismarck, who has two sons, and Phillips, who has four children, agreed that as soon as an event ends, they forget all about it. “It’s like pregnancy amnesia,” Phillips explained.
Almost going under twice — once 10 years ago and another time 15 years ago — taught them the importance of impressing upon young entrepreneurs the need to stay on top of cash-flow issues. The worst things like COVID-19, unexpected layoffs and clients’ comings and goings wind up being the best things because you end up with knowledge to avoid such challenges in the future, Phillips said. The company is seeing 20 percent annual gains on total billings, according to von Bismarck.
Asked about the early challenges, von Bismarck recalled a placement for their first client, a pashmina company. “We convinced a newspaper to print a special offer for these pashminas on the front page with a phone number,” von Bismarck said. “The phone number was wrong, so we got fired from that one.”
Another unexpected miss stemmed from allowing an employee to work remotely — long before that was routine — to care for an ailing parent. When it was time to return, the employee signed a long letter from Argentina with “’Eat, pray, love. à la,’ and her name,” von Bismarck said. “Then she downloaded our whole data base from a coffee shop in Argentina.”
As always, BPCM just carries on, despite the seismic shifts in the media landscape, COVID-19’s impact on employees and clients’ needs. “Clients want so much more today. They want strategy and so much more,” von Bismarck said.
Asked about their best moments, the founders said the fact that 90 percent of Wednesday’s attendees were former employees, including a few who traveled from California and Vermont. Phillips said, “There is a BPCM alumni hashtag, and people are in each other’s weddings. They still like to hang out and they like to hang out with us.”