BCM Sends Whiskey-Soaked Cowboys Into the Tech Future
BCM's "The Good the Fad and the Ugly" is a 2014 Australian digital self-promotional campaign in which the Brisbane-based advertising agency cast a pair of whiskey-soaked 19th-century cowboys as unlikely guides through the emerging technology landscape, using Western-film parody to separate genuine innovation from passing fads.
Published in September 2014, the campaign is an act of creative self-definition. Rather than producing a conventional agency showreel or capability document, BCM chose narrative as its vehicle — a single digital media asset built around the tension between old-world characters and new-world technology. The objective was clear: demonstrate that the agency's strategic and creative thinking was sharp enough to cut through the noise of a rapidly changing tech environment, while making that demonstration entertaining enough to earn attention in its own right.
The campaign sits squarely in the agency self-promotion category, meaning BCM was simultaneously the client and the creator. This dual role freed the team to take risks that a paying client brief might not permit. The concept placed two whiskey-soaked, 19th-century cowboys in conversation about the future of technology — a collision of anachronism and futurism designed to highlight which emerging technologies were genuine game-changers and which were the fads of the moment. In the Australian advertising market of 2014, where digital transformation was accelerating rapidly, the question of what tech to back was acutely relevant to both brands and the agencies advising them. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100 reflects solid creative ambition anchored in a coherent strategic idea, with room for broader cultural impact.
BCM made a deliberate strategic choice in framing technology commentary through the voice of outsiders.
The Brisbane-based agency, whose origins trace to the early 1970s through predecessor structure Knowles Bristow, had by 2014 established itself as a significant independent force in the Australian advertising market, according to reporting by mumbrella.com.au and bandt.com.au. The decision to produce a self-promotional digital campaign rather than rely on industry word-of-mouth reflects the competitive pressure facing mid-sized Australian agencies during a period when digital capability had become a core differentiator. In Australia, the advertising and media sector was navigating a pronounced shift toward digital channels, with agencies under pressure to demonstrate not just craft but strategic foresight about where technology was heading.
The Western-film parody format was not arbitrary. By placing two whiskey-soaked, 19th-century cowboys at the centre of a technology debate, the campaign exploited a productive irony: characters with no native relationship to technology become the most dispassionate judges of it. They carry no vested interest in any particular platform or gadget, which makes their verdicts — good, fad, or ugly — feel structurally credible. The concept also drew on the same thematic logic as the August 2014 BCM presentation documented on es.slideshare.net, which covered technologies including bitcoin, wearables, drones, 3D printing, virtual reality, driverless cars, and medical innovation. That intellectual groundwork gave the campaign genuine analytical substance beneath its entertainment surface. In a competitive landscape where Australian agencies were increasingly expected to counsel clients on technology investment, demonstrating that judgment through a piece of self-promotional craft was itself a strategic statement.
Director Miles Murphy led the production of "The Good the Fad and the Ugly" for Taxi Film Production.
The on-screen execution places two whiskey-soaked, 19th-century cowboys in a Western-landscape setting where they debate the merits and shortcomings of emerging technologies. The characters speak and behave as men entirely of their era, yet their conversation ranges across the defining digital and physical innovations of 2014 — a collision that generates both comedy and genuine critical perspective on the tech landscape. The anachronism is the engine of the piece: the cowboys' distance from the subject matter positions them as unbiased arbiters, sorting technologies into the good, the fad, and the ugly with the blunt confidence of frontier justice.
The creative team assembled for the campaign reflects the depth of resource BCM invested in what was, structurally, an internal brief. Creative director Peter Goodall oversaw the work, with art direction handled by Sal Borzillo and Adam Head. Copywriter Shaun McMahon wrote the script, translating BCM's technology analysis into dialogue that could carry both wit and strategic weight. Production was managed by producer Mark Bishop, with Andrew Wareham serving as executive producer and Mark Wareham as director of photography. Agency producer Shane Ford coordinated the agency side of the production. The involvement of Taxi Film Production as a dedicated production company signals that BCM treated this self-promotional asset with the same production rigour it would apply to a paid client campaign. The campaign was delivered as a single digital media asset, published in Australia in September 2014, and represented BCM's most visible piece of creative self-expression of that period.
No verified performance data for "The Good the Fad and the Ugly" is publicly available.
Without audience reach figures, engagement metrics, or new-business attribution data in the public record, the campaign's effectiveness must be assessed through its structural design. The choice of a single, highly crafted digital asset over a multi-touchpoint campaign concentrates impact — the work either lands as a compelling creative statement or it does not. For an agency self-promotion piece in Australia in 2014, the primary measure of success would have been the quality of industry conversation it generated and the degree to which it reinforced BCM's reputation for strategic and creative distinction among prospective clients and industry peers.
The campaign's Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100 positions it as a credible piece of creative work with a clear conceptual spine. The Western-parody format is distinctive and the technology subject matter was genuinely timely — the technologies discussed, including virtual reality, drones, and wearables, as documented on es.slideshare.net, have since proven to be exactly the kind of mixed bag of transformative and overhyped innovations that the cowboys' taxonomy predicted. That structural prescience adds retrospective credibility to the campaign's core argument. Where the score suggests room for growth is likely in measurable reach and in the depth of cultural penetration beyond the immediate Australian advertising industry audience. As a piece of agency self-promotion, it demonstrated creative confidence; as a broader cultural artifact, its circulation was inherently bounded by the niche it addressed.
"The Good the Fad and the Ugly" is a 2014 BCM digital self-promotional campaign set in a Western-film parody format. Two whiskey-soaked, 19th-century cowboys debate emerging technologies, categorising them as genuinely transformative, fleeting fads, or outright failures. The campaign was published in Australia in September 2014 as a single digital media asset.
The campaign was created entirely within BCM, with the Brisbane-based agency acting as both client and creator. Creative director Peter Goodall led the team, which included art directors Sal Borzillo and Adam Head, copywriter Shaun McMahon, and director Miles Murphy. Taxi Film Production handled production in Australia.
BCM used whiskey-soaked, 19th-century cowboys because their distance from modern technology made them credible, dispassionate judges of it. The anachronism generated both comedy and strategic clarity, allowing the agency to separate genuine innovations from passing fads without appearing to advocate for any single platform or product category.
The campaign's conceptual framework covered emerging technologies current in 2014. A related BCM presentation documented on es.slideshare.net addressed bitcoin, wearables, drones, 3D printing, virtual reality, driverless cars, and medical innovation — the same technology landscape the cowboys navigate in the campaign's narrative.
"The Good the Fad and the Ugly" holds a Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100. The score reflects solid creative ambition and a coherent conceptual strategy, while indicating room for broader cultural reach beyond the Australian advertising industry audience the self-promotional campaign primarily addressed.
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