Rinse & Repeat: A Love Letter to the Creative Grind
From the outside looking in, the creative endeavour often appears romantic: an act of pure inspiration, requiring talent, vision, and the ability to produce something beautiful. Artists, designers, musicians, and writers are celebrated for their ability to translate universal human experiences—joy, pain, grief—into tangible, emotionally resonant forms, such as artworks, campaigns, films, songs. It’s these products that get consumed and praised– implicitly assigning value to creativity itself. In turn, the creator is admired for bringing consciousness into their craft, as attention tends to centre what is most visible (read: the final output), rather than the often-invisible labour behind its making.
Every creative has grown familiar with this more complicated and often challenging reality of long hours, constant revisions, rejection, bureaucratic hurdles, and emotional fatigue. Despite a shared understanding of these experiences amongst them, there remains a lingering taboo around discussing the toll of creative labour, particularly in professional or client-facing contexts. The myth of inspired genius that paints the creative process as effortless, seamless and oftentimes easy persists, even as many quietly endure the grind. The hard truth is that creativity demands rigour, persistence, and above all, resilience.
Recognising this tension, BBH Singapore has stepped forward with Rinse & Repeat, a campaign that brings these often-unspoken challenges into the spotlight. Described as a “heartfelt and unflinching tribute to the creative journey,” the campaign was inspired by the lived experiences of the agency’s own creatives. Through a clever blend of product design, copywriting, and visual storytelling, Rinse & Repeat captures both the struggle and the strange affection we hold for the creative process.
At the heart of the campaign is a striking black soap—an unexpected object that serves as both a literal and metaphorical symbol. Engraved into the soap is a manifesto that mirrors the daily rhythms of creative work: the briefs, the brainstorms, the breakdowns, and the breakthroughs. The name Rinse & Repeat encapsulates a shared mantra among BBH creatives: that “persistence is power.” Whether read as a piece of advice or a reminder, it underscores the cyclical nature of the work—one project ends, another begins.
An excerpt from the manifesto reads:
Brief in. Breathe out. ‘The timeline’s tight on this one’. No doubt. Research. Research your research. Terrorising territories. Catch that trend. Too late. ‘How can we tackle Gen Zs?’ ‘TikTok?’. Slipshod. Break the mould. Break into culture... Clients clueless. Then why try to rule us?
Builds after builds. Everything from ground up. Three freshly-squeezed ideas to the table. Not feasible. Not feasible. Not good enough. ‘Go crazier, think bigger’. Take it back to the drawing board. Decks up to your neck... Toss and turn. Always firefighting. Watch me burn.
The accompanying campaign video is minimal yet evocative, alternating between tight shots of the soap’s details and bold typographic statements. The text, echoing the engraved style of the product itself, maintains a seamless aesthetic. But it’s the tone—dryly humorous and surprisingly tender—that gives the campaign its emotional depth.
There’s a clever contradiction at play. The soap’s stark black design suggests a weighty, even somber tone. But once you engage with the copy (particularly in the video), you find unexpected levity. Ingredients listed include “lightly salted tears, empathetic nods, a chorale of grunts, and peppermint.” It’s funny, it’s weirdly comforting, and most importantly—it’s real.
Perhaps this is the truest reflection of creative life. Amidst the chaos and burnout, there are also moments of laughter, camaraderie, absurdity, and even joy. Pain and satisfaction coexist. We may complain about our work, but we also return to it, again and again. As BBH Chief Creative Officer Sascha Kuntze puts it: “In this case, we took a bit of time to honour the process, the journey that leads to success. And when we finally get there, we do it all over again.”
In Rinse & Repeat, BBH Singapore has crafted more than a campaign. It’s a love letter to the struggle, a wink at the absurdity, and a reminder that while the creative journey can be exhausting, it’s also what keeps us going.
