A Name Worth Waiting For What Bbs Rebrand As Afternow Can Teach Every Creative Agency

Creative Boom: Insight Sponsored A name worth waiting for: What BB Agency's rebrand as Afternow can teach us The Croatian agency that outgrew its own name has finally rebranded as Afternow, and the timing couldn't be better. Written By: Tom May 25 May 2026 The Afternow team It's 11am on a Tuesday. Two men – one from the Croatian island of Krk, the other a Brit born in Chile – have just downed shots of quince rakia, an aromatic fruit brandy popular across the Balkans. Now they're explaining how their agency spent 13 years operating under a name one of them jokingly compares to a Call of Duty clan tag. The spirit is strong, and the laughter is genuine.

But behind the joke is a story that will resonate with anyone who's ever suspected their agency's name is getting in the way. Vicente Reyes Montealegre, head of brand and website, and Filip Justic, co-founder and head of strategy, are discussing Afternow. Until very recently, it was known as BB Agency, a stripped-back version of its original name, Balkan Brothers. But that original name, Filip readily admits, was never really a name at all. "At the outset, my brother and I didn't know what to call the agency, but then we had to fill out a form for 99designs," he explains.

"So we just called it Balkan Brothers." It stuck, it spread, and for over a decade, it did its job. But as the agency grew in ambition, headcount and client calibre, the gap between the name and the reality got harder to ignore. Today, Afternow is a 70-person operation working across strategy, brand, web and product design, with roughly 70% of its clients based in the US. It is, by any measure, a serious global player. The name Balkan Brothers, charming as it was, was no longer pulling its weight.

Emma Doležal (HR Specialist) with Vicente Reyes Montealegre, Head of Brand & Website Filip Justić, Head of Strategy & Growth A name that worked against you The problem wasn't just aesthetics. Filip is candid about the commercial friction the old name created. "Clients from, for instance, Germany already had a preconceived notion of the Balkans and people around that region, and there's also an expectation of price when you're seen as being from Eastern Europe," he points out. Meanwhile, long-standing clients had to be disabused of the idea that the agency was still two brothers doing all the work.

The decision to rebrand was taken around three years ago, but the process took two and a half years to complete; partly because client work, as ever, had to come first. A four-person team was assembled to work on the rebrand in secret, cycling through what Filip describes as a long list of bad names: Coast to Coast, Kinspoke, Jabuticaba and Bright&Bloom among them. One finalist, the Brazilian tropical fruit jabuticaba, apparently won hearts if not the final vote. What they eventually arrived at was Beyond Now, later refined into Afternow. It's a name that sits firmly in the present tense while pointing at whatever comes next.

Adrian Morić, Head of Product Emre Pak, Growth Marketing Manager Getting the timing exactly right Vicente describes the insight that made Afternow feel inevitable. "Market conditions were changing so fast, with new AI and everything that's happening around the world," he recollects. "It was very hard for us to decide on a fixed definition of who we are, in a world that's constantly changing. And somehow the name Afternow was a clear reflection of that. It's about being in the present moment, but also thinking that things are going to change." The anxiety Vicente describes is one that creatives everywhere will recognise in 2026.

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The article discusses a significant rebranding effort that offers valuable insights for creative agencies, making it impactful and relevant, though the concept of aligning a brand's name with its identity is not entirely new.