www.lionsdailynews.com friday, june 24 , 2011

Surreal Uyuni as
featured in the Uniqlo
spot (OPENER)
within the first two months.” For WMcCann regional director
Luca Lindner, the last year presented a very different kind of
challenge, to fuse Washington Olivetto and McCann Brazil to
create WMcCann. “It is now one of the top five agencies in the
market and both our clients and our people are very happy, combining
WBrazil’s local soul and creative ethos with McCann’s
global attitude and strategic planning tradition has been an amazing
task. And along the way we’ve picked up new business, such
as Walmart in Central America, new digital assignments for Nestle
Brasil, Telkom in South Africa and Sony Ericsson for parts of
the Middle East.”
Meanwhile, back on Planet Brazil, Lindner sometimes has
difficulty believing what is happening: “I wake up every morning
and check if I’m dreaming, but it is real. There is growth
everywhere. All our clients are on double-digit growth and we
are doing very well. But beyond the numbers, today in Brazil
and in most of the region under my responsibility, from Dubai to
Kenya and from Costa Rica to Brazil, there is the sort of openness
and optimism about the future that Europe had in the ‘50s/’60s.”
For Alexandre Gama, president and creative and planning
director of NEOGAMA/BBH, new business has been mainly local:
“Brazil is booming, local business rules and much of it is digital.
It’s a bit like categorising the world’s religions as Christian or
non-Christian, for example, when it’s clear that you’re describing
religion from your own point of view. But in communication,
the real professionals have to be agnostic and I’m a believer in
the holy toolbox of media communication. I’m not offline, online,
below the line or above the line. I’m no line. I seek to embrace all
forms of communication that can help my ideas to reach people
FOCUS ON LATIN AMERICA 41
“IF BEFORE WE ACCOMPLISHED MUCH
WITH LITTLE, WE ARE GOING TO
ACCOMPLISH MUCH MORE WITH
MORE... BUT WE WILL HAVE MORE
SOPHISTICATED PRODUCTION”
Sergio Valente, DM9DBB
in the best possible way. It’s the message that matters the most.”
When Gama started his agency, his goal was to take the
agency to the top 10 within 10 years. “NEOGAMA/BBH is now a
top-five agency in Brazil by media-buying rank,” he says. “The
agency is currently as relevant to the agency network business as
the London office. There’s no other case like this in the country,
even when you take into account that the country has been boosted
by recent economic growth.”
For Marcos Golfari, regional CEO for Ogilvy & Mather Latina,
and Gaston Bigio, regional creative director, 2010 was the
best in the last 10 years: “It was even better than pre-crisis 2008,
which was a record year — and this is only talking about numbers,”
Golfari says. “From a business point of view, we won important
new clients, including YPF in Argentina, Bimbo in Mexico,
Claro, L’Occitane and Siemens in Brazil, Nestea and Comcel in
Colombia, and Jumbo in Chile.”
According to Golfari, 2010 was a year of broad-based expansion.
“There was growth as well in newly initiated areas such as
PR, winning the Image Of Mexico campaign and, in Brazil, the
FRIDAY, JUNE 24,2011