My Story - Chapter 5: When design and strategy meet

After spending 2 years out of the ‘real world’ doing volunteer work in Brasilia, I returned to the advertising market to work as a planning assistant at one of the largest digital advertising agencies in São Paulo. As I mentioned in the previous post, the people who referred me were decisive for me to get the job. In addition to the fact that I was away from the market for a considerable time, another factor weighed heavily against me: college.

It is very common to see university students interning at advertising agencies, and many are turn into full-time employees or end up getting hired at another agency after graduating. Despite having studied 1 year of advertising at college before going on a mission, I did not know if I would be able to resume the course from where I left off, or if I would be able to handle the workday shift + college at night and I would say even more: I wasn't sure if advertising was what I really wanted to study to get my degree.

I was 21 (almost 22) at the time, and the years I served as a missionary ended up ‘eating’ 2 or 3 years in which I would have already studied at the university. I don't regret any of the volunteer work that I did (I usually say that it was my 'life graduation'), but I had to make up for it when I returned to the market. The upside is that it is very common to see several advertising employees who have never attended college working at agencies.

Although not something decisive, certainly college was something that could contribute a lot to my educational and professional life. But which course to take?

At F.biz, I literally sat next to teachers. Incredible professionals in the market who taught classes in renowned advertising colleges and courses. The fact of working with them and having already worked at large agencies with impactful clients made me decide not to study advertising. So I decided to study something that could complement my work as an account planner. I went through areas such as psychology and journalism, until arriving at Design. It was love at first sight. I already had previous knowledge of Photoshop and some basic design concepts, but what really caught my attention, besides the visual part, was the conceptual part. The ability that designers have to research, create, structure the idea and present it. In 2012, I enrolled and started the Graphic Design course at FMU.

Studying Graphic Design was an incredible experience. I made wonderful friends and who I still hangout with, and together we worked on super interesting and creative projects. The one that stands out to me the most is certainly the Spotify one, our final project at college. We had the opportunity to go to Spotify in São Paulo and interview some of the employees (in fact, according to them, we were the only university students to achieve this). We created a whole communication strategy for the brand, going through branding, design and creating a campaign that we called Heroes of Music. This period of approximately 4 years of study at the university certainly helped me a lot to develop skills in graphic design, design thinking and group work. In 2015 I graduated after long years taking buses and crowded trains, arriving home at 11:00pm and spending weekends doing homework. It was during this period that I also met my dear wife. We dated at a distance for 1 year before we got married, so you can add some extra bus and plane trips to the math as well. When we got married she was also attending college, studying childhood education. We managed to transfer her to a unit that was 5 minutes from mine, and for almost the remaining years we were able to return home together every night after classes. Bonus points!

Our Dream Team, from left to right: Lucas Lessa, me, André Blasques, Bruna Alberice, Beatriz Balsalobre

Some time later, while working at F.biz and studying at FMU, I was looking at my LinkedIn account and realized that someone from an agency called R/GA had viewed my profile. I have always admired R/GA and the work that the agency do, so I asked if they were up for a chat. I went there, had a chat and it was super cool. At the moment they were not looking into hiring, but they were definitely growing and that could be happening in the upcoming months. During 1 year I went back for two more interviews, until finally I ended up receiving a formal proposal. In April 2014, after almost 3 years working and building my entire planning foundation at F.biz, I went to R/GA to apply and perfect everything I was learning.

My journey in R/GA was indeed a journey of construction and a lot of challenges. In the beginning I worked providing assistance to super innovative projects for Samsung, Google and BTG Pactual (investment bank). Given the fact that the agency was still growing (and relatively new in Brazil), I ended up having the responsibility to work on a super important project for Google Brazil in a short time. That was my chance to shine and I put all my heart, effort and knowledge into this project together with the team. It was a success and that's when my relationship with Google marketing began. After that job, I still worked on some other projects for them.

I also had the opportunity to work with Bradesco bank, at the beginning of the 'next', a digital bank created by the bank around 2016/2017. It was an intense period, but accompanied with lots of learnings where I was able to develop multiple skills while working with media, analytics, UX, creative and business teams. We created a very nice relationship with the bank's employees and I practically lived there. In fact, I worked at the bank's headquarters in Osasco for 3 months together with some colleagues from the agency. We had our own room and put papers with user's journey flows, research, frameworks and ideas on the wall. We also put a poster of Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin's lead guitar player and brought a speaker to listen to rock while we worked. There was a day that someone knocked on our door and asked to turn the volume down because they could hear it in the next room. Sorry about that guys! :P

The bank's creation and development process was incredible. I remember participating in ideation sessions, workshops with bank employees, surveys with consumers and I even presented work for several bank executives and employees. I also had the opportunity to present work for the bank's VP and had the chance to participate in a meeting with the entire board, where we even had to wear a suit and tie. A remarkable period and certainly one of the most important in my professional life.

Some more ‘fun facts’ during this period of my life:

• For about 6 months during the total period I worked at R/GA, I had my brother as my boss. He worked as a Planning Director and we ran a good period of the next project together. I know you must be wondering how it would be like to work with your sibling, or a relative. In my case, it worked well. I always had my brother as a mentor and I learned to admire his work even more. Of course, some family lunches ended up becoming a business meeting and if I had any problems with him, I just needed to talk to my mom and everything was solved.

• In 2016 I made my first international trip to Canada. The choice of the country was due to the fact that I already liked (and played) Hockey in Brazil in addition to starting to fall in love with the idea of living abroad. I took the opportunity to research the agency market in Toronto and emailed about 30 planning professionals in the region. Of the 30, 11 answered me and I managed to arrange a quick chat with all of them. It was a very enriching and freezing experience as well. Maybe someday I talk more about it on a post.

• At R/GA I also managed to fulfill a dream that I always had: a rock band. We had already done a jam during the agency's barbecue parties, but the end of the year party was a great excuse to formalize the project. The name of the band? 'Os Nevrálgicos'. I don't think there's a really good translation in English, but the name came from a meeting with a client who referred to a phase of the project as crucial. Our setlist was this one.

As I mentioned earlier, this was one of the periods where I grew most professionally and personally. College, marriage, more responsibilities at work made me learn things that I carry with me today:

• Search for complementary knowledge: When I returned from my 2 year volunteer work I could have decided to study advertising. Instead, I decided to study something different, something new and that complemented what I was doing, adding a differential factor to my professional life. Look within your field for courses or extra knowledge that you can study and that can bring extra benefits to your life and career.

• You're responsible for creating the best college experience you can have: Although my college wasn't the best ranked in the country and had a less robust infrastructure, I managed to make the most of it and get lots of amazing experiences from there, thanks to the friends I made and the extra knowledge I sought to apply in my work.

• LinkedIn is an incredible tool: It was when someone viewed my profile that an opportunity arose. Thanks to this platform I got my job at R/GA and got in touch with a handful of planners in Canada to chat. I also use the platform to share the work I do and find out what's going on in the market. Use this platform (with wisdom and thoughtfulness always) and it can open many doors for you.

• Patience, reasoning and feeling when planning your career: I remember that I did some other interviews at the time I was leaving F.biz. I almost ended up accepting some proposals that I wasn't feeling 100% comfortable with. I learned that any movement I wanted to make in my career needed to be done with reason + emotion (evaluating pros, cons and also using the feeling). I also learned that I needed to be patient and always think about the impact that that decision would have in my future. The trajectory is as important as the final destination.

• The importance of Design: I learned that if everyone knew a little about design, the world would be a better place. I recommend that you seek to learn basic design concepts, both the application of the visual aspect and the application of design thinking. It is an area that should be valued more and that has a tremendous impact on our everyday lives in every way possible. Learn design!

• Proactive chats: In one of the previous posts I talked about never denying a chat. This learning is about proactively pursuing chats. Identify people you admire or would like to connect with and set up a chat to explore things you care about. This can open doors and bring knowledge that you will never forget.

• Special thanks to: Beatriz Balsalobre, André Blasques, Lucas Lessa, Bruna Albuquerque, Beto Bina, Fabiano Coura, Edson Sueyoshi, Karina Corchs, Renato Kaufmann, Tiago Franco, Saulo Rodrigues, Rafael Mansano, Marcio Garcia, Vicente Silva, Arthur Calefe, Marcia Aguirre.