IDEAS AND CREATIVE STRATEGIES FOR PRODUCT BRANDS AND BUSINESSFor personal reasons, in 2015 I decided to return to Ecuador and tried to settle in Guayaquil definitely. I started an adventure as a solo consultant that led me to give advice to companies and public agencies on marketing, advertising and digital transformation.In addition, I developed several business ideas through the creation of Start Ups, for which I look for financing.At the same time, I also became a Brand Builder in the team of Creatica Global, a network of Latin branding agencies run from Quito, and with offices in Mexico, Colombia and Panama.I also developed a new advertising theory of the 21st century, and a new marketing campaign analysis methodology based on current market needs and adapted to current times. This leads me to start a parallel career as speaker and lecturer in which I try to contribute with this knowledge to companies and to publicity and media agencies.

In June of 2013 a well-known Argentine head hunter brings me to Ecuador to assume the Creative Directorate of McCann Erikson and of Momentum in Guayaquil.It is difficult to comment on my experience without criticizing the market that welcomed me, the country where I live and all the good it has given me, and my own difficulties to adapt to a context I did not expect. So in order to share responsibilities between myself and the context, I will say that I found myself in a fantastic agency but with a market that is not innovative, tremendously conservative, and very much anchored in a series of knowledge or premises of McGraw Hill's typical of the 80's marketing manual. Designed for a context in which there were not even cell phones, much less the Internet or social networks. This caused that the illusion with which I arrived to be able to contribute many things, little by little it was transforming into a frustration that became difficult to handle for my end.After looking at a drawer full of fantastic ideas that never went live, I decided to resign and return to my country a few months to reflect on my experience. Fourth failure.In spite of this, I did have some achievements. First, I was able to raise the agency's creative level by two points over 10, according to McCann's rating scale in LATAM. Secondly, I left the agency leaving more talent than I found when I arrived, a digital department that believes, and a philosophy that left a seed planted that I am sure will someday flourish. Third, the Ecuadorian industry recognized our work in the EFFI awards of 2014 and 2015 with 8 finalists, three golds and one silver. Before this, McCann Guayaquil had not been awarded for many years.________________Main Accounts:________________- BURGER KING- CERVECERÍA NACIONAL (Beer)- DE PRATI (Fashion Retailer)- GOBIERNO DE LA REPÚBLICA DEL ECUADOR (Govern of Ecuador)- LA FABRIL (The Ecuatorian Procter & Gamble)- PACIFICARD (Credit Card)

The creative club (CdeC) is a non-profit organization that works to improve the quality of creative work in Spain and seeks the union of professionals in this sector.What we want is that Spanish creative work is as good as possible and that is why our activity is aimed at collaborating in the training of current and future creatives and showing the value of creativity in communication.To fulfill these objectives, we work in collaboration with THREE COLLECTIVES:1. The partners or professionals of creativity, for whom it is a matter of creating a forum for discussion and organizing enriching activities such as conferences, exhibitions and courses.2. Students or young people who have just finished their studies and are looking to develop their career in the creative area. The CdeC brings you closer to the world of work, by organizing the Versus CdeC and projections and conferences.3. Advertisers with whom we seek to establish a permanent relationship because we are aware that only the understanding between advertisers and creatives can lead to quality work.

Once the decision was made to migrate to Latin America, and while waiting for an opportunity outside of Spain, I worked as Creative Director freelance at ARENA QUANTUM, the digital media agency of the HAVAS group.My goal was to enrich with value propositions through strategy and creativity, agency services focused on research, procurement and strategy and media planning.Again it served to corroborate what I had already learned in Carat, and is that the advertising model based on the purchase of spaces to insert the messages of brands is slowly dying, as opposed to a new advertising model that since 2001 has been growing. I learned that my job and that of my generation should be to manage the change of model.________________Main Accounts:________________- BANESTO (Banking and Finances)- FNAC (A large French Retail Chain selling Cultural and Electronic Products)- SCHWEPPES (Tonic Water)

After the financial problem of ALICE & PETER, the agency that I founded, I began to negotiate the sale of the brand to one of the independent pioneering agencies in Social Media in Spain. ELOGIA was interested in acquiring a creative reputation that I did not have with the purchase of the brand and with my incorporation, thanks to the media exposure that I had achieved by the fantastic work with my agency. And I was interested in being able to offer clients strategies that had more to do with creating content for brands than with traditional advertising.For months, during the negotiations, I join the ELOGIA team to strategically and creatively direct the proposals to the clients of the Barcelona and Madrid offices. But finally a satisfactory agreement was not reached and the collaboration was broken.In this period, in addition to working in display campaigns, email marketing, social media and social ads, I focus a lot on content marketing and branded content proposals. Understanding as content not only the creation of TV programs or editorial content, but also films, documentaries, events and shows. Anything that can draw the audience's attention to the digital environments where a brand is located.________________Main Accounts:________________- AVON- BURGER KING- CARREFOUR (French multinational Retailer)- CORREOS DE ESPAÑA (Spanish Public Mail Company)- DECATHLON (One of the world's largest Sporting Goods Retailers)- DISNEY STORE- IKEA- MOTOROLA- PELAYO SEGUROS (Insurance)- PRIVALIA (Online-Fashion Outlet)- PURIFICACIÓN GARCÍA (Fashion Design)

Despite knowing that a great crisis was starting in Europe, on the day that Obama won his first elections in 2008, he was infected by this illusion of "Yes we can", and I started with my partner Antonio, my own personal project: ALICE & PETER | The Ideas CompanyIt was not an advertising agency, but an Ideas agency, which was intended to be a response to a new agency model that the market was demanding, adapted to the needs and the current and future context.In these years, we did few projects, but with very good level. Campaigns that were included in the Short List of advertising festivals like "El Sol", or the yearbook of the Creative Club of Spain. For basically financial reasons because of the crisis in Spain, the adventure succumbed. Third failure.I do not speak of failure with regret, but rather the opposite. I say it proud to know that we tried it, that we left the skin in it, that I learned a lot about business management and that we did fantastic jobs handling low budgets. Proud of having demonstrated to myself and the market that you can do other types of advertising that I firmly believe. Advertising for a new paradigm, based on brands generating attractive content so that the citizen comes to look for them, instead of continually interrupting the content that people have decided to consume. Advertising based on the idea that brands have to stop "saying" things and start "doing" things for people who demonstrate the brand's mission.________________Main Accounts:________________- L'OREAL- MICROSOFT- RED BULL- SEUR (Courrier)- SOL MELIÁ (Hotels)- VODAFONE- WOLTERS KLUWER

If we divide the work process of an agency into 4 phases, analysis, strategic planning, creativity and production ... with the vision of the business and industry that give years of experience, I began to see and became increasingly interested in the Two first parts. Thus, although in the past I had already served as a strategic planner since the creative direction, it was the first time that my position was focused solely on strategy and guided the way to creative teams without acting as creative director.It was the time when communication becomes interesting thanks to the incursion of something that did not exist before. Social Media networks. We now faced a new public that is the recipient of the information that brands produce, but at the same time is an information producer. The Prosumer is born.________________Main Accounts:________________- FORD- COCA-COLA- FANTA- IBERDROLA (Energy Company)- DANONE (Dairy Products)- GRUPO MAHOU SAN MIGUEL (Beer)- COMUNIDAD DE MADRID (Government of Madrid)- VICEROY (Watches)- FERNANDO ALONSO (Formula 1 World Champion)- ÍKER CASILLAS (Captain of the Real Madrid Soccer Club and the Spanish National Soccer Team)

Thanks to the marketing experience and the experience in the third sector, acquired in Greenpeace, Action Against Hunger proposed to me to direct its Marketing department.For one year I work mainly on three fronts:The first is to "professionalize" the marketing of the organization, for which I incorporated new profiles, elaborated methodologies and procedures and above all, I choose new agency through bidding, convincing the organization of the need to remunerate the work of the agency, which seems obvious, but was not done before. This way the agency commitment is superior and the possibility of the organization to be demanding with them is superior as well.The second is the collection of databases, segmentation and categorization and interactions of them to try to identify the different profiles of donors and for their exploitation in direct mail marketing campaigns.The third is to start migrating from the offline model, to the online model, both in the communication of the organization with its donors and people interested in publications, as well as in the fundraising for which I start to use strategies and Email marketing tools.This experience gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about topics that have interested me for years, international geopolitics, the analysis of poverty in the world, the study of migratory movements and the understanding of food production and distribution in the world.

Needing a rest from the environment of advertising agencies, I decided to take a period of two years in which by personal commitment, I decide to put my experience to the service of causes on with which I feel identified and work in the NGO sector.The opportunity to enter the sector was presented by replacing GREENPEACE's director of digital marketing, from maternity leave, until her reinstatement to her position. This short period helped me understand from the inside how marketing works in the third sector and opened the door to my next experience.During these months, I worked in fundraising campaigns through email marketing, through the combination of digital marketing and telemarketing, and I coordinated fundraising teams that are finding funds on the street. In addition, I collaborate with the teams of activists to give the widest possible dissemination through the Internet of their actions and with the press department in advocacy campaigns and political lobbying.

With the development of the Internet in Spain, not only digital agencies, but also digital media agencies, or the digital departments of the large traditional media agencies like CARAT was born. For two years, I managed creative executive management with a team of between 15 and 20 people, and I was a member of the management board of one of the largest media agencies in the world.The business model of media agencies consisting of buying large volumes of media spaces at a cheaper price and selling them to brands is literally translated to the Internet. In this way, the core business of digital media agencies is in the sale of spaces; Turning the creativity and the production to be practically a commodity that is given to the customer as value added in exchange for managing the media account.My vision is opposed. For me, the value of advertising is good ideas, not the place where those ideas are told. Knowing the business of the media agencies inside, is when I begin to reflect on the need for a change of advertising model, and this coincides with the beginning of a new global advertising paradigm that was born in 2001.________________Main Accounts:________________- ADIDAS- ANESVAD (NGO)- AVIS (Car Rent)- BMG MUSIC (Record Company)- COMUNUDAD DE MADRID (Government of Madrid)- DISNEY - EL CORTE INGLÉS (Department Store)- LVMH (World Leader in Luxury Brands)- WISHKEY JAMESON - IFEMA (Fairs and Expositions of the Government of Madrid)- IINSTITUTO NACIONAL DE LA SEGURIDAD SOCIAL (Social Security of Spain)- LÍNEA DIRECTA ASEGURADORA (Car Insurance)- MONDADORI EDITORIAL (Book Publishing company)- MONSTER (Job Search Web)- MÉDICOS SIN FRONTERAS (NGO)- NEC (Computers)- OSRAM (Light Bulbs)- REAL MADRID CLUB DE FÚTBOL (Soccer Club)- REAL FERERACIÓN ESPAÑOLA DE FÚTBOL (Royal Spanish Soccer Federation)- RENAULT (Cars)- SEGUROS SANTA LUCÍA (Insurance)- TELEFÓNICA (Telecommunications)- TELEVISIÓN ESPAÑOLA (Spanish Public TV)- THOMAS BURBERRY

Probably the most exciting project I've ever participated in. In 2001, eight years before the European Union-mandated analogue switch-off, which forced all Broadcasters to convert their analog-to-digital signal, in this Start Up we were designing and manufacturing a universal decoder To service all the TV channels and in which we included our own services through the TV. Portal of contents, applications, Online banking, supermarket, games, Audiometry, PVR, advertising formats...My job was to lead a team of creatives from various disciplines that formed the link between Engineering and Marketing departments. Knowing the capacities in engineering, we had to invent all type of contents and services that could add value to the platform and that could become business models.Like many Start Ups of that time, with the dot-com bubble crash of 2001, the project ran out of funding and sank. Second failure, although in this one I was not guilty.

After leaving BBDO, I decided to focus on gaining experience and learning to direct teams. For this, I joined as creative supervisor to eOneLorente, the digital agency created by the Lorente Communication Group, which was one of the three large independent groups in Spain. The founding nucleus of eOne was formed by very young, but great managers who came from having successfully launched what was in Spain the first digital division of one of the big agencies: Ogilvy Interactive.In this period I became dedicated to creatively orient and supervise creative teams in the proposal to clients of all kinds of services related to digital environments: corporate websites, advertising microsites, digital campaigns, e-commerce web, advergaming, Interactive CD ROM, digital catalogs, relational databases, CRM ...The adventure ends when the Lorente Group ceases to be independent and is acquired by one of the great global networks: Euro RSCG of the Havas Group.________________Main Accounts:________________- BBVA (Banking and Finances)- CADBURY (Chocolates)- CINZANO (Italian Brand of Vermouth)- DIRECCIÓN GENERAL DE TRÁFICO (Government Agency for Regulation of Road Traffic)- ENDESA (Energy Company)- INVERTIA.COM (Internet Investment Portal)- MILAR (Megastore Appliances Distributor)- OSBORNE (Wineries of Wines and Spirits)- PROSEGUR (Private Security Company)- RED BULL (Energy Drink)- SM EDICIONES (Book Publishing Company)- TELEFÓNICA (Telecommunications Company)- TERRA (The most important Latino Internet Portal)- VOLVO (Cars)

The big advertising agencies, which had l missed the "train" of the Internet because they did not think there was business in it, began to realize their mistake and tried to correct it by buying small independent digital agencies. ORBITAL was the Barcelona digital agency that was acquired the BBDO Group. After opening a branch in Madrid I had the opportunity for the first time in my life to be in charge of a small creative team of three people. Those were the times when the online world and the offline world were trying to understand each other. The experience lasted a few months. I was 27 years old and I realized that leading is not doing it all, but learning to delegate. First failure.________________Main Accounts:________________- GILLETTE (Shaving Products)- HEINEKEN (Beer)- IBERIA (Air Line)- PEPSI- RETEVISIÓN (Telecommunications Company).

I began my most senior stage in one of the first independent digital agencies in Spain that still works today and is still a reference. At first I started out as Creative Copywriter thinking and running digital campaigns. As the company evolved towards consulting and development of e-commerce platforms, my role was changing and I started to lead different types of projects that had more to do with usability and customer service through the Internet than about advertising.I worked in content architecture and hierarchical information, in UX (Usser Xperience), navigation flows, wireframes and user interfaces and I conceptualized digital tools and applications to endow customers' websites with value.It was also the time in which Macromedia entered the market with its Flash technology that years later would be acquired by Adobe. During that time we developed Flash interactive experiences for brands through the Internet. The websites incorporated a new human sense in addition to sight and hearing ... touch.________________Main Accounts:________________- ANTENA 3 TELEVISIÓN (Open TV Channel)- IBERIA (Air Line)- KELLOGG'S (Cereals)- LA VOZ DE GALICIA (Newspaper)- LOGISTA (Logistics Courier)- LYCOS (Internet Portal)- PÁGINAS AMARILLAS (Yellow Pages)- SANTANA - SUZUKI (Cars, Trucks and Motorcycles)- VIA DIGITAL (Satellite TV)- YA.COM (Internet Portal)

My first experience in digital environments was at the beginning of what later became the largest Internet consultant in all Ibero-America, before its bankruptcy in 2001. I was part of the team of 30 pioneers of marketing and digital advertising in Spain. With the feeling that we were inventing the future, we worked for dozens of clients in the development of the first generation of web pages and digital campaigns, before the advent of Adobe Flash technology.We experimented with new methodologies and working procedures. The work teams stopped being paired and the profile of the Front-end programmer, which worked with HTML, Javascript and DHTML, was added.It also involved my first experience in managing digital communities as part of the COMMM.COM content team, a self-developed product that was the first Hispanic virtual community. ________________Main Accounts:________________- A.B. ASESORES (Banking and Finances)- ARGENTARIA (Banking and Finances)- CAJA DUERO (Banking and Finances)- CAMPER (The most international Spanish shoe brand)- CAMPOFRÍO (Sausages)- JAZZTEL (Telecommunications Company)- RAY-BAN (Optics, Fashion and Accessories)- RENAULT (Cars)- SAAB (Cars)- SANITAS (Health Insurance)- VOILÁ (French Internet Portal)