The guy with no awards (but good stories)
Hi, Dogura,
So... you asked me for a list of awards I’ve won. That’s a little bit embarrassing (or not), because, as I told you, winning awards was never really part of my mission.
Back in 2006, I remember I had a banner that made it to the Cannes shortlist — which I guess counts for something — but honestly, I couldn’t even find the file anymore.
In 2019, I won — well, the team I was leading won — two design awards for the Tok&Stok rebranding and e-commerce overhaul: platinum at CLAP and bronze at the Brasil Design Award.
And in 2022, we landed second place (unfairly — we really deserved gold, hahaha) in a global ESG competition called Tech4Positive Futures, with a project that later evolved into a climate intelligence startup I co-founded: BRISE.
Still, I wouldn’t say any of these qualify me as an “advertising guy”. At least, not the way the industry usually means it.
So, what the hell am I doing here applying for a creative director position?
Well, let’s unpack that.
Sure, I’ve spent over two decades in ad agencies — but I’m far from what you’d call a traditional ad guy. I’ve never followed a crystal-clear career path (headhunters hate when I say that, but it’s true).
I’ve just always gone where the interesting problems were. That led to more than a few plot twists. Not all of them hits — but together, they gave me a wide-angle view of what’s possible in communication, tech, and innovation.
Since I don’t have shiny trophies to flash, let me try to show you what I do have.
I studied journalism and started out as a copywriter. But this was 1997, in a digital agency, where “copywriter” basically meant doing planning, UX, client service, HTML, Flash… and sometimes even art direction.
It turned out to be a gift.
When I joined McCann in 2005 — literally the last month you could still smoke in the creative department — the main goal wasn’t just to create the “digital version” of offline campaigns, but to prove we could deliver real value with it.
And, just as important, to convince everyone — not just clients, but the agency itself — that this value had a future.
We managed to pull off some pretty OK work for that time. Here are a few things I dug up:
In 2008, I joined Dentsu with a familiar mission: build and lead a “digital team” — and once again, evangelize both the agency and its clients.
Oh my god… looking back now, it feels like 50 years ago — and in internet years, maybe it was.
Then… I took a sharp turn and became a partner at a very peculiar hybrid — part agency, part startup — with an even more peculiar name:
Gruda em mim que o boi não te lambe.
It was chaotic, scrappy, fun. After years in big network agencies, it was a shock to go from layers of structure to something leaner, faster, and a lot more improvisational. Fewer resources, sure — but more room to invent.
We worked for Google (just arriving in Brazil), Apple (who paid us in Macs), and brazilian artists like Gilberto Gil, Nando Reis, and Capital Inicial.
We created content for all of them. And yes, in 2009, producing a fully fan-generated music video for Capital was actually pretty badass.
The agency was eventually acquired by Artplan.
After that, I moved to New York — not for some glamorous agency gig, but for a bold (some would say “quixotic” – I don’t even know if this word exists in english) adventure: to kickstart the US office of a 3D/motion production company.
My job? Walk into Manhattan and Brooklyn ad agencies and convince them to work with us. Cold prospecting in my english “from the streets”…
And you know what? It was awesome!
No, not really.
Turns out, the job was… well, a bit outside my natural habitat.
Instead of being in a room with people who knew the context — shaping ideas, building strategy, and selling them through — I found myself doing something closer to insurance sales: walking into agencies cold, trying to pitch something they weren’t asking for.
It wasn’t exactly my thing.
But it forced me out of every comfort zone I had — linguistically, culturally, professionally. And for that, I’m grateful. I came back with thicker skin, better instincts, and a sharper sense of my own limits.
Back in Brazil, I joined Riot as Executive Creative Director. In 2012, Riot was the biggest social media agency in the country — and growing fast. I led a creative team that scaled to nearly 110 people, across dozens of clients, with the kind of delivery pace that made people age in dog years.
There were moments of madness, yes. But also a lot of good work, some great ideas, and the kind of learning you only get when you’re running full speed with your shoelaces untied.
Then came an offer I couldn’t refuse: to set up IBM’s iX Studio in Brazil. Once again, I built the team from the scratch and acted as Creative Director on projects for Bradesco, Santander, Ipiranga, Fiat — and a joint initiative between IBM & Apple.
These weren’t the kind of projects that end up in award shows — they were pitches, internal tools, hardcore transformation stuff. But two of them stand out:
First, BIA — Bradesco’s AI assistant. The public-facing work was done by Ogilvy, but the early product thinking — like “what should BIA actually do?” — was scribbled inside the iX war room.
Second, Bradesco had never managed to open a checking account in under 90 minutes. They challenged us to fix it, legacy systems and all. In under two months, we developed an app that did the job in under 10 minutes (this was before Nubank).
Not sexy, maybe — but meaningful. And fun in a nerdy, puzzle-solving way.
After IBM, I went to FSB — a massive PR agency with close to 1,000 people — where I was once again handed the mission of “making digital happen.”
I worked on campaigns for Avon, Nestlé, Ipiranga, Schin… and led the digital side of the Rio Olympics effort.
It was big, intense, messy, and somehow, it worked.
In 2017, I joined TV1 as Creative and Planning Director.
I worked across several accounts, but the highlights were leading the creative for Localiza’s TV campaigns and driving the digital side of GOL’s full brand refresh.
One standout was the selfie check-in — yes, passengers could check into their flight just by snapping a selfie.
It was one of those rare occasions when branding, UX, content, and performance all shared the same brief — and actually got along.
After that came Try — an experience design agency under the WPP umbrella. I wasn’t there long, but we managed to deliver some solid stuff: full redesigns of the Casas Bahia, Ponto Frio, Avon and Tok&Stok (yep, those awards I mentioned earlier), plus the complete branding for Avenue.
Not bad for a short stay.
That’s when the pandemic hit — and I found myself back in the tech world. I took on the role of Head of Innovation at Capgemini, a 400,000-employee multinational (around 5,000 in Brazil).
My mission? Spark conversations. Open doors. Bring emerging tech down to earth for clients who were curious, but hesitant.
That turned into some metaverse experiments — including an article I wrote that was published by MIT, and a project for Tommy Hilfiger that became a global case study.
At a time when most brands were just putting out press releases about “entering the metaverse,” we actually built something.
There were also plenty of AI projects. One of my favorites? A 1,7-meter-tall voice-activated avatar we placed inside Pão de Açúcar supermarkets to help customers choose wine based on their preferences.
Yes, a talking wine concierge. In aisle five ;)
So yeah — and that’s the very short version.
I went from journalism to digital advertising, then UX, planning, creative direction, PR, tech, innovation… and built some side projects along the way (some I’m not even mentioning here because this is getting long).
Now you know I have no big awards and also no career focus. And that maybe I’m not the ideal candidate for this job.
But then again — maybe that’s exactly why it could work.
It has, before.
I just remembered a scene from Ocean’s Eleven that captures the kind of thing that draws me in — and no, it’s not about robbing safes:
Saul: I have a question, say we get into the cage, and through the security doors there and down the elevator we can't move, and past the guards with the guns, and into the vault we can't open...
Rusty: Without being seen by the cameras.
Danny: Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that.
Saul: Yeah well, say we do all that... uh... we're just supposed to walk out of there with $150,000,000 in cash on us, without getting stopped?
[pause as everyone turns to look at Danny]
Danny: Yeah.
Saul: [nervously] Oh. Okay.
To wrap it up — whether this works out or not — I really enjoyed our conversations. And digging through all these stories to write this page was fun.
Thanks again.
;)
Some links maybe worth checking out:
A personal project I haven’t launched yet but really care about: O Plano
Oh, and a GPT I created based on a framework that helps people make decisions. Might even help with you guys with this one.
