Argentina: BBDO agency Buenos Aires

Ramiro Rodríguez Cohen, joint ECD at BBDO Argentina, has been instrumental in steering the agency from print to integrated campaigns. He tells Isobel Roberts about the importance of ideas and why winning awards is an indicator of progress and future direction.  

When it comes to physical size, BBDO Argentina might be a small fi sh compared to its bigger network buddies, but it’s certainly no small fry when it comes to creative prowess. Since joint executive creative directors Ramiro Rodríguez Cohen and Rodrigo Grau joined from Ogilvy three years ago, they’ve helped transform the agency’s reputation from solid performer in print to implementer of integrated, and are part of a team of Buenos Aires shops leading the charge in Argentinian advertising.

“I think we have a clear focus,” explains Rodríguez Cohen. “When you have to do an integrated campaign you need a big idea fi rst, and then how you execute that idea in each of the mediums isn’t so important because the big thing is the big idea. It doesn’t matter how you explore the idea in print, internet, TV – if you have a big idea everything will build in that direction and the campaign will be a good campaign.”

If the agency’s awards cabinet is anything to go by, this formula is a winning one; BBDO Argentina have bagged the Integrated Grand Prix for the last two years on the trot at FIAP, and also snared the same prize at this year’s Wave Festival in Rio, the new show on the block that is setting standards for Latin American creativity. “For us,” believes Rodríguez Cohen, “the wins signify that it is not just a one-off, but the way that we are heading. Awards don’t tell you if your work is good or bad, but they show you are working in a direction that is clear – it’s not these awards themselves but what they signify that we appreciate.”

The Pepsi campaign that scooped both Integrated Grands Prix this year involved a stunt that would have most marketing managers recoiling in horror – changing the name of the brand to Pecsi, then plastering the billboards of Buenos Aires with the soft drink’s rebranded logos. “It was funny because it was the biggest out-of-home logos I ever did,” grins Rodríguez Cohen, “but it came from a very strong insight that in Argentina people can’t say the ‘ps’ in Pepsi. The brand used to put global campaigns on air, and I think this campaign brings the product much closer to the people here.” Accompanying the out-of-home ads were a series of Pecsi-themed TV spots, all backed up by the Pecsipedia site, which allowed visitors to submit new versions of other words they found diffi cult to pronounce too. The campaign proved a hit, with the brand’s Spanish counterpart even adopting the idea and renaming the drink Pesi across the Atlantic.

It was social insight of a romantic rather than linguistic type that lay behind the previous year’s FIAP Integrated Grand Prix winner, the Bring Back Slow Dancing campaign for Doritos. “We did a lot of research on blogs and in forums and on the internet,” Rodríguez Cohen says, “about what the problem was between young people and getting connected. And it seemed everything in the modern world is made to eliminate physical contact, and we remembered that slow dancing was a thing that made it easier for us when were younger.” So the agency launched a crusade to bring back slow dancing to discos, first on social networks and via the campaign’s website, before spreading the word through mass media and guerrilla marketing – even making Doritos condoms.

Indeed, while the agency has been exploring these multi-faceted campaigns for clients over the last couple of years, their history of experimental ideas with Nike runs deeper, fuelled by the brand’s desire for innovation. In fact, BBDO were triumphant in 2007 when they were awarded one of only two Integrated Cannes Lions ever presented to Argentina for the Nike Barrio Bonito campaign, which saw Buenos Aires’ La Boca neighbourhood transformed into a football-themed art canvas to coincide with the 2006 World Cup. However, with communications and technology changing rapidly, other brands are taking braver steps too.

And while the economic crisis sent other parts of the globe reeling, the advertising industry in Argentina took it on the chin, accustomed to the effects of a yo-yoing economy – and smaller budgets. So considering the country’s strong creative status, can less money equal better creative? “That’s a lie, we can be creative with a lot of money too!” laughs Rodríguez Cohen. “I think you have to be clever, not more creative. You have to be more efficient and think how to make the money and budget enough.”

Moving more into online marketing has certainly helped budgets stretch further in other countries, and digital advertising is on the increase in Argentina too, although economic matters and access to computers are still issues, but ones that Rodríguez Cohen is hopeful will change: “I think the latest technology makes the technology before cheaper, so sooner or later people will have more access to technology and smartphones and computers here, and it’s going to make the platform bigger.”

But, for now, TV is by far the dominant medium and forms a large proportion of the work that BBDO produces – but, fortunately, it’s something that the Argentinians are pretty good at. Sit through almost any ad break and you will find yourself giggling, a fact that Rodríguez Cohen accredits to the Argentinian character rather than the work of the creative industries. “We’re always making jokes and making fun of each other and I think that you can see that in the advertising too. We have a very good sense of humour and I think it’s part of the culture, something that is very different to other countries, particularly in this region.”

So with the agency’s heyday of print advertising firmly in its past, BBDO Argentina is quietly crafting a new reputation for forward-thinking communications and helping to raise the bar for the region as a whole. Rodríguez Cohen, however, remains modest: “I think we have a clear focus,” he concludes, “and we are working very hard in that direction and going there as fast as we can, and I don’t know what’s cooking in other’s kitchens, but we are doing what we want to.”