The Inner Circle of Espadaysantacruz
Espadaysantacruz Studio, the Madrid-based creative technology company for agencies seeking tech-inspired stories, talks continuous curiosity.
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Miguel Espada, Juan Santa-Cruz and Nerea Goikoetxea met at university and seemed destined for careers in academia – in philosophy, mathematics and cultural management. But inspired and united by their love for art, culture and technology, they turned themselves into the go-to talents for agencies seeking tech-inspired stories – producing everything from spectacular interactive events to swimming caps that guide visually impaired swimmers [below]. Danny Edwards talks to the three friends behind Madrid-based creative technology specialists Espadaysantacruz Studio.
In 2012 three friends decided that life in academia as, variously, a mathematician, philosopher and cultural manager, could take a back seat to more creative and artistic endeavours. So, united by a love for art, culture, technology and a challenge, Miguel Espada, Juan Santa-Cruz and Nerea Goikoetxea created Espadaysantacruz Studio. Based in Madrid, the company specialises in creating interactive and visual experiences that use technology to take creative ideas to a new aesthetic dimension.
Their groundbreaking work for Samsung – which earned them two gold Lions at Cannes 2016 for their development of a vibrating swimming cap for blind swimmers – alongside lauded work for Ford and Pepe Jeans, has seen them propelled to the top of many must-work-with lists. Here, the studio’s three founders talk to shots about the company’s origins and the positive and negatives of working with tech.
“…we started to pay attention to brand communication. We thought that brands and agencies could be interested in our skills, that they could communicate using new media projects lead by creators like us.”
Can you explain a little about your individual backgrounds and how you all came together to create Espadaysantacruz?
NG: We met while we were at university. Juan and I studied philosophy and humanities but we were passionate about photography, developing and printing in our own lab in our kitchen. Later on, Juan, who was doing a PhD in computer science, met Miguel at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where Miguel was a young professor.
We all had an interest in art, cinema, literature and culture in general, and were all experimenting with being artists through our own personal projects. At that time, I was dedicated to cultural management, coordinating and directing projects, while Juan and Miguel were teaching in the computer science faculty. They were working on personal artistic projects, some of which involved the use of new media technologies. In 2008 I mentioned that they should create a company, a studio – Espadaysantacruz.
And they did. Juan and Miguel focussed their attention on this new venture, with no real professional objective at that point. Then, in 2012, I left my job and joined them. That’s when we started to pay attention to brand communication. We thought that brands and agencies could be interested in our skills, that they could communicate using new media projects lead by creators like us.
"So many agencies are trying to introduce new technologies into every single aspect of everyday life, even where they are not needed."
What was the driving force behind your decision to create the company?
NG: Continuous curiosity. The will to do things in different ways, the spirit of adventure. We are all very restless and passionate and worked hard to create the studio. None of us has any business training, but our instinct and the process of trial and error propelled us forward. We chose to focus our creativity and work on advertising and brand communication because it was a fertile ground in which creative technology was still developing.
Nerea Goikoetxea is inspired by…
What’s your favourite ever ad?
There are so many that inspire me. But Toni Segarra [executive creative director at SCPF] is the mind and the soul behind the iconic Spanish ad for BMW, Mano [Hand]. Its tagline ‘¿Te gusta conducir?’ [Do you like to drive?] resonates in the mind of everyone in Spain. A hand trailing in the wind through a car window is a sign of freedom. We do not see the product. The absence of the car was disruptive at the time. I love the simplicity and the intelligence of the idea behind that ad.
What product could you not live without?
The sea.
How do you relieve stress during a project?
I convince myself that when a collective of people focuses together on the same objective, giving their best, in the end the project comes out ahead.
What fictitious character do you most relate to?
[Cartoon character] Willy Fog. I am very dangerous with a world map in my hands.
What are your thoughts on social media?
I have mixed feelings. Social media easily connects people who, in another time, it would have been impossible to connect. In a brand context, it’s an open window that connects brands with people naturally. And without doubt it’s an enormous creative field, in constant movement, which makes it even more stimulating. But, at the same time, I think it has a perverse face. I can’t discard my background before the internet and social media. I don’t feel like a 100 per cent digital native, so that influences me to think that the digital world makes relationships between people less genuine.
What’s the last film you watched and was it any good?
A Most Violent Year by J. C. Chandor.
What film do you think everyone should have seen?
Any of David Attenborough’s documentaries.
If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what would you like to be?
A marine biologist, no doubt!
Was advertising an industry you always wanted to get into?
ME: Not at all. We all come from backgrounds very far from advertising: mathematics, philosophy and cultural management. We began to collaborate as an artistic collective because we shared a common interest in different artistic expressions. We began to incorporate new technologies into our work and this elevated them to a new artistic dimension. At one point, we thought we could apply our way of doing things to the advertising industry to have greater visibility.
Your area of expertise is technology and technological solutions. Has the abundance of new tech at your disposal made standing out from the crowd easier or harder?
ME: We don’t differentiate between one technology and another. What we do is apply scientific methods to our projects. Of course, there are many technologies. Every day new devices appear, but basically they all try to modify our relationship with the world and with others. Our mission is to find the expressive qualities of every technology and build stories through them. Technology is a tool, not an end in itself.
“Our mission is to find the expressive qualities of every technology and build stories through them. Technology is a tool, not an end in itself.”
Do you think that brands and agencies sometimes rely on using new and potentially exciting technology in a campaign regardless of whether that technology actually helps them solve the client’s problem?
NG: This an interesting but difficult question to answer. No doubt there are some agencies and brands that jump on innovation without having a clear idea of whether it’s useful (or even inspiring) to their clients or to the public. Our work is, to a large degree, about creating content that is attractive, innovative and inspiring to the public. We try to help agencies and brands connect to the public through these projects. Technology is fashionable, as it has always been. What has happened is that technology is now more accessible – and better – than in the past, not only for users but also for makers. But the life of technologies are shorter and this causes what we call “use and throw innovation”.
Is simplicity sometimes the best approach? Do some companies and brands have a tendency to overcomplicate the use of technology?
ME: The advertising industry is helping companies find new spaces of communication between them and their potential consumers. A simple application of technology, such as Blind Cap [a wearable band and swimming cap that alerts visually impaired swimmers as they approach the end of a lane] can help show that a company is looking to the future and it has a particular sensitivity about its customers’ needs.
Sometimes the advertising industry does overcomplicate the use of technology. Innovation communicates very well, it gets recognition and awards, so many agencies are trying to introduce new technologies into every single aspect of everyday life, even where they are not needed. Sometimes analogue solutions are much better than digital ones.
Miguel Espada is inspired by…
What’s your favourite ever ad?
I love the poetic way that technology is used in the spot Sound of Honda/Ayrton Senna 1989.
What product could you not live without?
My bike.
What are your thoughts on social media?
I’m a lazy user. I’m more a voyeur than an active participant.
What’s the last film you watched and was it any good?
Goodnight Mommy. A nice horror movie.
What’s your favourite piece of tech?
I like Arduino. As an open hardware platform it changed the way we relate to technology.
What film do you think everyone should have seen?
Any of Tarkovsky’s films.
What fictitious character do you most relate to?
David Lurie, the protagonist of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.
If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what would you like to be?
A white-collar thief or a bad-ass hacker.
Espadaysantacruz is a multitalented entity. You develop projects, code them and make the surrounding film explaining the piece of work. Do you think this approach is one of the things that makes you stand out?
NG: Definitely. If there is something that defines us it’s that we take care of all details and aspects of each project: the technology, design and visual aspects. In advertising there is great respect for the TV commercial, so they tend to focus on this and assimilate their production methods to the ones used in film. We do not do that, we are not directors (but we direct our films), we are not creative coders (but we code) we are not product designers (but we design). We are a team and we work as a collective with one goal: to make each project unique, coherent and consistent.
In terms of future technological innovations, what are you most excited about or intrigued by?
ME: In the last few years we have started to become interested, like so many others, in artificial intelligence and machine learning. In fact, machine learning is based on a set of algorithms that have been known for many years, but now they’re starting to be really useful on a practical level.
There are technological revolutions that are paradigm shifts because they affect our world view, how we relate to the world, and we believe that the advances in machine learning are going to be game-changers, because they are going to propel the rest of the technological world to a different level.
Espadaysantacruz are represented in the UK by 1stAveMachine.
