Planning for the Best: Paola Ortega on "Debating, Questioning and Entertaining Opposing Views"
Paola (or Pao for short) is head of strategy at Quality Meats, a fully virtual ad agency recently named an AdAge A-list Standout, AdAge's Small Agency of the Year for the last two years, and Adweek's Breakthrough Agency of the Year Finalist.
Quality Meats was started in the summer of 2020 with no paying clients or investors, just a few humans focused on delivering the highest-quality work without all the BS that gets in the way. Today they're a fully integrated agency with that exact same mission, but with more humans, and a client roster including Samsung, Huggies, Regal Cinemas, DoorDash, SAXX Underwear, Marquee Sports Network, and more.
Joining Quality Meats in fall of 2023, Pao stepped in to complete the leadership team with her smarts and warmth, and has begun to channel a career’s worth of learnings into building the strategy department at Quality Meats.
A Mexican-born, Texas-raised strategist with a quasi-irrational obsession to help brands craft their story, Pao’s early beginnings in the multicultural space gave her the tools to always dig deeper to find the sharp, unspoken truths that reframe problems and instigate creativity. Throughout her career, she has helped global brands like Fanta and Heineken reignite their presence, brought brands like Coors Light back into the cultural zeitgeist and led brand-defining work for legacy icons like Barbie.
When she’s not out and about getting into deep conversations with strangers, you can find her chasing her two energetic boys, getting lost in a white collar crime documentary or in the kitchen trying to master mom’s recipes.
LBB> What do you think is the difference between a strategist and a planner? Is there one?
Paola> Debating, questioning and entertaining opposing views on any given topic is one of the most exciting aspects of being a strategist; it’s how we push ourselves to new spaces that help forge the path for the brands we lead…but the whole strategy vs planning is a dead end debate I can’t get behind – and one I think would be nice to put to rest once and for all.
We can’t sit here and collectively complain as a practice that ‘clients don’t get strategy’ if we keep pretending like it’s not all the same thing, making us look like we don’t get it ourselves. As the brilliant Martin Weigel points out, the difference in naming goes back to the history of the practice, so maybe we should just have everyone read his very eloquent piece 'Strategy, Rediscovered' and call it a day.
At the end of the day, no matter what we call it, we have the responsibility to bring the best of the science and the art of strategy together to help create new potential for brands.
LBB> And which description do you think suits the way you work best?
Paola> The one in the very first sentence above. I like to get lost in the good stuff that actually takes us places — like talking to uber drivers about everything and anything (or any human that will let me, really), reading / watching / listening to things that have nothing to do with advertising and everything with how we understand the world, connect with humans and bring new perspectives to different problems.
LBB> We’re used to hearing about the best creative advertising campaigns, but what’s your favorite historic campaign from a strategic perspective? One that you feel demonstrates great strategy?
Paola> Librerías Gandhi “We Make You Read” and everything the brand has done in Mexico for the past 20 years is *chefs kiss*. It’s not just one of my favorite campaigns but also the one that sparked my interest in the industry.
Librerías Gandhi is a bookstore created with the ambition to democratise books in Mexico and instigate an entire country to realise the power in becoming more cultured.
Using wit and humour, and being unafraid to be a sharp critic of Mexican culture, politics, and society at large, the brand built an irreverent tone that helped connect with people in a way you would with a friend. With quick, sharp headline driven work it made you stop and think — with a smile on your face.
The campaign didn’t just spike sales and traffic for the brand…it helped change the way a country thinks about reading from being a ‘thing for the academics’ to a part of daily life that changes perspectives for everyone who cares to give it a shot.
The work has remained as relevant through many societal and political shifts in Mexico, and positioned itself as the better alternative to what the country faces daily, but also the pivotal tool to changing said reality.
The campaign has won numerous awards, including Cannes Lions, Grand Effies, Clios and many more in Latin America. The most exciting part is that it became (and remains) an icon in Mexican culture and continues to drive results for the brand.
LBB> When you’re turning a business brief into something that can inform an inspiring creative campaign, do you find the most useful resource to draw on?
Paola> Pop culture. I personally have the attention span of a goldfish. So, I know how hard it is to stay focused on something when it is presented in an uninteresting manner, no matter how important or intelligent the content is.
There’s nothing less sexy or uninspiring than a bunch of business jargon and charts or boring text on slides. So, I try to be my own worst critic, and find ways to distil things into interesting beats, and to ‘dress up’ the points I am making with things like gifs (my personal favourite), movie quotes, memes, lyrics etc to make things stick and keep people engaged.
It’s like Switftonomics, no one really cares to understand basic economic concepts, but the second you attach Taylor Swift to it, America is listening. So, that’s what I try to do. Find those things that will make things interesting, sticky, and start to get creative brains going.
Also – creatives. They are such an underutilised resource in strategy. It’s not about making them do your job for you, but it’s incredibly rewarding to be able to just think things through with them and together come up with a much more interesting brief than one you maybe would have spent 3 days on all by yourself.
LBB> What part of your job/the strategic process do you enjoy the most?
Paola> Oof. Tough one. But probably the ‘what-ifs’ of a brief. To me, the conversation a brief sparks is way more exciting than the document itself. Sure, it’s important but ultimately I want to know that it gets people thinking, that we can use that time together to start pushing things in interesting directions, and that’s my favorite part of my job. The time we spend together as a team kicking things around and seeing where things can take us, together.
LBB> What strategic maxims, frameworks or principles do you find yourself going back to over and over again? Why are they so useful?
Paola> “WHY?” is maybe the most helpful thing I’ve learned in my career that I use daily. Frameworks can be helpful, but they can also be limiting in some ways, adding an unnecessary burden to try to conform to boxes on a slide, instead of focusing on the meaty bits. I just have found asking yourself WHY is an incredibly helpful tool to getting to sharper, more interesting places.
It helps me push my own initial thinking, which we all need. WHY are we saying this? WHY do we have the right to do it? WHY is this the right step in getting us to where we want to go? WHY aren’t we instead saying x or y?
LBB> What sort of creatives do you like to work with? As a strategist, what do you want them to do with the information you give them?
Paola> Passionate creatives with strong points of view, who are passionate about their work but never too precious and the ones who get excited about nerding out with you on strategy early on. I don’t want them to just take information I give them, I want us to push on things together, I want them to question things, to make sure they feel ownership and be unafraid to kill 99 other ways in until we find the one we all feel stoked about.
LBB> There’s a negative stereotype about strategy being used to validate creative ideas, rather than as a resource to inform them and make sure they’re effective. How do you make sure the agency gets this the right way round?
Paola> I am lucky to have joined an agency and leadership team with two co-founders and a managing director who are inherently strategic, who believe in strategy’s essential role in getting to the best work possible, and with whom I’ve built a great relationship with. And that is 90% of it.
We respect and value each other’s points of view and are unafraid to disagree and push each other. Bringing others in on things early and never treating strategy as an output, but rather a means to an end is how we make sure we are making the most of strategy and what allows us to give our creativity that strong foundation and edge that will impact a business, and not just be a fun little thing to make.
LBB> What have you found to be the most important consideration in recruiting and nurturing strategic talent?
Paola> Homogeneity is the enemy. I look for people who think differently, who have different lived experiences, who each bring something different to the table. Some leaders look for people who will just execute their vision and follow the path of least resistance. I want to build a team who creates that vision together, where the sum is greater than its parts and where passionate discussions are something we look forward to, not avoid.
LBB> In recent years it seems like effectiveness awards have grown in prestige and agencies have paid more attention to them. How do you think this has impacted on how strategists work and the way they are perceived?
Paola> It is interesting to me that effectiveness has just now become ‘a thing’ for many. I had a lot of mentors and managers early in my career from LATAM and Europe and feel like it was tattooed in my brain very early on that ‘work that works’ is always the goal. But, all in all excited to see effectiveness become a common language and not a mysterious land only some are brave enough to explore.
For me that’s the key. Demystifying it for everyone, making sure everyone knows what it takes work to work and having that collective ambition. I believe effectiveness demands creativity in a world where almost 90% of ads are ignored. Higher quality creative delivers 4x the profit (WARC, 2023) — and while it’s not the only thing that matters, it is an essential piece of it.
That’s one thing we are prioritising and I hope every other agency is too! It is our bread and butter, and if we can’t prove that creativity drives business, we’re all out of jobs.
We’re also seeing a shift that brand and product are not at odds, and that embracing the product and what makes it unique can help you build the brand in powerful ways.
And lastly, I also stand by the fact that the ‘where’ is as important as the ‘what.’ So, comms strategy isn’t just a silly little chart we put in decks to dazzle clients, but our Swiss-army knife for making sure the right message is getting to the right people at the right time and in disruptive ways. Because otherwise, you might as well just run a blank banner.
LBB> Do you have any frustrations with planning/strategy as a discipline?
Paola> The self-importance. If you care more about looking smart than actually being smart while having fun and taking work to interesting spaces, you’re in the wrong industry.
LBB> What advice would you give to anyone considering a career as a strategist/planner?
Paola> Be interested in many other things that have nothing to do with advertising. You will naturally find those connections. If you get too caught up in the industry you’ll lose touch with reality and forget that we’re doing work that connects with real humans.
Comparison is the thief of joy. You are nothing like the strategist next to you, and that’s a great thing. Everyone will be good at different things, lean into yours.
Don’t worry about having all the right answers, you will be more valuable for asking all the right questions and knowing how to get to the right answers.
