Going Beyond a Digital Product with Dentsu Creative Mexico’s Said Gil
With nearly two decades of experience in digital marketing, Dentsu Creative Mexico’s CEO, Said Gil, is passionate about business growth, improving user experience, and leveraging new technologies to do so. He is also the head of CXM for dentsu in Mexico.
Previously having worked at JWT, We Agency and DoubleYou, Said has spent over four years under the dentsu banner, holding positions like chief business officer at Isobar, and chief growth officer for the local market - not to mention his role as board member for the Strategic Value of Brands (AVE), Mexico’s association for agencies, media and advertisers.
After a successful 2023, following the merger of agencies Isobar and dentsuMB in Mexico, and an enlightening experience as president of the digital and social jury at the recent El Ojo Awards, Said sat down with LBB’s Ben Conway to discuss his philosophy for 2024, why digital and social are synonymous with experience, and why he feels the agency has ‘nothing to lose and lots to win’.
LBB> How was 2023 for Dentsu Creative Mexico?
Said> It was a really, really good year for us. We just integrated Isobar and dentsuMB into a single operation, Dentsu Creative, so 2023 was our first year, and to be totally honest, we didn't expect to have that [kind of] year. To win at Cannes Lions, to have the first two Grand Prix at the Clio Entertainment Awards for Mexico, work for different clients and different types of work- it was truly a really good year.
We managed to assemble an incredible team from creative to innovation, strategy, business operations and so on. And, by the end of 2023, we started to get some momentum in terms of pitches, new business and having different conversations with new clients.
LBB> How much of that award-winning work was digital and social-focused, compared to traditional campaigns?
Said> That’s a really good question because Isobar was more of a digital creativity/experience agency, whereas dentsuMB was more of a traditional TVC spot-focused agency. Nowadays in Mexico, nearly 60% of our business is related to digital (content production, social, influencer marketing, web development and so on). It’s part of our DNA.
We face every challenge from a digital standpoint, so we rely a lot on culture, social, and how people are behaving on different platforms. We're really into cultural strategy and experience as a whole, and so digital is really important for us.
LBB> How much do you view digital and social as part of experience as a wider umbrella?
Said> That’s a tough one. Everything is social, so when you're talking about having an experience with a brand, most of the time, it's a social experience. You interact with brands, and they give you snapshots or different benefits etc., but it's kind of a social interaction.
Experience has evolved from a platform-based mindset to multi-channel experiences. When we are talking about experience, social is a really important factor because it's the way that everybody is interacting - it doesn't matter if it's with our brands, or if it's between us. So they're both related, but when we are talking about experience, we're going beyond a digital product; it’s important to orchestrate different touch points and to create a single narrative, and that is, most of the time, social.
[Above: Cannes Lions/Clio-winning project, Saba - 'V-Land']
LBB> Where are you seeing innovations in that space beyond digital? What are clients looking for?
Said> The one that excites me most is avatars… meta-humans. Different brands on a global scale are doing really interesting things with meta-humans, applying AI to interact with and serve their customers.
From a social standpoint - as in ‘a social community’, not ‘social media’ - it’s totally changing how we’re interacting. We’re interacting not just as users, but as avatars. I’m really excited, not only from a gaming or digital standpoint, but by the way brands and users can create new meta-humans or avatars that can interact on a daily basis.
LBB> You were the president of the digital and social jury at the recent El Ojo Awards - how was that experience?
Said> There were over 260 case studies, so it was a really crowded category. We were seeing different types of projects, from social content to influencer marketing, some from a more innovation standpoint, using new technologies, and so on. I set the tone with the jury on four main criteria:
- Celebrate the work: That's really important for us. We need to be tough on the work but we need to celebrate the different ideas and different types of projects that we see.
- The consumer at the centre, always: The consumer needs to always be at the centre of every idea. So it’s important to identify [if it solves] any specific problem from a country or a region, and the cultural context for the brand. It was really important to understand the context of the idea and why it was relevant to that customer.
- How it creates a narrative and experience: Digital and social, by my understanding, is synonymous with experience. So [it’s about] going beyond a media format.
- Embrace innovation: I urged the jury to embrace innovation, but with a purpose. The technology has to serve the idea and have a single purpose for the brand. We needed to be really careful, because there are a lot of projects that are tech-based but aren’t quite relevant. They're really impressive with the use of technology, but they're not impressive in terms of their relevance to the products.
[Above: Eurofarma - ‘Scrolling Therapy’]
LBB> What were some of the projects that stood out from your judging which balanced the innovation with purpose well?
Said> The first one was from Dentsu Creative Argentina, called ‘Scrolling Therapy’. It's an app for people with Parkinson’s that links to your social media… The different facial exercises activate likes, reposts and so on, so it was a really innovative project.
The second one was from Samsung in Spain. It’s an app for people with autism which is linked to your headphones. When a situation becomes stressful, you can activate it to generate different sounds to relax the person by isolating them from the environment.
The third one was a case study from DDB Colombia, called ‘Influencers’ Friends’. It’s for a small beer brand in Colombia, so they couldn’t get the biggest stars or reggaetoneros to be their influencers. Instead, they hired the artists’ best friends. It’s really clever because you can see J Balvin’s best friend with a can of beer in every post with J Balvin. It totally changed the way I understood influencer marketing.
And the last one was from Argentina - Quilmes, a big beer brand in the country, and its World Cup campaign, ‘Coincidences’. Those were the ones that excited me the most.
LBB> Looking at the rest of 2024, what lessons from that jury room have you taken with you?
Said> One of the most interesting things that I saw were specific activations with a huge impact. When we're talking about digital and innovation, we tend to be really obsessed with using different technologies, but this year - not only at El Ojo but at different festivals - there were a lot of case studies that were really specific. I can remember Pedidos Ya and GUT’s campaign ‘World Cup Delivery’, which was actually a push notification that told all the people in Argentina that the World Cup trophy was arriving in Argentina.
It’s about specific activations with a huge, and culturally relevant, impact. From a creative mindset, that’s quite hard because you need to be really attached to the culture of that brand’s customers in order to gain relevance. I think that's kind of a trend for this year, and in the years to come for sure, because there won’t be enough budget for brands to compete on every level.
[Above: Pedidos Ya - ‘World Cup Delivery’]
LBB> How do you set up an agency to make sure your creatives are picking up on these cultural insights?
Said> You need to have a really strong strategy team. Our strategy team is really well trained to highlight different trends, cultural nuances, and so on. When the creative team gets familiar with working with the strategy team, they will then start to identify those different influences themselves. The other thing, as well, is to surround yourself with different databases and tools, to be inspired and well-informed regarding those nuances.
LBB> And lastly, what do you see on the horizon for the social and digital space, as well as Dentsu Creative Mexico more specifically, in 2024?
Said> One from a digital standpoint that is quite big is automation; AI creating its own kind of content group, optimising content and creating new variants and different specifications for that content. Clients are really interested in how to incorporate artificial intelligence into their daily business.
For the years to come, there are a lot of things that we need to accomplish. Not just reputation stuff either - the agency is growing at a really good pace and our clients are not only in Mexico. We're gaining relevance here and we’ve assembled a really strong team in Mexico, but we're also gaining relevance for different clients, as well as regionally and globally, as Dentsu Creative.
From a global standpoint, we're becoming [more] relevant for different brands, and we’re the underdog in the game. To be totally honest, it feels really good to be the underdog. The only thing that you can achieve is to grow, so there's nothing to lose and there's a lot to be won.
