Into the Library with Marcelo Reis
'The Creative Library' is LBB’s exciting new launch. It’s been months - years, probably - in the making and we reckon our re-tooled archive will change the way you work, whether you’re a company looking to store and share your work, or a marketer or creative looking for new partners or inspiration for your latest project.
The latest stage of this launch involves you, our readers. If you have ever been credited on campaigns or music videos, you can now personalise your creative profile - find out more about why and how here.
To coincide with launching The Creative Library, we launched regular feature called ‘Into the Library’ where we catch up with the industry’s most influential directors and creatives to talk about their career highlights, past and present. Think of it as a reel showcase with a big dollop of personality. We interview directors and top creatives about their favourite commercials and music videos from their catalogues to find out how these works shaped them.
Sharing the most influential projects of his career so far today is Marcelo Reis, Leo Burnett Tailor Made's CEO and CCO, one of the leading creative minds of the Brazilian and wider Latin American markets. Before arriving at Leo Burnett Tailor Made, he helped create award winning work at agencies such as W/Brazil, Leo Burnett Brasil, Y&R, Lew'Lara\TBWA and DM9, where he played a key role in them becoming Agency of The Year at the 2009 Cannes Festival. In 2014, Reis helped Leo Burnett Tailor Made to win 22 Cannes Lions, making them the most awarded Brazilian agency at the festival, and has since gone from strength to strength as the agency's creative leader.
Highlighting the campaigns that have left a mark on his storied career thus far, Marcelo speaks to LBB's Ben Conway about some key moments in his life as a creative - including work with Fiat, footballing legends Pelé and Ronaldo, and a buried Bentley.
SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation - '7%'
I created this as an intern when I first arrived in São Paulo from Belo Horizonte - a transitional moment in my life. I had left my position as a copywriter in Minas Gerais, a regional market, to come to São Paulo and start from scratch as an intern. I was around 25 years old when I created this campaign with my first partner, Bráulio Kuwabara. We had a great connection and started doing various jobs for several clients at Lew'Lara. One of the jobs was this campaign for SOS Mata Atlântica in 2000, where we created a physical piece that only used 7% of the billboard space because that was exactly the size of green area left in the Mata Atlântica at that time. This ad won a Gold Lion and was the first time I went up on stage at Cannes - it really lifted me to another level and into the international awards scene. It gave me a taste of what it's like to participate and seek creativity in its excellence. It showed me how important the idea is, both to engage and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the business to clients. Above all, that piece was an important communication tool for the cause.
Museum of Art of São Paulo - 'Divan Bench'
DM9DDB, my second job in São Paulo, was one of the hottest agencies at the time. We got the project for the Freud exhibition at Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP), which was a highly coveted job among the creative duos. We created several pieces that won international awards, including Gold at The One Show. This campaign also transformed my relationship with my profession, because it showed me that I could work at a top creative agency and perform really well. It gave me a big confidence boost in my third year in the market, and encouraged me to keep dedicating myself to the job. I had the comfort of feeling that, no matter where I went in the world, I could certainly find a way to stand out creatively.
Fiat - 'Rethink Your Concepts'
During this campaign, I became very close to the Fiat brand, and we had the opportunity to continue a campaign that conceptually already existed for the Fiat Palio. We had the chance to come up with the most creative and memorable assets for the main idea, 'It's time to rethink your concepts'. The Fiat brand was facing big rejection rates at the time, and this campaign helped reverse that and make the brand the sales leader for decades. We managed to create a campaign that tackled some very delicate topics at the time: structural racism, gender prejudice, social class discrimination and homophobia. We were able to tell several different stories and engage the country in a discussion about revising concepts and prejudices, using real-life examples. This was a huge step forward for the communication industry; Fiat was the first brand to bring up taboo subjects on prime time. Today it may be common in our communications but back in 2001, it wasn't. Fiat had the courage to say that Brazilians needed to revisit their paradigms and look at the world with more equality. It's a job in which I deeply immersed myself, perhaps the campaign with which I have the most profound connection and became a topic of discussion at family tables and greatly propelled me as a professional.
Banco Real - 'University (Lee)'
This campaign was very important because I was beginning to take on leadership roles in the creative industry. This was a new segment for Banco Real, and a campaign to engage with the university audience. It wasn't just a simple advertising campaign, because we had to communicate like young people and recreate the same environment college students were used to. We placed professors inside Banco Real branches, and they interacted with the students, showing that Banco Real offered the right partnership, from a professional growth and perspective for the future. I think that if it was done today, almost 20 years later, it would be a much more interactive campaign from a social media standpoint, with clustering and the use of performance media. After all, it was a campaign aimed at young people within the young universe, with real university professors. It fulfilled all that was needed, was extremely creative and generated business for the bank. It allowed us to work effectively for a big brand in a significant national movement, propelling us towards larger projects within the agency.
My second stint at DM9DBB was very important. We made history with a huge and astonishing creative team, and we did impactful work of the highest quality. We were awarded 'Agency of the Year' at Cannes in 2009. The pieces I'm showcasing here, as creative director, represent some of the agency's award-winning pieces at Cannes that year. Standing on the Cannes stage to accept the 'Agency of the Year' trophy was an unforgettable moment. It left me craving more, and in 2013, at Leo Burnett Tailor Made, we managed to be the third most-awarded Brazilian agency at Cannes and, in 2014, the first to win 22 Lions.
Fiat - 'Thin Ronaldo'
We hired Ronaldo Fenômeno and slimmed down his body, when all of Brazil was focused on the player's excessive weight. We joked that Ronaldo had lost weight because Fiat was downsizing everything, even the price of their cars. It was an instant success and made a huge buzz in the automotive market.
Fiat - 'Don't Text and Drive: Alphabet'
We executed a print campaign that became the most awarded worldwide in 2013. The 'Don’t Text and Drive' campaign bolstered our country's reputation in graphical work and once again showcased our partnership with the Fiat brand.
Carrefour - 'Rei Pelé'
Football influences our communication yet again. Not just football, but the king of football. We brought in Pelé to connect the World Cup with our communication concept: 'Faz Carrefour', created in 2012 for Carrefour and still in use today. It was such a simple creative and strategic solution, based on a simple fact: going shopping is synonymous with going to Carrefour in Brazil. Pelé crowned this narrative by inviting everyone to join in doing the basics: cheering with him for the national team.
Fiat - 'Come to the Streets'
In 2013, we launched a campaign that referenced the Confederations Cup. We invited Brazilians to cheer on the streets, which are Brazil's largest stadium bleachers. Recorded by a fantastic Brazilian singer, Falcão, the song became the unofficial anthem of the 2014 World Cup. In this anthem, we invited people to take to the streets to celebrate, but it ended up having an even greater impact, and captured people's hearts. It was used in the 2013 protests against the increase in bus fare and other social issues. The campaign transcended its original purpose, connecting with the zeitgeist of our people. Even today, people still believe that an anthem of such magnitude was created for the protests, and others doubt its advertising origin. #VempraRua was immortalised and turned into the name of a political movement. We won a Cannes Lion and were recognised at all Brazilian festivals as having created a timeless campaign, or perhaps even contributed to a true national sociocultural movement.
Abto - 'The Bentley Burial'
We orchestrated 'The Bentley Burial' with a budget of roughly $5,000 USD. We dug a hole at the house of Chiquinho Scarpa, a very exotic and famous Brazilian socialite, who agreed to 'bury' his Bentley to create a buzz on social media; we launched this guerrilla tactic, the first of its kind in Brazil. We made a single post on his profile in which he said he would bury his $500,000 car, exactly as the pharaohs did. The entire social media was driven to this topic and he was lambasted. TV networks, digital media, newspapers, magazines, gossip shows - everyone was curious and wanted to know more. At the moment of the burial, which was covered live by journalists, he announced he wouldn't bury it after all. That, in fact, he had done all this just to show that people bury things much more valuable than a Bentley - they bury their organs. This campaign was awarded several Gold Lions at Cannes. The creative, account services, planning, production and media teams at Leo worked as one, and shared the glory.
Hemoba - 'My Blood Is Red and Black'
Around the same time [as 'The Bentley Burial'], we did a campaign for Hemoba, in which we removed the red colour from the black, white and red jerseys of Esporte Clube Vitória. With each game, blood donations increased, and we returned a single red stripe, encouraging people to donate more. In five weeks, we managed to bring back all the stripes, and blood donations in the state of Bahia hit a new record. In other words, we turned the traditional tri-colour jersey into a black and white one, until the blood banks had enough stock. This campaign won several Lions at Cannes, and that year we returned from France with 22 Lions and as the most-awarded agency in Brazil.
Fiat - 'The Most Valuable Tweet'
After sponsoring 'Big Brother Brasil' for over 20 years, Fiat lost the sponsorship to Chevrolet, who paid twice as much for the advertising quota. During the show, people missed Fiat and complained about the brand change on Twitter (the platform with the most interactions and mentions to the TV reality show). And then, when a true enthusiast of the brand expressed his genuine longing, Fiat reversed the logic of the show: it took the game from TV to the social network, and gifted that man with a Fiat Toro pickup. We gave away the car in real time, as the GM challenge on the show was aired. The whole internet embraced the action, and the official sponsor ended the day in 11th place on the trending topics, while Fiat came in 4th. After all that, we still managed to deliver the car and steer the conversation, bringing all the attention back to Fiat, without investing a single penny in advertising. That's the kind of conversation we like to create for our brands.
Volta Pinheiros - 'Come Back Pinheiros'
In 2017, I created, along with a group of people, a movement to rescue the polluted Pinheiros River, the river of the state capital. For this, we were honoured by the Municipal Chamber of the City of São Paulo. We developed several guerrilla actions that created talkability and brought the river back into the media and into the agendas of politicians. After all, São Paulo is a city full of problems, with issues in health, education, violence and also sanitation - so a polluted river ends up being a secondary concern. We created a few campaigns with this movement called '#ComeBackPinheiros', based on guerrilla actions. We placed a four-metre-tall poop emoji in the Pinheiros River; created a stinky perfume using water from the river and sent it to the State Governor; we used human excrement to make busts of Governors who failed to deliver the cleaning projects they promised; and recently brought "radioactive capybaras" into the waters - an inflatable capybara with three eyes - to prove that the river is still full of chemical pollution. We discovered - through a scientific partnership with a university in São Paulo - that the Government hides the real pollution data. The most interesting thing about our profession is that the most memorable works in life have nothing to do with awards. They're about engaging people. 'Come Back Pinheiros' is one such work.
My journey at Leo Burnett Tailor Made is the result of the collective stories of all the people I've met along the way. Every award I've won, every campaign I've launched, and my current position as CEO and CCO - I owe it all to everyone I've worked with. Here at Leo, we've done truly amazing work, and talking about Leo means talking about a body of work rather than a single job. Leo is a cutting-edge, strategic, and creative agency that speaks about business and delivers results for clients through creativity. That's our goal. To discover what is good for people, because that will surely be good for brands' business.
