My Creative Hero: Barbara Kruger

Fred Saldanha has always ran from his comfort zone. He know it sounds cliché, but his collection of zip codes doesn't lie. Lisbon, London, São Paulo, Detroit, Boston, New York - he has worked all over the place for the past 32 years. So far, the journey has included places like Y&R, DDB, FCB, Grey, W+K, Ogilvy, AgênciaClick/Isobar, Huge, and Arnold. Traditional, design-oriented, digital native, small, big, all kinds of agencies.

In 1997, with a spirit of adventure and insanity, he co-founded a shop in Portugal that, after a resounding success, was acquired by FCB, where he became a partner and creative leader. In the year of the merger, FCB Lisbon was elected the world's most creative office among the FCB network.

Currently, he is the CCO at VML, overseeing all Colgate-Palmolive brands worldwide. Under his leadership, Colgate went from zero to 11 Lions at Cannes, including two Silver Lions in Film and Creative Strategy.

He has been a jury member at Cannes, D&AD, and One Show, among other international festivals. In 2015, he was named one of the 30 most creative people in advertising by Business Insider, and in 2021, he was recognised in The Drum's World Creative Rankings of the best CCOs of the year. He is also a member of the VML Global Creative Council.

His work was recognised with more than 55 Cannes Lions for brands like Colgate, Coca-Cola, Sprite, Unicef, Leica, Motorola, Forbes, Monster.com, Hellman's, and Fiat, among other awards like D&AD, Effie, Webby, LIA, One Show, and Clio. One thing has never changed during all these years: the will to work with people he admires and for brands he loves. 

I have an imaginary sticker album of creative heroes I've collected since I entered the advertising world. But if I had to choose just one of those heroes to talk about, it would be the artist Barbara Kruger.

Even though she despises advertising (it's OK, Barbara, I still love you) and has a very critical view of the consumerist world we live in (her circa-1987 poster "I Shop Therefore I Am" is an example), her work is punch-you-in-the-gut inspiring.

There's no one like her when it comes to combining images with provocative words.

Impossible to ignore, her pieces always spark political debate presented as works of art. She wields the power of concision, crafting text that pokes at our conscience and makes us question everything we do and everything we are.

Her insights are as sharp as her visuals (found images that easily illustrate powerful social commentaries). Interestingly, the scale of her work is very similar to the media we use in our industry: billboards, audio-video installations, ambient activations, matchbook covers, bus shelters, and so on.

With her background in graphic design, Barbara created a distinctive visual language — an explosive mix of pop and punk — that has never aged or lost its relevance (ask the brand Supreme, which openly admitted to copying her signature image).

I started following Barbara's work in the '90s. I still remember seeing some of her pieces featured in a museum — impactful, utterly visceral, meticulously simple. Photomontages with text alternating between Helvetica and Futura Bold. Since then, I've been a fan. I would love to collect some pieces, but I can either buy art or afford rent in NY — not both. In 2017, I was lucky to experience one of her works firsthand: “Untitled (Skate) 2017,” a vinyl, site-specific installation at Coleman Skatepark in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

I love her work, as the art sucker that I am. However, as an ad guy, I find Barbara Kruger's work profoundly inspiring for our industry. Every piece she creates makes you stop, think and feel something. She treats her viewers as thinking beings capable of being moved, angered or understood in her messages. You could say her work is “emphatically visual.” Is there a better approach when facing a new creative brief?

There's one Barbara Kruger piece that has stayed vivid in my memory. Years ago, I bought a ticket to attend her "performance" at the Performa Art Biennial. Curiously, the website selling the ticket provided no description of the nature of this work.

When I arrived at the venue, a line stretched for blocks in SoHo, NY. After over an hour of waiting, I entered the "performance" space and was told by a security guard, "Once inside, you have 10 minutes." The performance was, in fact, a store — a museum shop-type store. In this small pop-up shop (which could only hold about 10 people at a time), you could buy items like hoodies, T-shirts, patches, skateboard decks, and beanies in red and black, all with Barbara Kruger's signature all-caps text.

I saw people looking incredulous, even angry, for having paid for what was essentially access to a store. I laughed at the irony of the performance. What better way to critique consumerism — starting with those lines of people outside stores in NY or LA — than by turning the transaction into an artistic installation? Point made. And since I'd already waited an hour in line, I didn't think twice before buying Barbara Kruger's skateboard deck.

After all, "I Shop Therefore I Am."