Face to Face with... Santiago Keller Sarmiento

El Ojo de Iberoamérica, the innovative festival to celebrate the best in creativity from Latin America, Spain and Portugal, opens today in Buenos Aires. Now in its 15th year, the event originally launched back in 1998 to review and celebrate the first four years of LatinSpots, a leading magazine covering Ibero-American creativity led by publication director Santiago Keller Sarmiento.

Born without a long term plan, the El Ojo continues to thrive and has reinvented itself through the years, acting as a torch bearer to champion innovation introducing new categories and offering an inspiring programme on an annual basis. Work covered by the festival is often seen to do well on the circuit in the year ahead with winners going on to do well at other festivals such as Cannes Lions and with a leading speaker and networking event programme over three days, El Ojo really is an event worth noting on the ad calendar. Here, Sarmiento, also the festival’s president, offers more insight into the event and its values, what’s featuring at this year’s milestone instalment and the importance of South American creativity. 

Tell us about El Ojo and how has it reinvented itself over the years?

Back when we started our goal was to celebrate and recognise the best organisations and professionals. The Best Agency in the region was DM9 (which later became affiliated with DDB) and the Best Creative was Marcello Serpa. This was the inaugural event [in 1998], bringing together more than 500 people from the region and it was a great success. We thought it would end there, but the following year, everyone was calling us to find out when El Ojo would be and we decided to repeat it even though we weren’t completely convinced.

We decided to make it an official festival to recognise not only the best professionals and organisations in the region, but also the best work in each category. Our goal was to show the best work people are doing and to motivate and inspire the rest of the industry to do better. We wanted to make El Ojo the meeting place for industry professionals, the place to train, debate, inspire and motivate everyone to do better and conquer the world.

El Ojo was the first festival in the world to do its entire registration system online, and the first to implement a system that allows jurors to vote from their respective countries and avoid the restrictions that often happen during face-to-face judging due to issues of nationality, networks, cronyism or simply admiration, allowing each juror to really choose what they think is best. Also, three years ago we were the first to decide that the Grand Prix of the festival should be elected in an integrated manner by all of the presidents together in the days prior to the festival.

Furthermore, each year we update the categories and were among the first festivals to include sections such as Interactive, Branded Content, Best Idea, Tercer Ojo (Titanium) and Sustainability. This year we launched El Ojo Mobile and El Ojo Sports, the first with the support of the Mobile Marketing Association of Latin America.

How have all the preparations been going for this year’s event?

Preparations have gone very well. We’re ready and we’re going to have a strong festival again this year despite the economic crisis. We begin producing El Ojo almost a year and a half in advance with the majority of speakers confirmed then. But like all events, many things aren’t defined until the last few months and weeks. This week, almost 300 jurors finished voting for winners, and in the last few days presidents have been choosing the Grand Prix winners.

As for submissions, El Ojo continues to grow. This year submissions were up by three per cent with 5170 entries, which makes us the festival with the most entries from Iberoamérica, and also one of the largest in the world.

How valuable do you think the festival is for getting an advanced preview of upcoming work?

El Ojo includes work that has appeared up to October 5 2012, so there is a lot of fresh, new work involved. In fact, in recent years work that won in El Ojo has gone on to win in all the festivals the following year. Cases such as Axe 3 from Ponce Buenos Aires, that won the Grand Prix at El Ojo won the Grand Prix for Integrated at Cannes the following year. The same thing happened with The Friendship Machine from Coca-Cola that won at El Ojo in 2010, and later in Cannes in 2011. There are many examples of this. For a lot of people, El Ojo marks the beginning of the following festival year.

And how important do you think it is to represent and keep moving Latin American work forward?

Latin America is a region of creativity, freshness and innovation, full of original ideas. Today agencies in the region do global creative for the leading marketers in the world. The region is a leader in creativity, and if you look at rankings like the Gunn Report you’ll find countries like Argentina and Brazil that are leading the rankings. The economy of a country like Argentina is much smaller than many others, so that gives you an idea of the quality of its creativity.  Much of the best creativity in the world comes from Latino talent and the region.

And El Ojo’s intimate environment offers a unique experience for delegates to get closer to the key industry figures on the programme; tell us about that aspect…

As I mention, our goal has always been for El Ojo to be a space for inspiration, training, debate, and motivation. The people who attend the festival live in a climate of creativity and are looking for more. We provide them with plenty of options, one of which being the possibility of sharing experiences, or talking directly with the brightest minds in the industry.

Each year, we summon the most brilliant minds in communication, marketing, entertainment, new technologies, culture and art to share their thoughts, visions, doubts and questions.  We do this in a relaxed, social environment where speakers are accessible to attendees. The space is more intimate, the schedule more open, and the vibe more comfortable than many global festivals, which allows a greater level of access and intimacy between speakers and attendees.

And what’s happening this year? Are there any highlights you can tell us about?

A lot of inspiration, brilliant ideas and motivation. Our hope is that they will leave transformed and anxious to conquer the world – or at least with a new idea that occurred to them while they’re enjoying El Ojo 2012.

Attendees will hear from a variety of speakers during our prestigious conference series, including global leaders like Droga5 founder and creative director David Droga, DDB Worldwide president & CEO Chuck Brymer and DraftFCB CEO & president Laurence Boschetto.

The conference will also feature some of Latin America’s most celebrated marketing leaders: JWT Brasil chief integrated officer Mauro Cavalletti, Ogilvy & Mather Latina regional creative director & founding partner of David Gastón Bigio, VP of creative for Ogilvy & Mather Latina & David founding partner Anselmo Ramos as well as many more.

And what about this year’s new categories, why are they relevant?

Each year, we do a review with the juries and industry professionals and evaluate how we can improve each of the categories, if we should add new ones, etc. For example, because of the growth and penetration of smartphones and tablets in the region, we decided to launch El Ojo Mobile with the support of the Mobile Marketing Association of the region.

We have close to 80 entries and the voting process has been incredible. We already have many recommendations for 2013 in this category based on the experience of the jurors and the pieces that have been entered.

We also launched a new award category for all of the Latinos that work in different countries outside of the region that want to be recognised by El Ojo, and also for those agencies that do work outside of the region. We will recognise them with an award for the Best Latin Idea for the World.

El Ojo de Iberoamérica begins today (November 14) and runs for three days in Buenos Aires concluding with a closing party at Palacia Alsina. For more information on the event go to El Ojo de Iberoamérica.