Brazil Special: Marcelo Reis

Young Marcelo Reis was impatient to break away from his provincial middle-class background and make a creative life for himself. This drive has pushed Reis to become the world’s top CCO and his agency, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, to take 22 Lions at Cannes 2014, as Carol Cooper discovers

Hailing from Minas Gerais, a scenic state of old colonial mining towns and national parks in eastern Brazil, Marcelo Reis describes his family background as “middle class, pretty square, concerned with self-image and moral values. There was very little to do with art.” He was all set to become an electrical engineer, “due to family pressure, not because I liked it. But, thank God, I gave it up.” He studied architecture and advertising at university, but ended up plumping for the latter – though he doesn’t feel advertising is art “but sales with creativity”.

As a young man, he says, “My desire to create and invent and my knack for controversy made me an impatient person.” Along with the typical Brazilian warmth, charm and openness, I detect a lingering sense of that urgency and force of will. Here’s a man you would want on your side in a battle, a man who’d relish the chance to shake things up and initiate change. It’s a force that is evident in his work and along his road to success.

The smell of success

In 1998, he left his hometown and arrived in São Paulo seeking work as a copywriter. “I needed to radically change. I wanted to work with people much better than me. I made a list of agencies, using the São Paulo Creative Club directory and mailed my portfolio to the major CDs.” His work caught the eye of Marcelo Pires, then CD at W/Brasil. “I imagine he liked my energy and impatience. He ended up putting me at the head of a six-month-long queue for an internship. I remember the day I sat down at my desk in the agency, the agency that was such an icon for me, and being given work on the classifieds of [newspaper] Folha de São Paulo. I can even remember the smell of that day.”

In a matter of months he had won Young Creative of the Year at Cannes 1999. Moving through agencies Lew’LaraTBWA, Leo Burnett Brasil and Loducca, he was appointed CD for the São Paulo office of Y&R in 2006 but, being one for pushing himself, a year later he left to study screenwriting at the New York Film Academy. “I thought it was time to leave Brazil and learn something new,” he says. “The course opened my mind to something I may dedicate myself to someday. But not now. Advertising is too intense to share with another type of creative process.”

Lured back to ad land, in 2008 he became CD at DM9DDB, helping it win Agency of the Year at Cannes 2009. Keen to learn more about digital media, he took a course at Hyper Island in London, with mixed results: “It was fun but I didn’t learn much. It was a good course for anyone who didn’t know a thing about digital, but I’m more hands-on. These days, I learn a lot more in a day’s work alongside Leo Burnett Tailor Made’s digital team.”

Reis launched Tailor Made at the end of 2010 in association with Paulo Giovanni, and in April 2011, as a result of the merger with Leo Burnett, he became partner and creative VP of Leo Burnett Tailor Made. “The merge with LB wasn’t planned,” Reis explains. “We were in meetings with clients and the opportunity popped up. As we say in Brazil, God put the right people in the right place.”

It’s certainly the right place to be if you like winning awards. In the 2014 Gunn Report, Leo Burnett Tailor Made ranked number one in the world in the All Gunns Blazing category for the Hemoba/EC Vitoria My Blood Is Red And Black campaign, which garnered a total of 80 gongs. The agency was also crowned the second Most Awarded Creative Agency in Brazil, and eighth in the world. In 2013, Bentley Burial for ABTO reached number two in the All Gunns Blazing ranking and gathered 70 awards in total.

At the heart of LBTM’s work is the philosophy of ‘Humankind’ – something Reis is passionate about: “The basis of Humankind is that creativity has the power to change behaviour. We really believe in this,” he says. A remarkable example of behaviour change that went somewhat beyond the campaign’s original remit is evidenced in Vem Pra Rua [Come To The Street] for Fiat, which made the unusual journey from integrated TV, radio and social media campaign to becoming an anthem of political unrest, giving a voice to the largest street demonstrations Brazil has ever seen. 

Possibly due to his ‘impatient’ nature, Reis identified and expanded on the sense of antagonism in Fiat’s original message. Though it was partly in celebration of the Confederations Cup football tournament in 2013, it also referenced the car manufacturer’s exclusion from World Cup sponsorship, and a recognition that most local fans were also excluded due to high ticket prices. It was a rallying cry to the disgruntled and dispossessed set to a catchy tune by the popular singer Marcelo Falcão and, when unrest started to erupt, protesting against corrupt politicians, government spending on the tournament and underfunded public services, the ad’s themes were adapted to fit the protestors’ cause.

Taking it to the streets

Brazilian YouTube users created a video mash-up blending newsreel clips of the protests with images from the triumphalist Johnnie Walker spot Rock Giant by NEOGAMA/BBH, in which the Sugarloaf Mountain morphs into a rock giant that rises up and walks through the streets of Rio, all set to the Vem Pra Rua tune. Reis thumps out the beat on the table – “Vem Pra Rua! Vem Pra Rua! There was a kind of anger in the song and it became an anthem of the demos. In the lyrics there’s a part that says Brazil will be bigger, like a giant for the first time. So they used the image from the Johnnie Walker campaign. It was good for them. It was good for Fiat, too.”

Although LBTM also has a government account, the agency wasn’t asked to remove the Fiat campaign. “This just proves that democracy is strong in Brazil,” says Reis.

In 2013, Bentley Burial audaciously raised awareness of organ donation by staging a curious stunt involving eccentric Brazilian tycoon Chiquinho Scarpa. He announced on his Facebook page that, inspired by the Egyptian pharaohs’ habit of burying artefacts they wished to take with them to the afterlife, he was going to bury his $500,000 Bentley in his garden. The country reacted with outrage and the story went viral. The burial was to be shown live on TV, but as the car disappeared into the ground Scarpa called a halt and, in front of the world’s media, explained that things far more valuable than cars are buried every year – human organs. National Organ Donation Week was launched and organ donation increased by 31.5 per cent in one month.

My Blood Is Red And Black aimed to increase blood donations to the Bahia state blood bank, Hemoba, by engaging fans of the football team EC Vitória. The red from the team’s red-and-black-striped shirt was removed and fans urged to donate blood. The more blood they donated the quicker the red would be returned to the team strip. The target was to increase blood donations by 25 per cent – within six weeks they had increased by 46 per cent.

The remarkable results of both these campaigns are what interests Reis. “Take Hemoba,” he says. “It’s not about how we changed the colour of the Vitória shirt but how the ad changed blood donation in Bahia. I think the power of the idea is bigger than how the idea was made into a campaign.”

In explaining how Leo Burnett’s ethos has merged with Tailor Made’s, Reis excitedly grabs a piece of paper and draws a stick man. “Humankind is the brain, while Tailor Made is the body and arms and legs. The TM technique creates the best thing for the client; we are with the client all the time. We often travel around Brazil to see clients’ operations and understand their point of view. Last weekend I personally visited Fiat dealers – it’s important to do this sort of thing. We then use the Humankind ideas to solve the problem, so the two strategies merge into one.”

In practical terms this has meant a reorganisation of the company. “I don’t have one VP of creative but separate groups made up of clients and CDs, each with their own VP or AVP who has the power to decide their strategies. I am at the top of the structure and they run ideas past me, but they have the power to manage their clients. I’ve given more autonomy to the groups.”

Reis is clearly not power hungry; nor is he arrogant. When I congratulate him on recently being named as the world’s top chief creative officer (a joint first with David Lubars of BBDO NY) in the latest Directory Big Won Rankings, he demurs. “It was a surprise for me. It’s crazy!” His leadership clearly promotes a happy working environment. The week I visit, the country is gearing up for carnival, with São Paulo citizens starting to migrate to Rio and elsewhere. Reis’s crew are staging their own in-office carnival before packing up for a few days – and I imagine the agency samba-ing all the way to success.