The Way I See It: Anselmo Ramos

I was born in Sao Paulo. My childhood was very creative; my dad was an engineer who did oil painting at the weekends, and my mum was a piano teacher.

I was more excited when I found my dad’s MAD Magazines than his Playboys, because Mad was about comedy and ideas and creativity. I even submitted some ideas to Mad… I'm still waiting for a reply.

I grew up between Jesus and aliens. It was weird.

My dad was all about esoteric things like karma and extra-terrestrials, while my mum, who’s still alive, is a hardcore Christian. So, I grew up between Jesus and aliens. It was weird.

I went to a Steiner Waldorf school. It was very creatively driven. Sculpting, drawing, gardening, acting, music, knitting. I can knit you a sweater if you want.

Above: Reading his dad's MAD Magazines helped Ramos define ideas, comedy and creativity as a driving force in his life. 

I hated [the school] at the beginning, but then I just loved it. I stayed until I finished high school at 18-years-old. It's a very creative environment. My daughters went to the same school when we went back to Brazil in 2007.

My mum became so radical on the pedagogy of Rudolph Steiner that she removed the television from our home. I had no TV for many years.

I think the fact that I basically grew up without TV made me a writer, because I was just reading non-stop.

Boredom can be very powerful.

Boredom can be very powerful because you need to do something, you need to create something, otherwise you’re just staring at the wall.

When I was deciding about college I wrote down all the professions. Doctor? Hate. Lawyer? Boring. Literally, like that. The last one was advertising; I like ideas, I like writing, I like shopping, and I like brands, I really like brands. 

Above: The young Anselmo and a piece of his alien-influenced artwork.

I got a job as a junior writer in Brazil. I was there for a couple years but I had no idea [what I was doing]. I didn't know anyone, no one from my family worked in advertising. I had no connections, no ideas.

Then I saw an advertising annual and I became obsessed. I started to collect them all; the One Show, D&AD. I was spending my salary just buying those expensive annuals that had the smell of this unattainable advertising world. That's when I started to become an ad nerd.

I saw an advertising annual and I became obsessed.

I worked at an agency in Sao Paulo for a couple years and, in 1995, I decided to move to Lisbon. It was the first time I’d been on a plane, the first time experiencing a different culture. I was there for a year and then I went to Madrid.

I didn't speak or write Spanish and that was a great learning experience for me because it made me a better writer. I understood that you just need to find a great idea that will travel, regardless of the language.

Above: 2001's Bubble, for Sony Walkman, was one of Ramos's early spots while working at Y&R Miami.

I moved to the US after that, when I was 28. Then, in 2007, I returned to Brazil after 12 years away to work at Ogilvy. I was a foreigner in my own country.

At that point Ogilvy Brazil was super-profitable, top five in revenue, but I think it was number 47 in creativity. My job was to help change the culture and, at the beginning, it was really tough. We just embraced everything David Ogilvy stood for.

Tham said, ‘You better deliver on it, otherwise you're going to look really stupid’.

The Global CEO, Miles Young, and the Global CCO at that time, Tham Kai Meng, came to Brazil to see the work. I said, listen, we have nothing, but I've found a newspaper from the future. We’d mocked up an Ad Age special edition from 2012, four years in the future, and I started to read it to them. It described how we were the best agency ever, winning everything. I was just projecting, manifesting.

There was silence, and then Tham said, ‘You better deliver on it, otherwise you're going to look really stupid’.

Above: Dove Real Beauty Sketches was a multi-award-winning campaign which helped push Ogilvy Brazil to become Cannes Lions' Agency of the Year in 2012. 

We worked very hard and, in 2012, we sat down to read it again and 95% of the things [we predicted] had happened. Then, in 2013, we became Agency of the Year in Cannes.

I couldn't afford to hire the best creatives from the best agencies in Brazil, so we found unexpected talent in unexpected places. We created this island of misfits.

The Regional Creative Director for Ogilvy was Gaston Bigio [Co-Founder of GUT]. The first time we met, in Cannes, he tried to fire me.

The first time we met, in Cannes, he tried to fire me.

We met a couple weeks later in my office in Brazil. He looked at all my advertising annuals, and said; ‘Someone with all these annuals cannot be that bad. Let's work together’.

After the success at Ogilvy we wanted to do our own thing and we started DAVID. It would be part of Ogilvy, so about heritage and tradition, but more personal, using the first name.

We started in Sao Paulo, then Buenos Aires, then Miami, and that's when I moved back to the US, in 2014.

Above: Ramos became an 'ad nerd' after collecting advertising annuals, like the ones created by D&AD.

Ogilvy was about changing existing culture. At DAVID we were creating a culture from scratch.

DAVID was huge fun and we learned a lot, but it got to a point that we couldn't do everything that we wanted to do, or as fast as we wanted to do it. I thought we’d learned enough, that we could do it. So, we opened GUT.

It took me a couple months to convince Gaston because I'm the dreamer, the idealistic one. He's more grounded, he worries about things. But It's important to have both, and we complement each other.

Bravery is a journey. It's a daily, conscious choice, a scale.

One of the reasons behind GUT’s growth [the agency has seven offices in six countries] is that we have a very clear positioning; we are a brave agency for brave clients.

Bravery is a journey. It's a daily, conscious choice, a scale. Zero is completely dominated by fear and 10 is where there's no other way to live. We have clients that are eight and nine, and we have clients who are four, but who are willing to move up the scale.

Above: Work for Philadelphia, through GUT Miami, one of seven GUT offices in six countries.

We recently opened in the Netherlands, our first office in Europe. We thought it was the right time and we are super-excited. The plan is global domination; we want to go to Asia, we want to go to Africa. It's about being strategically present in every continent.

We want to be the most diverse, creative and influential independent network ever. And in that order. We believe diversity drives creativity, and then that drives influence.

Independence was key in these first five years because we can do whatever we want. It gives us the freedom to make decisions, to make mistakes and to correct them along the way.

GUT is people first, work second, clients third.

I would describe my job as creating and sustaining a culture. That’s the most important thing.

GUT is people first, work second, clients third. We say that to our clients and the best clients understand, because if our people are happy, inspired, nurtured and motivated, they'll do great work.