Pablo Del Campo: The Way I See It

Pablo Del Campo, Saatchi’s newly appointed global creative director, didn’t get where he is today without being all about the work. Since he founded Del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi in 2000, he’s garnered the agency Gunn Report glory and bagged it 52 Lions, 47 CLIOs and 250 FIAPs. He oversees another office in Madrid and Saatchi’s Worldwide Creative Board, plus he was the spokesperson for its New Directors’ Showcase 2014. But, asks Carol Cooper, what about the man behind the work? Beyond his passion for big advertising ideas, it seems this modest man likes tennis... a lot

I was born 47 years ago in Buenos Aires.

My earliest memory is that I didn’t want to go to kindergarten.

I had a happy childhood, it consisted of tennis, drawing, tennis, drawing, tennis…

My favourite subject at school was history. I was an average student.

My father was the head of Citroën cars in Argentina for many years. Then he moved to Mercedes Benz, which was also in Buenos Aires. My mother still works as a French teacher and translator.

I was drawn to pursue a career in advertising because it was a chance to put into a blender all the things I loved – movies, music, drawing… and business, too.

My first job in advertising was at Casares Grey in 1989. I started off in the production department and then, six months later, became a junior copywriter, then went on to take the role of creative director.

During my time at Casares Grey it was my home, my club, my everything. I was there more than six years. I didn’t have time to get on to a tennis court for six years.

My closest friends call me Paul. Some schoolmates called me Batata, which is the nickname of the Argentinian tennis player Jose Luis Clerc.

It’s tough for me to choose the best piece of advertising work that I’ve seen, but I like the consistency that you can see in the Axe campaigns. At the moment, I’m in love with Susan Glenn. [BBH New York’s Susan Glenn campaign for Axe, fearnosusanglenn.com]

I don’t know exactly which is the best piece of advertising work I’ve ever done, but the day that Battle of the Surfaces was completed was the happiest day in my career. More than just the piece of work, my happiness was related to the achievement it represented.

Almost 200 million people around the world watched The Battle of the Surfaces [a tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, in Majorca, 2007]. One half of the court was clay and the other grass. I don’t remember the exact moment that I came up with the idea, but I do recall being in an aeroplane and seeing a football stadium where the grass blended into the clay. I think what brought this about was the fact that I just know and love this sport so well. It was the perfect time for the Battle of the Surfaces match to be played, too. Federer and Nadal were number one on grass and on clay respectively. Neither one of them could beat the other one on the other’s preferred surface. Federer was having a really hard time trying to beat Nadal on clay and vice versa. I think that’s how the idea came to be.

When I met Nadal in Paris and told him the idea I’d come up with, it was just an amazing moment to me. I showed him some sketches and as he went through them I could see the excitement in his eyes. I didn’t get to see Federer. His representative came to the agency in Shanghai and sealed the deal with me.

My advice to a young person with aspirations to work in advertising would be this: if you really love your idea, and you believe in it, and you know it’s strongly connected to the consumers, then look for a plan A, or a plan B, or a plan C, or even a plan Z – but make it happen.

The worst days of my career involve politics. By which I mean office politics. I have never worked for politicians and we don’t in the agency. I hate office politics though, it makes me lose all of my energy. Today happens to be one of those days. But yesterday was amazing.

I believe it’s important to have la duda (the doubt) in creativity. It’s important to follow your guts. But it’s also positive to rethink, to consult, to be curious and to decide whether or not the idea that you like today is the one you are still going to like tomorrow.

I had a manifesto when I set up Del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi in January 2000, first when we launched the agency in Argentina, then again in Spain. I’m also sharing it now that I have this new worldwide role. Our aim is to offer the experience of many,the support of some, the flexibility of few, the creativity of very few, the will of no one.

In my new role my remit is to accelerate the movement and adoption of ideas from our creatives and strategists to clients all around the world, on all platforms and devices. My priorities are to set new goals for our creatives and to mentor world-changing ideas. Ideas about communicating are the centre of my universe.

The best way to promote a team’s creativity is to give everyone in the agency’s teams the chance to do the best pieces of work. You shouldn’t have only the most senior staff working on big ideas or junior staff stuck with smaller campaigns.

A creative team will make great advertising if they are able to put themselves into the shoes of the consumers – to understand what makes them laugh, cry, enjoy. To know what they hate, what they want to avoid and what they are expecting or desperately needing.

The role of truth in advertising is complex. I think the key to advertising is identifying how to connect with people – perhaps that connection can be defined as truth. People understand the codes of advertising, the same way they understand and accept the codes of cinema or literature. You don’t ask people to believe that what they read in a novel or see in a film is true, but you want them to enjoy it. Similarly, advertising should entertain, but should also respect the DNA of the products and brands.

I love awards that are for real work. I love awards with consistent ideas that help big brands build their reputations.

When I think about the things clients are seeking from agencies,  I see how the client/agency relationship has changed. Things are very different today. The clients’ sense of loyalty is not the same. A client who has worked with you for many years, can now give a project of the brand you are managing for them to another agency and nothing happens. Years ago this did not happen. We, the agencies, are losing the consultant/expert role in developing ideas and brand positioning.

We have always really cared about helping all our clients develop more and more creative products every year. The agency’s key feature is developing ‘ideas bigger than ads’. These ideas can relate to new media and resources or to traditional ones. I believe it’s crucial to be able to make the news with the ideas we come up with and to build something people can talk about, something with potential. And technology can spread the word throughout the whole world in a matter of hours.

Last year we got a gold Lion for Pampers with our campaign Giving Birth Live, which was a project that was far removed from a traditional commercial. We have developed pieces that have been very well received and that have won awards: Schweppes Pipe Glass, Coca Cola’s Cheering Truck and, this year, Almost Identical developed for Beldent/Trident. All three of these campaigns were pretty unconventional.

The biggest change we have affected is to change the question from “what does my ad look like?” to “what does love feel like?” We explore the question in every way imaginable, from a roadshow collecting cheers for a national football team [Cheering Truck], to a museum installation featuring identical twins [Almost Identical] to live broadcasts of the first moments of motherhood [Giving Birth Live].

Sometimes a good idea can be a very simple one for example, the Sony PlayStation Victor campaign in 2010, which displayed the world through a child’s eyes. It was a very literal idea. A dramatisation of what happens to gamers. As babies, they are always discovering new feelings. When you are a baby, everything is new every single hour. The same happens to gamers.

People in Argentina value great advertising almost as much as they value football – and when you are in the middle of a crisis, it’s even more important that your team wins the World Cup!

Argentineans always demand great creativity in advertising during both the good and the bad times. They think of advertising as something entertaining and moving that relates to their lives and culture. And the big corporations know it is important to communicate well with people.

Argentina is a county where we are always afraid of what is going to happen next because of the recurrent instability, so we rarely say no to any opportunity. For this reason we will happily work 24/7, which makes us more competitive than many agencies in more developed markets.

I’m excited by the new technologies and digital platforms that are available in advertising these days. These are great times with plenty of creative opportunities. What’s not that easy for us, and also for clients, is choosing what platform to play with.

Having both artistic fulfilment for myself and having my work appreciated by others are equally important things to me.

If I could change one thing about myself it would be that I would get angry less often.

The thing I am most afraid of is uncertainty, but on the other hand I know that it’s very productive creatively, too.

If I could travel back in time, just once, it would be to travel to Forest Hills in New York in 1977 for the final of the US Open tennis. I would have loved to have seen Argentina’s Guillermo Vilas beating Jimmy Connors.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been close to death but I do suffer from claustrophobia. I hate elevators without mirrors. 

I’m based in Buenos Aires but I have to spend a week of every month in New York or London so I am trying to find a way to balance my busy workload and travel with a personal/family life. It doesn’t look feasible, but Saatchi’s slogan is that ‘Nothing is Impossible’.

My hero is Argentina’s answer to Walt Disney – Manuel Garcîa Ferré [Spanish Argentine animation director and cartoonist]. He created tons of cartoons. When I celebrated my 10th birthday I spent a full day with him. It was the best present my parents ever gave me.

If I was appointed President of Argentina for one day I would copy what the countries that are, in my opinion, the best, are doing, which would be Australia and New Zealand.

With Jose Miguel Sokoloff [president of Lowe Global Creative Council] in Colombia, Argentinian Fernando Vega Olmos [who was chairman of JWT’s Worldwide Creative Council till 2012, now partner of his own agency Picnic] and Brazil’s Alexandre Gama [Worldwide chief creative officer at BBH], there has been a rise in the number of creatives from Latin American countries becoming global chiefs in the last few years. I think the reason for that could be a combination of Latin American freshness, plus ambition. Also, never allowing yourself to get stuck in a comfort zone.

If I could be equally successful in another profession I would choose tennis. I would be Roger Federer.

I would you like to be remembered as somebody who never gave up.

At the end of the day, what really matters is love. Love should be the answer. But also, always waking up with ganas, which means a good, positive attitude. You should go to sleep knowing you gave your best, that you had the ganas to do it and that you will have the ganas to give it your best again the next day. I feel that is the most important thing.