Carmen Rodriguez on shaping Gut’s global growth and pivotal campaigns

“Then I started watching ads,” she recalls. “And I was always very fascinated with them, especially coming from Brazil. Advertising was something that was part of the culture, especially in the 80s right when I was growing up. There were a lot of ads that were very famous because of the jingles. That’s how I got hooked.”

Rodriguez’ first break came through a friend who, she managed to get an interview for an internship at Leo Burnett São Paulo in the late 90s.

Her prospective boss at the agency was a German director who had come to Brazil to lead the Philip Morris business. Since he didn’t speak Portuguese, he needed someone with at least some knowledge of English to assist him and that’s where Rodriguez stepped in.

That opportunity marked the beginning of her journey at Leo Burnett. She recalls her early days there, where the company had a tradition, still upheld today, of dedicating the first two days to immersing new employees in its culture. During this orientation, they shared stories about Leo Burnett himself, including his passion for creativity, advertising and the legendary apple story – the fruit has symbolized the company ever since the adman placed a bowl of them at reception when he opened during the Great Depression.

“I was fascinated by that,” says Rodriguez. She likens learning all about the agency’s different departments and projects like “magic” and everything seemed “big and iconic”.

“Nobody teaches you what happens inside an agency,” she continues. “And what do you do if you're an account person, or what do you do if you are a producer or a creative. It was very magical for me to discover it and find out where I belonged.”

Eventually, Rodriguez landed in accounts and it's an area where she has remained throughout her career, honing her craft at other agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, David and now Gut.

Choosing a favorite project feels like choosing a favorite child to Rodriguez, it’s almost impossible. Looking back, there are many incredible moments in her career so far, but one that stands out is the first ad she worked on and saw published in a magazine. It was for Marlboro, and at the time, most of the work involved adapting materials from Leo Burnett Chicago.

However, there came a moment when they were allowed to add a touch of Brazilian flavor, taking some creative liberties. She vividly remembers the first ad created entirely in Brazil, still using global assets but with an original twist. It was a special milestone - her first project that was truly a creation, not just an adaptation.

Another big moment was her first Cannes Lions win, which was for Burger King while she was at David with the crew that would eventually start up Gut. The project was based on findings that in the deaf community, although there were signs for lots of unique words, there wasn’t one for the Whopper. They changed that and it won a bronze award.

Her first Grand Prix win came in 2022 with the ‘Real Tone’ campaign for Google Pixel that starred Lizzo. “The client briefed us like look, we have this phone, and we want to talk about the camera. The camera is the most important feature,” she explains.

“And then we started to study the product, and we found that they had this feature that was designed specifically for darker skin colors to show the real tone of skin. And considering that there was a Super Bowl, we were like, should we be talking about just the camera? You should be talking about this feature!”

In 2019 Rodriguez followed her David colleagues Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio to their new venture, an indie agency called Gut (it has since been acquired by one of its clients, Argentine firm Globant) where she is the global chief growth officer.

Over the years, the shop has grown from a small agency to a multi-office network with offices in Buenos Aires, Miami, Mexico City, São Paulo, and Toronto. Rodriguez's most difficult part is keeping up with all of the different time zones.

“At this moment, our priority is to expand the European operations and Asia,” she explains. “The biggest challenge of being a business lead inside a creative agency is to conciliate the business needs, creative need, and make sure that the entire machine of the agency understands the business needs for the client and bringing creative solutions for that. I'm trying to balance supporting everyone and not going crazy with working at 7am all the way to 2am sometimes.”

That creative mindset, and start-up mentality, is something that Gut has adamantly ensured remains as it expands. Globant, which was a client turned investor, is a tech company and Rodriguez says that the partnership works so well because they both bring something different to the table but don’t necessarily try to step on each other’s toes.

She says that the Gut values are written down in one of the founder’s notebooks and it's something they still look at today. “If you go to any Gut office in the world, you feel that you are in a Gut office. But at the same time, we always say that each office is 50% Gut 50% themselves, their local market,” she adds.

“So, if you go to Sao Paulo, Brazil, it's very unique. It has a very Brazilian personality. It has the Sao Paulo flair. And then when you go to Miami, it's a Gut office, but it's a completely different vibe.”