Bernardo andrada, executive creative director, north america, oliver

Bernardo is perhaps the rarest of creative talents. Certainly, he is an incredibly gifted ECD, guiding teams to breakthrough, purposeful, brave work for our clients' brands. But in an unconventional twist, he plies that often ego driven craft with a personal philosophy of deep generosity.

And (spoiler alert): he does both of these things at the creative helm of an in-house agency.

He will say without hesitation that some of his proudest moments are ones he can't take credit for, where a groundbreaking idea for a client's brand is unleashed into their agency ecosystem in a way that all make meaningful contributions. This is what leading at an in-house agency looks like – nurturing the "greater good.”

Believing that the ideas belong to the clients, not the creative director. Giving more, without expecting more in return. Yet, unsurprisingly, always getting more in return: an amazing body of work, a raft of awards and the inclusion in "Adweek’s 2020 Creative 100 list". And the thing he treasures most: trust. From clients and colleagues alike. He is the creative partner every brand manager and agency leader dreams of.

Leading OLIVER's network of in-house agencies is a unique challenge. Each team sits within a different client organization; there is no central "creative department" to preside over. Bernardo treats all teams as if they are the *only* creative department, because for each client, they are. It requires setting standards for unwavering creative excellence, developing expertise in a multitude of categories, and exercising masterful diplomacy skills.

Singlehandedly, Bernardo has elevated the expectations of the entire advertising industry on what "in-house creativity” means. Under his leadership, OLIVER has defied the doubters with award-winning work for clients such as Unilever, Molson Coors, Bayer Consumer Health, and Adidas.

The creative awards are impressive but the ones he will mention first are OLIVER North America being named "Adweek’s 2020 Fastest Growing Large Agency” and U-Studio (Unilever’s in-house agency powered by OLIVER) being named "Campaign’s 2020 In-House Agency of the Year". His contribution to OLIVER's growth is immeasurable, yet unmistakable.

As Bernardo would say: The more you give, the more that comes back to you.

BRIEF: WISH you a merry CHRISTMAS

It’s fair to say Wish isn’t usually top of mind when speaking of e-commerce powerhouses.

There are lots of reasons why and it’d be easy to point at the ridiculous and ridiculously cheap items available on the platform (from $5 sneakers to $46 smartphones and a very wide variety of sex toys), the odd UI, the complete absence of customer service or the weeks you need to wait before receiving your order.

And yet, Wish has proven itself an e-comm giant.

It has over 100M monthly active users on its (kinda insane) platform every month, managed $2.5B in revenue in 2020, a not-too-shabby IPO and the much sought-after meme-stock status, so there’s no denying the app’s popularity or its product market-fit.

It found its niche selling insanely cheap products to insanely value conscious customers, and it works.

According to one of its founders, Wish was designed to mimic the experience of wandering and getting lost in a mall, a place filled with stuff to buy as far as the eye can see, a direct repudiation of the type of search-first purchase behaviour encouraged by Amazon and other online retailers.

So, your brief is to get people to buy their presents on Wish this Christmas.

It’s the busiest period of the year for advertisers and retailers where every brand from John Lewis to Amazon will be vying for customers’ attention. Your challenge is to direct that attention towards Wish.

Your campaign can use any media that you want and must work globally.

Consider your budget unlimited, but please stay within the realms of reality. I’ll be judging the quality of the idea first and foremost.

Go crazy.

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Responses to Brief 1 due Sept 30, 2021 11:59pm (Los Angeles time)