Brazil Special: Luiz Sanches

He’s as Brazilian as Havaianas, but Luiz Sanches, CD of AlmapBBDO, is getting sick of emotional campaigns. He tells Carol Cooper that his sometimes turbulent country is the perfect place for creating the ads we need today – cheaper, faster, funnier

Luiz Sanches, creative director of AlmapBBDO and one of the most lauded advertising creatives in the world, needs to get something off his chest. Although he’s Brazilian to the core, and thus expressive, engaging and, of course, emotional, he’s come to the conclusion that there may be too much emotion in advertising. “Last year in Cannes I was watching film campaigns and I got a bit depressed,” he says. “There was great quality, but everything had to be doing good, or politically correct or making people cry. I thought ‘OK, that’s great, but where’s the other part?’ It seems all the brands are speaking in the same way, so I think we should change the tone. Everybody is doing emotion in the country at the moment and I think people need more humour.”

His agency’s World Cup-themed spot for Visa in 2014 certainly hits the funny bone. It features former France international Zinedine Zidane popping into a café to watch a game between France and Italy only to discover too late it’s an Italian restaurant packed with hostile fans.

Faster, cheaper, better

Whether he’s aiming to move or amuse, Sanches’s work certainly seems to be a magnet to those big cats from Cannes. His wins at last year’s festival brought his total of Lions to a staggering 86; he has a Press Grand Prix under his belt for a Billboard magazine campaign in 2010. I congratulate him on his success – “It’s nice,” he allows, with a modest, sparkling smile.

Sanches started his career with DM9DDB in 1992 and has been at AlmapBBDO since 1995, first as an art director, now as chief creative officer. In addition to all his Lions, he’s collected many other major prizes from festivals such as D&AD, the Clios and the NY Art Directors Club. He’s also led AlmapBBDO to the honour of Agency of the Year at Cannes in 2010 and 2011.

Whether because of these plaudits or his personality, Sanches is unfailingly positive about the troubles faced by both his country and the ad industry as a whole. “In Brazil we know how to deal with mess, we know how to deal with confusion,” he says. “I was born and raised here so I know how it works – sometimes we are up, sometimes we are down. That brings more incentive to come up with cheaper solutions, faster solutions – and in my opinion it’s exactly what the industry needs today, to be fast and cheap.”

But what about his 2012 spot for Getty Images From Love To Bingo? That wasn’t fast, cheap or quick. I’d read that it took months to create, splicing together 873 still images into one sweeping narrative. “Yes, that took six months to make,” he concedes. “But it was about using a great idea and crafting it in the best way we could. The time we put into it was easy – it sparkles your eyes, you want to do it, you’re enjoying it.”

His belief in the concept led him to take a risk and produce the whole spot before pitching it to the client. “There is creativity in how you present work to clients, you have to make them see your vision, to engage them, to make their eyes sparkle too. How do you show great ideas? Look at things from a different angle. That’s why I think now is a great time for creativity. Art directors and copywriters have to use the best ideas in their heads because they don’t have a multi-million dollar budget. That’s what we did with the Volkswagen spot Kombi’s Last Wishes.”

The last factory to make the Volkswagen Kombi near São Paulo was due to close and Kombi’s Last Wishes tells the stories of people whose lives have been touched by their Kombis, from a woman who was born in one to a man who turned his into a pasta restaurant. “They had 300 Kombis to sell for US$25,000, which is too much for a car that’s going to be discontinued. There was no rational way to persuade a person to buy one, so it had to be emotional. It was an opportunity to tell a story, to treat the bus as a person who is making a will so they can give back to the people what the people gave to it, giving back the love.”

The sweet smell of opportunity

Having won a Grand Prix for the Billboard campaign, Sanches invests a lot in the power of the image. I ask him how visual language will change in the post-Instagram and Pinterest world. “We are in a transition where people have access to many different types of images from around the world. But what you see is becoming standardised, everything looks alike, so if you walk around a mall in Brazil it’s no different to walking around a mall in the UK. So you have to choose images that stand out, to make something local, individual. That was the key point of our poster campaign for Havaianas, for example. When you see the brand you know it’s Brazilian. You have to choose images that stand out when there are so many images about. The image must have a soul!”

But Sanches has no time for agencies that hire well known artists to create work – “That is wrong in my opinion. It’s lazy.” AlmapBBDO certainly backs up Sanches’s vision, investing in its in-house artists. “We have a studio with three photographers and we have over 20 designers and illustrators,” Sanches says with pride.

Among his many talents is the ability to turn a challenge into an opportunity. I tell him I hope Brazil pulls through its economic and political troubles, and its drought. He smiles that sparkling smile again: “Perhaps the water shortage is a good opportunity for the perfume makers…”