Spain Special: Overview

Having spent years mired in political and fiscal mierda, Spain’s image as a land of sun, sand and sangria has taken a bashing, as has its ad industry. But, though it’s yet to regain its pre-crisis budgets and talent pool, creativity has flourished, as evidenced by recent Cannes and Gunn Report glory. Selena Schleh says olé to a scene rich in innovation and emotion

In the teeth-gnashing, breast-beating wake of the Brexit referendum – sterling in free-fall, a political power vacuum opening up, looming job losses, ‘moving from UK to Canada’ dominating Google search results – spare a thought for Spain. Yes, the weather (300 days of sun annually) is officially better than the UK, but the country has spent the past seven years mired in a ‘Great Recession’, unemployment is stuck at 22 per cent, and to top it off, they’ve been without a government since December; a state of affairs set to continue after last month’s inconclusive general election.

La crisis económica officially ended last year, but in the ad industry, change hasn’t happened overnight. Budgets, which plummeted by more than 50 per cent at the start of the recession, have not recovered their pre-crisis levels, according to Martin Beilin, founder of production service company Los Producers. Talent is still thin on the ground, with agencies fighting to reverse the creative exodus to the rest of Europe and Latin America. “The market has scandalously lost much of its value and great numbers of creative and talented professionals abandoned the country in search of opportunities abroad,” says José Maria Roca de Viñals, CCO of DDB Spain. “It is going to cost us substantially to return to our ‘before-crisis’ standards.”

Whether it’s all that sunshine or the fact that political/economic mierda has become the status quo, most locals are remarkably stoic and exhibit an international blend of British stiff upper lip, Gallic sang-froid and a dash of Latin humour. “We have enjoyed better times, but I also think we’re [experiencing] one of the best creative moments of the last ten years,” says Juan Nonzioli, chief creative director at independent agency Shackleton.

Adrián Mediavilla, head of planning at Senora Rushmore, another Spanish boutique, agrees: “The truth is that Spain is doing pretty well, creatively speaking.” Need proof? The Gunn Report 2015 ranked Spain the world’s sixth most creative country – up five places from 2014 – and at Cannes this year the country flamenco-danced away with a haul of 27 Lions, including the Cyber Grand Prix. Closer to home, the Bilbao-based El Sol festival, which celebrates creativity across Latin America, saw Spain triumph over Brazil and Argentina, countries that both have traditionally stronger creative heritages. 

Crisis? What crisis?

So could it be said that a ‘crisis mentality’ has spawned, rather than stifled, creativity? That’s certainly the belief of Roca de Viñals: “Because of the crisis, we have been converted to true specialists in the creation and development of successful, organic and socially impacting ideas which don’t require massive media investment in order to be effective and relevant.” An ability to improvise has been key to survival, says Paulo Areas, general creative director at Ogilvy & Mather Madrid, and “kept the quality of the creative high even when we have limited resources to do so.”

Interestingly, the sheer longevity of the recession may well have been creativity’s saviour. Brands and agencies who initially reacted with caution were forced to rethink their conservative approach as the years wore on, says Ogilvy’s Areas: “We knew that we couldn’t be stuck in a crisis mindset while the global market was moving, or we would be left behind, so we have to dig deep and find a new way of delivering our creative work within our reality.” Or, as Beto Nahmad, CCO of VCCP Madrid, puts it: “The economic crisis made clients risk more for creativity, since if you don’t, you’re dead.”

And that creativity is currently expressing itself in myriad different ways – although underlying all of these is Spain’s strong tradition of emotional advertising.  “I think there’s great diversity in the style of advertising Spain can pull off,” says Juan Garcia Escudero, ECD of Leo Burnett Madrid. A quick glance over the past year’s output bears him out: from his agency’s beautifully crafted animation Justino (more of which later) to LOLA MullenLowe Madrid’s gold Lion-winning radio campaign for Libero and VCCP’s clever repurposing of ad-targeting tech in Worten Friendly Cookies, Spain has proved itself equally adept in both progressive digital and more classic advertising mediums.

Meanwhile in product development and innovation, a field in which Shackleton’s Nonzioli thinks “[Spain] could probably still grow”, we’ve seen a plethora of pioneering campaigns. There is Ogilvy & Mather Madrid’s Birdhouse Alarm for Generali Insurance, a smoke detection system to prevent forest fires; Volkswagen Connect, a beacon-enabled key ring, developed by DDB Spain, which does everything from reserving a parking space to helping you locate your mobile phone; and a skateboarding app, Syrmo, from McCann Madrid, which tracks skaters’ tricks to help improve their technique and enable them to create pro-style skate videos.

For VCCP’s Nahmad, Spain’s success is all down to “unique ideas… which aren’t confined to specific media channels.” He cites another of VCCP’s integrated campaigns, Upgrade Your World, for Microsoft’s Windows 10 system, which yoked together mobile and outdoor categories by geo-tagging historically significant windows; consumers who downloaded a special app could then uncover the inspiring, ‘world-upgrading’ stories behind the frames.

The perfect example of a category-transcending idea with a powerful story at its heart was, of course, Justino – Leo Burnett’s hit Christmas ad for the Spanish Lottery, with its cockle-warming tale of a night-shift security guard whose after-hours good deeds at a mannequin factory come back to him in spades.

As well as the web film, which garnered four million-plus views, the campaign leveraged Instagram and Facebook, where people could follow Justino’s story in real time. Many people considered Justino to be the king of the Yuletide ad battle, despite being up against John Lewis’ Man On The Moon and Sainsbury’s Mog. It went on to pick up heavy metal in Cannes across three categories – Film, Film Craft and Cyber, where it won the Grand Prix for being “[an] interesting intersection between idea, technology, time [and] craft… Every piece of this story was perfectly created and crafted for its channel”.

There’s no doubt that exquisite craft was key to Justino’s success, but its strong emotional undertow was the clincher – and that is what many insiders regard as the traditional hallmark of Spanish advertising. As Senora Rushmore’s Mediavilla puts it: “Basic human emotions are at the centre of the best creative work ever produced in Spain”.

The Latino connection

While creativity has been nursed back to life, economically the country is still not out of the woods, and there are worries that the aftershock of a Brexit could flip it back into the red. One sector of the commercials industry unruffled by the prospect are the production service companies, who point out that Spain remains the leading European destination to shoot campaigns for the global market. “The climate and quality of crews and equipment are fundamental,” says Miki Heras, founder and partner of production company Tesauro, which counts the likes of IKEA’s The Man Who Hides The Bloody Lids and Libero Magazine Libero Spray on its reel.

Another factor that should continue to help the ad industry stay afloat is the unique niche Spain occupies at the intersection of Europe and Latin America. Thanks to its historical links to both continents, “Spain can produce spots containing Argentinian storytelling and tone, Brazilian inspired art direction and digital campaigns that resemble the work of a British or Swedish agency,” says DDB’s Roca de Viñals.

While most networks are actively cultivating the synergies between their Spanish and Central/South American outposts, others have gone as far as radically restructuring their company model. DDB was way ahead of the curve in 2011, when it set up a ‘Latina bloc’ which was based on shared language and cultural values rather than strict geographic location. The new model saw Spanish offices taken out of the EMEA region and grouped instead with Latin America and Hispanic North America.

As a result, says Roca de Viñals, DDB Spain has become a creative hub for big local brands like BBVA and Movistar, which are looking to expand to Latin America and the US, while also operating as a gateway to Europe for companies from fast-growing LatAm economies like Peru and Colombia.

Though usual industry niggles of time frames, talent retention, budgets and work-life balance persist, it seems the sun still shines on Spain. “Spanish advertising is an increasingly professional type of advertising, nipping at the heels of the British and US markets, which we admire greatly,” concludes VCCP’s Nahmad. “One day, though, we know we’ll do it even better.”