the againstodds

On top of its ability to churn out brilliant ideas at volume, Argentina’s creative community is uniquely skilled in the art of survival. It’s had to be, to ride Argentina’s rollercoaster economy, according to Majo Acosta and Marta González Muguruza, directors of the communication, marketing and advertising magazine Reporte Publicidad

SIMON Kuznets, the Belarusborn US economist who won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Economics, used to say there are four kinds of countries: developed, developing, Japan and Argentina. Our country is hard to explain. It’s a huge generator of talent in diverse fields — talent that has had to coexist with an unstable economy that suffers a meltdown every 10 years. Argentina’s cyclic crises have endowed its society — and particularly its advertising industry — with very high levels of adaptability and resilience, along with a finely tuned survival instinct. Argentina is living with three-digit inflation, an average income that has been slashed down to one third in barely five years, a currency that plummets in value month after month, and more than 15 dollar-peso exchange rates, depending on economic activity: official dollar, blue dollar, soybean dollar, tourist dollar, Coldplay dollar, Qatar dollar, “solidary dollar”… Even so, we boast an advertising industry that has consistently ranked in the top 15 countries at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and even, for several years, made it into the top three in film. According to the latest survey of the principal players in the sector, half are over 20 years old. In addition, around 2,500 companies exist within Argentina’s advertising ecosystem, employing some 25,800 people directly, along with an indirect labour force of more than 80,000. Advertising activity represents 0.93% of the country’s GDP. Seven of every 10 Argentine agencies exports creativity and services to a value of $200m a year. These agencies are small and independent. Most have fewer than 50 employees; seven out of every 10 don’t belong to a network. Over the last 12 months, Argentina has reached an inflation rate of 113%, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and the Central Bank. Many segments of society have been forced to alter their consumption patterns. With budgets tight, some brands have come to the rescue, as is reflected in a number of the campaigns competing in Cannes this year. In Argentina, when things get difficult, we say: “We’re going through a hairy moment.” Building on this concept and our ability to find humour in everyday situations, the Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes brewery (AB InBev) launched ‘Segunda Quincena’ (‘Second Fortnight’), a digital platform that offers benefits and discounts on its various soft-drink, wine, beer

Covian

and bottled-water brands. The offer is activated on the 15th day of every month and lasts through to the 31st. The communication and development for ‘Segunda Quincena’ is handled by the company’s in-house agency, draftLine BUE, along with its marketing and sales teams. In a similar vein, Tuenti, the telecommunications brand for Gen Z, led by Wunderman Thompson, launched its ‘Tuenti Dollar’ campaign, an affordable new US dollar exchange rate for buying cellphone data and unlimited WhatsApp usage. The initiative has been so successful that the Tuenti Dollar is now being used as the main currency beyond the platform. In the same field, Mercado Libre, the regional e-commerce giant, hooked into the success of the Big Brother TV show with an idea by GUT. The campaign aims to demonstrate the benefits of Mercado Libre’s digital wallet by investing Big Brother’s 15m peso prize, thus avoiding the risk of the cash devaluing during the reality competition’s four-month run. Meanwhile, ‘Christmas Always Finds its Way’, a series of Christmas shorts for Coca-Cola developed by Grey Argentina, Grey Global and OpenX, succeeded in getting Amazon Prime viewers into the holiday spirit while exploring new relationships between brands, content and entertainment. The Christmas anthology brought together the worlds of advertising and Hollywood by featuring films by award-winning directors Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. The World Cup invaded local and international commercials breaks with major productions. BBDO Argentina won Pepsi’s global pitch and delivered a mega production in the shape of ‘Nutmeg Royale’. Starring Leo Messi, Paul Pogba and Ronaldinho, the film surged around the world, packed with Easter eggs for football fans. There wasn’t a brand that didn’t join in the celebration of Argentina’s third World Cup victory in Qatar last December, the joy of winning the championship providing a muchneeded morale boost. The euphoria caused five million Argentines to make a pilgrimage to Buenos Aires’

Obelisk monument in our country’s biggest-ever mass gathering. This inspired TyC Sports channel and its agency Mercado McCann to air a replay of the epic Argentina vs France final on December 24, programmed in such a way that the traditional Christmas toast would coincide with the moment that Argentina captain Messi raises the World Cup trophy. The talent drain to other countries and industries is a challenge that not only Argentina faces. Over the last year, close to two out of every 10 communication professionals have either begun to work for the outside world from home or emigrated to another market. At the same time, independent Argentine-born agencies have gained in strength as creative hubs and are exporting ideas for major global brands. Examples include Untold (AB InBev, Meta, Cabify, Unilever), Don (PepsiCo, TikTok, Warner Bros. Discovery), Niña (Under Armour, Bumeran, Disney), Anita y Vega (Netflix, PepsiCo), Slap (Doritos, Lays, Netflix), Isla (Gatorade), Vendaval (Pilsen, Coppel) and Togetherwith (KFC, DirecTV, LongHorn). And large networks also provide services worldwide — such is the case with VMLY&R (Colgate, Coca-Cola, Danone) and David Buenos Aires (Corona, Coca-Cola, Falabella). Among the examples in contention at this year’s Cannes Lions is ‘Shoppable Armpits’ by Wunderman Thompson for deodorant brand Degree. The social-commerce campaign on Instagram turned armpits into stars by inserting a direct link to Degree’s e-store into images of the armpits of athletes, celebrities and influencers. Also in competition this year is ‘Eternal Players’ by Niña for Under Armour and the Toluca FC team of Mexico. The campaign communicates the launch of Toluca FC’s Day of the Dead outfits by recreating in the FIFA 22 video