Anselmo Ramos of GUT
How Vulnerable is Too Vulnerable?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 250: Anselmo Ramos
Here’s a question. How vulnerable is too vulnerable?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I’m asked to help their leaders understand themselves better, to discover what they’re capable of, and then to maximize their impact.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Anselmo Ramos. He’s the Co-Founder and Creative Chairman of GUT, a global independent creative agency that’s headquartered in Miami, and with six other offices around the world.
Months after being named the Independent Agency Network of the Year at last year’s Cannes Lions, GUT announced it was being acquired by the tech company Globant. GUT was recently named one of the most innovative companies in the world by Fast Company.
For a company that is barely six years old, its story and success are remarkable. It’s also built on a very specific ethos.
“We talk about our feelings all the time. And Gaston and I, we talk about our feelings in front of everyone at Gut. And sometimes we cry. We cry a lot, by the way. And we try not to forget that we're humans. Sure, we are running a company, but it's okay to be insecure sometimes. It's okay to be fearful. It's okay to be super courageous, sometimes. It's okay to expose your feelings.”
Businesses measure success by many metrics, and as a leader, you live with most of them every day.
In most companies, seeing the leaders cry in public would be a strong indicator that things were heading in the wrong direction. Or worse. For many staff members, it would be traumatic to witness such a public display of human emotion from their leaders.
This conversation with Anselmo has made me think hard about the humanity side of the leadership equation.
How vulnerable is too vulnerable?
The answer, of course, depends on the culture that you have created. If your culture is based on deep and enduring emotional trust, you give people the ability to show up as complex, multifaceted humans, to show up as whole beings.
In a world in which Artificial Intelligence will soon be able to mimic — or more — much of what passes for ‘creative’ in inverted commas, our ability as a species to separate ourselves from the servers, will depend on whether we can unleash ‘human creativity’, that capacity which no technology can replace.
Human creativity comes from the soul. And souls have feelings.
How do you measure those?
Here’s Anselmo Ramos.
Charles (02:55):
Anselmo, welcome to Fearless.
Anselmo Ramos (02:55):
Thanks. So happy to be here. I've been waiting for this invitation, Charles, for a while. Thank you.
Charles (03:01):
Although actually the news you've been making recently makes this, I think, an even more compelling conversation at this point. Let me start as I always do. When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious of creativity being a thing?
Anselmo Ramos (03:14):
Oh, it was very early on. I was a kid and I grew up in a very creative environment. My mom, she's in her eighties right now, and she's a piano teacher, you know, and she still teaches piano. And my dad, he was a mechanical engineer, but he would do audio painting in the weekends, and he was very creative. So I was surrounded by creativity, music, and painting. And then, my mom sent me to a German school, Rudolph Steiner. And, I was in sixth grade, and that school was, there was no grades. It was just like, everything was about painting and singing and dancing and acting, sculpting, gardening, knitting. I had to learn how to knit. So I can knit a sweater if you want, Charles.
Charles (04:10):
I'll send you my size.
Anselmo Ramos (04:12):
Please do.
Charles (04:14):
I read somewhere that you had no TV growing up. Is that right?
Anselmo Ramos (04:18):
That's right, yeah. When I was a teenager, my mom, she became a little radical on that pedagogy, and she took TV out of the house. And then I had no option. I started to read, I was just reading everything. I read every book from Agatha Christie, for instance, you know. I just started to read like crazy. I think that's one of the reasons I became a writer, because I had no option. You know, there was no internet, no TV, so I just started to read. I would also read Mad Magazine, you know, I loved Mad Magazine back then. I even sent them some ideas. And I would sneak out from the house and I would go to my friend's houses to watch TV. To watch American TV shows, like The $6 Million Man, The Incredible Hulk, like those kind of things, like Chips, dubbed into Portuguese. So, yeah, I mean, and then, you know, when I started to write TV commercials was kind of a revenge, you know. “Hey mom, look at me now, I'm writing TV commercials.”
Charles (05:32):
The Mad Magazine reference, I think it is interesting. When you sent it off, how hopeful were you that you would get published?
Anselmo Ramos (05:40):
I'm always hopeful, Charles. I'm super optimistic about life. So I would literally send them through mail, like some ideas. And of course, they never publish anything, but, yeah, I was hopeful. You know, I'm always hopeful.
Charles (05:58):
How do you take rejection?
Anselmo Ramos (06:01):
I think rejection is just part of being creative because you get rejected all the time, right? As a writer, as a creative, you have to embrace rejection. And the more you embrace it and the more you understand it's part of the creative process, the better you are. Because there's always another idea. You can always write another one. So it's just part of the process, you know? And we are in the creative business. We're selling ideas for our clients, and it's very, it's not something tangible. It's very subjective. So we get rejected all the time. Well, especially if you try to do something different, something brave, something gutsy. We get rejected every week, but we are fine with it. It's part of the process, you know.
Charles (06:56):
It's an interesting line, right? I mean, I don’t know if you've ever heard Lee Clow tell the story about 1984 and how that got on the air. I was at a conference once where he told a story in great detail about how they'd showed it to Jobs, he said, three days before the Super Bowl, and Steve had decided he hated the spot and wanted to sell the airtime, and Lee Clow went back and said to the media department, sell two of them, but we're going to run the third one. And Jobs called him, apparently the day before the Super Bowl, again, this is all according to Lee Clow, and said to him, you'll never work. He was screaming at him down the phone. He said, you'll never work in this industry again and went, and you're going to ruin my company. And so I've always been interested in the line between, to your point, I mean, it's an industry based on rejection, but the vast majority of ideas that get developed by ad agencies never see the light of day by definition, right?
It's a very small number of the ideas that actually go out into the world. So rejection and the acceptance of rejection is actually built into the process. But there are moments when you have to decide, I'm not going to play by those rules anymore. If I want to just make a difference, I believe in this so strongly, this is a moment. And just reading your history and obviously talking to people about you, and knowing, and knowing a little bit, at least about the GUT story, it strikes me that there must have been many times where you have just said, I'm not playing by those rules anymore, and what you think is not going to be the final word in this situation. Is that an accurate reflection of kind of how you've gone through the world?
Anselmo Ramos (08:22):
Yes, it is. We try to minimize rejection by doing a lot of things. Like, one thing you have to do is, whatever we propose to our clients, it needs to be on brand, and it needs to make sense for their business, right? Communications is just a tool to help them with their business challenges and opportunities. So if it's on brand and if it's helping their business, it's going to be more, it is going to be easier for them to approve an idea like that, right? So that's one thing. The other thing is, when we like something, we present with a lot of passion, you know. We are a bunch of ad nerds. We're not cynical about advertising. We love our industry, we love ideas. So when we like something, it's very tangible. We present with a lot of passion.
And then sometimes, we can become a pain in the ass. If we like an idea, we can be, we can bring that idea back for years. You know, I've had cases that clients told us, you know what? Let's just make that idea. I'm just so tired to hearing you guys talk about it. I'm just, let's just, whatever, you know. So in a way, they make the idea just so they can stop hearing us talking about the idea, right? In some cases. In other cases, you have to be smart and understand there's a good reason for a client not to approve that idea, and that's fine. Then we're going to look for something else. Also, sometimes the way you present an idea. We are making ideas even before they're approved now, you know. We are making videos where we're just like, because nowadays, it's so easy. So we don't present just a deck. Sometimes we go all-in. Okay, here's the idea, and it's almost ready, you know, because we can do it. So that makes it easier to approve, because you are seeing something almost ready, and you feel something when you look at the idea, because you play, you watch, and you feel something. And when you feel something, it's very hard to say no.
Charles (10:39):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's the ultimate reference point, actually, right? If you trigger an emotion in somebody, I mean, it's the ultimate connection. I want to ask you a question. I don't think I've ever asked anybody else. But it comes up more and more in my journey through the creative industries. Clearly there are, there is an enormous focus on the value of advertising. The way that technology is evolving, we have literally tens of millions of people who are paying money to avoid advertising. What all the streaming services are built on, right? And those companies are worth billions and billions and billions of dollars. So, there is also a trillion dollars a year — I just looked it up — a trillion dollars a year nearly is going to be spent on advertising this year, worldwide. How do you reconcile the tension point between people who are willing to spend literally billions of dollars to avoid advertising, and the fact that advertisers are spending nearly a trillion dollars on advertising? What is it about that inherent conflict that makes sense?
Anselmo Ramos (11:46):
I think people are paying a lot of money to avoid bad advertising, you know. And I'll pay a lot of money myself to avoid bad advertising. Nobody wants to see that. It's horrible, right? So, good advertising, great advertising, that's awesome. Everybody wants to see that. Because just great content, like a great ad, everybody likes it, you know. You laugh, you cry, you share with your friends. So, in our case, we are in the business of doing great ads. And we attract clients that want to do great ads. They believe in advertising. They believe in the power of advertising. More than that, because our name is GUT, and we are looking for brave clients, we tend to attract clients that believe in bravery in advertising, which goes even further. So they believe that bravery means business, and we have an entire presentation showing how bravery means business.
It's more, it's costly effective, because you're going to spend less money in advertising if you do something that everyone would talk about, because you're going to get PR headlines, you're going to get earned media. You can spend less, actually. But I think that it's not either or, you can still do performance marketing. You can still, you know, do the day-to-day, the work that works, right? The day to day. But we always tell our clients, always leave room for, it could be 10%, it could be 20%, it could be 30%. Always leave room for proactivity, for testing something new, for putting something out there and see what happens. Because the internet will tell you right away if they like it or if they don't like it. That's the best way to know, by doing things.
Put it out there, see what happens. They'll give you instant feedback. And that's the beauty of doing ideas today. You know, you've get instant feedback all the time, and then you can see what's working, what's not working. You can double down on something. You can stop doing something. So, I think, you know, we always tell our clients at the beginning of the relationship that even the budget allocation should be flexible, you know, in order to try out for experimentation. Because a lot of the great ideas, Charles, that we see, nobody knew for sure that they would work, but they did. So you have to have to put it out there to see what happens.
Charles (14:33):
I love the idea that brave advertising means business. I love that idea. Can you prove it? That's the thing these days, right? We talk about the power of creativity. I believe in the power of creativity to change the world profoundly. Can you prove that brave advertising, braver advertising drives more business?
Anselmo Ramos (14:49):
Of course we can. We have tons of data that proves that. When we say bravery and advertising, sometimes people think about just a crazy creative idea. But bravery in communication means a lot of things. You can have a brave strategy. You can have a brave choice of target. You can have brave pricing strategy. You can have bravery in so many ways when it comes to communications, right? An idea is just one way. You can be brave in media. So many ways. And bravery means business, in short term, because sometimes you do a campaign, and then you can see overnight the increasing sales or the increasing store traffic. You can measure, actually, the impact of one idea. But you can also measure, you know, in short term, medium term, and long term.
Because we're going to turn six now, in April. So we have some relationships that are, like, five years old, four years old. So you can see the impact of our kind of advertising, brave advertising in our client's businesses. We can see what's happening like year after year. So it's very interesting. And we have tons of data, tons of numbers that show brave advertising works when it's done, right. But again, it's not being crazy for the sake of it. It's being very conscious about, okay, I am going to do 80% of marketing that I know is going to do exactly what I need, but I'm going to also allow for bravery, you know. We also, Charles, because I think at the beginning of GUT, we grew very fast because we had a very clear positioning.
We're a brave agency for brave clients. So we were attracting a lot of brave clients. But then it got to a point that we realized that we were not for everyone. So a lot of clients wouldn't call us because they would thought that, oh, maybe we're too brave for them. Maybe the organization's not ready for that. And then we created the Bravery Scale. The Bravery Scale is a great tool. It goes from zero to 10. Zero is completely dominated by fear, and 10 is there's no other way to live. And five is sometimes brave, sometimes fearful. And we have actually a description for each stage from zero to 10, and we have tips about what to do if you are a three, or if you are a five, or if you are an eight. Because it's a journey, you know. Bravery is not binary.
There's no such thing as, I'm brave, or, I'm not brave. It's a daily conscious choice. And it's a journey. You can be braver over time. There are a lot of tools, a lot of techniques. And it's a journey. So the clients love to have those conversations with us. And sometimes at the beginning of the relationship, they tell us, well, we are a four, and that's okay. As long as they're willing to move up on the bravery scale, it's totally okay. And usually from our experience, it takes one year to move up one stage. So if you are a four, it's going to take four years to become an eight on the bravery scale. It's really interesting. We also have a two hour presentation on the Bravery Scale. We can have a talk just about that, Charles.
Charles (18:34):
I would like to do that, actually. The podcast is called Fearless. I can't think of any more apt conversation to have than to discuss the Bravery Scale, truly. What I think is really compelling from my perspective about this, is your work speaks for itself. The recognition you got at Cannes last year, right, is a complete summation about the creative quality that, that is inherent in the business that you've built and the agents that you've built. But what strikes me, too, is that you are clearly appealing to clients as part of their own very human personal journey. The clients for whom being braver is part of their own personal ambition, whether they've ever stated that out loud to themselves or anybody else. But you are tapping into a really deep emotional, psychological dynamic for certain people. And it becomes, to your point, a natural filter for the kind of clients that give you the ability to do better work, more effective work, work that drives business. Were you conscious when you established the positioning that you were also appealing to people on a deeply personal, life journey level?
Anselmo Ramos (19:37):
Yes, for sure. Every business is a relationship business. And I think our business is even more, because we're not talking about, we're not selling any physical product. There are no factories, there are no products. We're talking about ideas, right? So it's, relationships are very, very important, especially relationships based on brave work. Not relationships based on golfing or, you know, or boating. We have relationships based on shared values. And that's very powerful. Because we want the same things, you know. We don't need to convince each other about the importance of creativity. We all know already, from day one, that creativity matters, that bravery means business. So everything is easier after that. So we tend to attract people that have shared values. They believe in the power of creativity. So then everything else is easier. So at the beginning of the relationship, for us it’s very important to have several conversations with a potential client to see if you want the same things, you know? And then after that, Charles, everything's easier. It's never easy, but it's easier.
Charles (21:05):
Why do you lose clients, given all of that? Why do people not stick around?
Anselmo Ramos (21:13):
I think, we're very lucky, you know. We've lost just a couple clients in our first six years. And usually it's because people change and then they want another kind of advertising, maybe less brave, maybe a little, maybe a hundred percent knowing what you're doing, a hundred percent effective. And without any room for trying new things, and trying something that hasn't been done before. So then, yeah, they were not the agency for you, you know, and that's okay. That's totally okay. I think the problem with most agencies, I think, is they don't know who they are. So they accept any clients. Oh, you have a budget? I'll take you. And I think it's really interesting how we sell brand positioning to our clients, but our industry, a lot of agencies don't have their own brand positioning.
We have a brand positioning. We treat GUT as our most important client. So we have values, we have tone and manner, we have vision, mission, we have a very clear personality. We have a lot of tools, we have principles, we have the black tea, we have a lot of things that makes GUT a brand. So we also like to lead by example. If we can take care of our own brand, maybe we can take care of yours. But we know who we are, we know what kind of talent we want to attract. We know what kind of work we want to do, what kind of clients we want to have. We have that clarity, and I think that's very important. And everything else is a consequence of that. So, the strategy is about choices. And as important as knowing who you are, is knowing who you are not. And we understand, and we know, and we like the fact that we are not for everyone. We don't want to be for everyone. We want to do one kind of advertising, because that's our belief. And that's who we are. And it's okay if we're not for everyone.
Charles (23:42):
I'm really conscious in the conversations I've had, even within the last year actually, but certainly over the length of the podcast, with Nils Leonard, with Greg Hahn, with Karl Lieberman and Neal Arthur at Wieden, who I would regard along with you. I know technically you're not independent anymore, but you still embody the spirit of that. The thing that I think differentiates those four agencies, is you are incredibly clear and over time, incredibly consistent about the kind of clients you think are right for you and the kind of clients you don't think are right for you. I've talked to Nils, I think almost every year since the podcast began, since he started Uncommon. And one of the through lines that’s always been remarkably consistent with him, is his clarity and consistency about, we're right for these people. We're not right for you if. And what you've just said is your version of the same thing. So I just think it's worth emphasizing, that the clarity about knowing what you're not, and who you're not for, is as important as understanding who you are for.
Anselmo Ramos (24:44):
Yes. And it's interesting that you mentioned Nils, Greg, and Neal. We all know each other, and we like each other, and we support each other. Like Nils, for instance. I met him for the first time in person after Cannes last year, and then I invited him for a chat with GUT. So I had everyone from GUT, 500 people, and Nils. And was just the two of us chatting, and it was incredible. And Greg and Neal, we know each other, we help each other. It's, I think those agencies that have shared values, because we know who we are, we know what kind of work we want to do. We like each other, we celebrate each other's work, and that's less common at a big holding company level. So those kind of relationships are very important because I think it makes the industry better.
Charles (25:43):
Are you threatened at all by anything that they do or how they show up at ever? Do you ever have a sense of, oh, that's competitive, or does it help you lift your game?
Anselmo Ramos (25:55):
No, it's just everything they do, when they do something great, it's really inspiring, you know. It's just, like, positive jealousy. We look at that work and we go like, oh my God, that's amazing. I wish I've done that. And then what's starting to happen is something that was unthinkable six years ago. We are starting to compete. So we go to a pitch, for instance, and there's Wieden, and I'm like, I cannot believe that we are competing, for the same piece of business. And it's just, it's a honor for us. It's an honor. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, or you learn, and you move forward. But the fact that you are in the same room, or competing for the same piece of business, that you are getting to that level, it's insane.
Charles (26:53):
Do you have a new business model or philosophy or approach? I was talking to Carl Johnson at Anomaly just over a year ago, and we talked a lot about his new business approach. And I think Carl is as good as it gets, from a new business dynamic. I mean, he's learned a lot over the years and he is got a very clear reference point and construct about how they go about it and a mindset. Have you developed that kind of cohesion, consistency about how you approach new business? Is there a real kind of model and plan that you follow?
Anselmo Ramos (27:24):
It's interesting, Charles. We are getting better at new business. I think the first couple years of GUT, I would say the first three to four years of GUT, we didn't do new business. It was basically we were growing because of our reputation, because of relationships. We would get projects and then those projects eventually would become an AOR. So we almost didn't pitch. And now we're getting to a point, after five years, we're going to turn six in April, that we're starting to pitch, but in our own way. So we're developing our own techniques and processes when it comes to pitching. You know, what's the GUTsy way of pitching? And so it depends on the project, it depends on the brand, it depends on a lot of things. But I think it's a great opportunity to show a client, what would you do, you know, if you were them?
So we tend to go all in. And sometimes we just show one idea, because it's very hard to go to any meeting and show 10 brilliant ideas. It's very hard. So we tend to go very sharp and just show sometimes one thing. Sometimes you need an option, but even when you need an option, we always have a very strong opinion about, this is the one, this is the one that we think you should do. Sometimes it's almost like a all win approach, you know, this is what we believe, you know, and fine, if we win, great. If we don't, that's fine, too.
Charles (29:19):
Someone once said to me that their goal when developing relationships with clients was to get to the point where the client had such trust in the agency's understanding of not just their advertising and marketing problems, but their business problems, that they would prefer that the agency write the brief for the advertising. Because the client believed the agency would have more insight into the kind of brief that's necessary. Does that resonate with you? Is that an aspiration of yours?
Anselmo Ramos (29:45):
Yeah, actually we say, one of our principles, we say, when you know the brand, when you know the brand personality, the values, the tone and manner, you are briefed already. You don't need to brief. Of course there will be official client briefs. A new flavor, a new product, a new something. And then it's an official client brief. But in general, if you know the brand, we're briefed already. You know, pop culture is happening every day. And creatives can think about that brand every day. And we love proactivity. I think it's one of our secrets, if you will. Well, it's not a secret, because we talk about that all the time, but we love proactivity. We're not the kind of agency that is just waiting for the client, for the client's brief, right?
Actually, I think that's one of the problems with most agencies. We're always in a waiting mode. I'm waiting for the brief, I'm waiting for the client's approval, I'm waiting for the feedback, I'm waiting for this, I'm waiting for that. We tend to be a little more proactive. So, what about this, what about that? This just happened in pop culture. What if we do something, you know. You can call that react advertising or fast advertising or hackvertising. There are a lot of new kinds of advertising that feel very modern, you know, and we love that. Sometimes, Charles, clients tell us, please stop because it's too much, right? And they don't have the money or the budget or the calendar to produce all the ideas. But I think that shows passion, you know. That shows that we love your brand and we cannot stop thinking about your brand, because we're a bunch of ad nerds and it’s beyond our control, you know? So it shows a lot of passion, and clients love that. And so, yeah, I think that will be one of our secrets, if you will, that proactivity, you know, I think it's very powerful.
Charles (32:10):
It's a good line, actually. Uncontrollably passionate about your business.
Anselmo Ramos (32:15):
Yes. It’s a great line.
Charles (32:18):
Let's talk a little bit about you. Did you always want to lead?
Anselmo Ramos (32:24):
Yes. It's really weird, since I was 19, when I got into college for marketing and communications in Sao Paulo. I've always wanted to have my own agency. I don’t know why, because my family, I come from a family that no one is an entrepreneur, no one. But since I was, since, like, first year of college, I was like, one day I want to have my own agency. I don’t know why. But yes, I've always had that desire to run my own shop one day.
Charles (33:10):
You and I have got Ogilvy heritage in common. I worked there in the early part of my career. I was lucky, actually, to work there when David was still occasionally walking the hallways. You would literally, he'd pop over, he'd come over to New York sometimes, and you would literally turn the corner and he'd be walking towards you. And that was a moment. Or you'd see him upstairs, there was a bar on one of the floors and he'd be sitting there with people just talking. I mean, it was really extraordinary. Why did you decide you wanted to start your own business? What was it that you couldn't get at Ogilvy and then at David, that you thought this, I need to do this by myself?
Anselmo Ramos (33:47):
I think my experience with Ogilvy was incredible. I love the Ogilvy brand. I'm a fan until today. When I joined Ogilvy Brazil in 2007, that was my first time in a big leadership position. It was the first time in my career that I became Chief Creative Officer. And it was a big agency. It was a 600 people agency, more or less, very profitable. I think it was like top five in the Ogilvy global ranking in revenue, but it was number forty seven in creativity. So very profitable, really sh*tty, right? And my job was to make sure that Ogilvy Brazil will go up in the rank, in the creative rankings, internally and externally. So, I think the most important thing that I did was just to bring back David Ogilvy, because at that point, David Ogilvy was just a name.
No one was talking about all the great things that he said, that he wrote, all his quotes. That's the only thing I did. I just brought him back. And we just started to talk about David Ogilvy, you know, he wrote that book, he wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man, let's read that. And let's look at his quotes, you know. Because the job back then was about reminding everyone of a culture. The culture was there, but it was kind of like dormant. No one was talking about the culture. But, five years later, when we went from number 47 to number one in 2013 with ‘Real Beauty Sketches’, that was the year, Dove Real Beauty sketches. After that, we felt that we were ready for something else, for something a little more personal. That's when we had the idea of David.
And David was a great idea, very simple. Ogilvy is about David Ogilvy’s last name, which is about the heritage, the tradition. What if we start David after David Ogilvy's first name? This one, you tell someone, please call me by the first name. It's more personal. And that was a great pitch, and they liked the idea. And we did that for five years. And it was incredible because we learned how to open an agency on WPP’s dime, right? Because they helped us with all the back office, and all we had to do was look for clients and do great work. But it was a great training ground for us in how to open an agency. So, if Ogilvy was about reminding everyone of a culture, David was about starting a culture within a culture. David was about starting a subculture, because it was based on the same person.
And then after five years of that, we were finally ready to start a culture from scratch, to start a culture from zero. And that was the most beautiful thing, you know, when you have a blank page and you can design a culture from scratch. We were ready. And there's another principle from GUT that we say, if you don't design the culture, the culture will design itself. So every company has a culture, every company has a culture. Even if you're not designing it, the culture will design itself. So, from day one, we were very intentional about the culture. This is our name, this is our logo, those are our three values. You know, we wrote down everything, so we took it very seriously. But, for me, it was a process. And it's interesting how every project, it's almost like five years. You know, Ogilvy Brazil was around five years.
David was five years. GUT phase one was five years, which was basically the startup phase that we went from taking a second mortgage on our houses to become Independent Network of the Year in Cannes. Five years. And now, with the partnership with Globant, partnering with a tech company, that's going to be our next five years, you know, phase two of GUT. Which is going to, we're calling this phase, ‘Sh*t is getting serious’, you know. We're growing, we are 600 people now, seven offices, six countries. We are getting really important brands, big brands. And we feel the responsibility, it's a network now. We're not a startup anymore, so that's phase two. So, the next five years now of GUT. So it's really interesting. I don’t know, I feel that three years is not enough, and seven years is too much. Five years is just perfect.
Charles (39:17):
I've always thought that culture was a reflection of the values of a company. And you've talked about the fact that you established three very early on. I think that values are sustainable, culture evolves as a company grows and changes. What were the three values that you defined as you started the company, and are they still in place today or have you changed them?
Anselmo Ramos (39:38):
We have three values, Charles, and we wrote down right after we decided on the name. And they all come from our name. The first value is courage, and it's about having the guts to do something that hasn't been done before. The second value is transparency, and it's about spilling your guts inside and out, being brutally honest, a hundred percent transparent. And the third one, and the most important one, is intuition. It's about following your gut, not only your own individual gut, but following the collective gut. That's very powerful. When you are in a room, and everyone's laughing about an idea, that's very powerful because we just need to be connected to that feeling, right? And the power of our collective guts, it’s incredible. You only need to be connected to your gut, because sometimes we're very rational, right? And your gut, your intuition, intuition never shouts. Your intuition whispers, but you need to be quiet and connected to your feelings, to really listen to their voice. And that's our most important value. I would say that everything we've done so far, it has been very intuitive. Sure, we have back sales and we have business plans, we have all that. We have all the numbers to back it up. But, what's driving our decisions? What's driving our growth, our creativity? It's our intuition.
Charles (41:30):
So, let me challenge that, because I think it's a fascinating reference point, and clearly you've done it successfully. Fear is also a very, very powerful intuition. We walk around here as human beings, we walk around with a lot of it. We would absolutely not be here as a species if we hadn't worried about things destroying us over the course of millennia. Somebody described fear to me as, false evidence appearing real. Which doesn't make it feel any less substantive. How do you create an environment in which that very human instinct is placed in the right place for what you are describing to be successful? Because if people are responding to their gut and their gut says, I'm afraid of this, that doesn't work. The entire business premise falls apart. So you clearly have to be able to create an environment in which people can find a different place to locate their fear, and they can respond to the other more positive aspects of their gut. How have you done that? What is it about the environment that allows people to put their fear into the right location?
Anselmo Ramos (42:35):
It's interesting. We talk about fear all the time. Every once in a while, we have a founder's chat and we invite people to come and talk to us. A lot of people are from the industry, but sometimes we bring people from the outside. We invited, in our first ever BOTY, beginning of the year event in Brazil that we took a hundred people to Sao Paulo in January 2020. We invited Maya Gabeira, she's a surfer, and she's a worldwide record, you know, like, big wave surfer. She's crazy. She surfs really big waves. And, at one point, she almost died. She was basically dead for several minutes, and then she was brought back to life. And then after a while, she was back to surfing big waves. She's insane, right? But she told us something really powerful. She said, nobody's born courageous.
There's no such thing. You have to choose to be courageous. It's a choice. It's like bravery. Everything is a choice in life. You have to choose to be courageous. There's no such thing as, oh, she's courageous and he isn't. It's a choice. Everyone's fearful, you know? So you just need to know how to deal with your fear. Everyone has fear at some point or at some level. We are all humans. But it's about how you deal with your fear. Another GUTsy guest speaker that we had was Alex Honnold, the mountain climber from Free Solo. You know, he climbs mountains with no rope. He is insane, right? And he said, the problem with our society right now is that we live comfortable lives. So, we are on a Zoom call right now. There's air conditioning, we're going to, after this, I'm going to have a nice lunch, you know, I'm going to drive a car somewhere.
It's like, it's a very comfortable life. And, he said, and we don't feel fear anymore, like, physical fear. And he said something crazy, he said, I think you should find time in your life to practice fear. Practice fear, like, intentionally. Just travel to an exotic place, you know, instead of going to Paris again. Or just like, or try a different food for the first time that you haven't tried. Just practice fear a little bit, because you're going to be better as a human being, and you're going to learn how to overcome fear. And I thought that was so powerful. So we talk about fear all the time. We're humans, sometimes we have fear, but, we do everything we can to encourage people to overcome fear and to follow that intuition.
If the intuition is saying, go for it, go for it. But at the same time, if the intuition is saying, don't go for it, for whatever reason, we don't go for it. So, that voice inside of you already knows something that you don't, because your brain, Charles, you have two brains, you know. Your first brain and then your second brain. Your second brain is your gut, and that's just science. The scientific community calls your gut your second brain, because you have neurons, neurotransmitters, serotonin, you have all that. And it's literally a second brain. And the great thing is, you know how they say that you can only use 10% of your brain? They're talking about the first brain. The second brain, you can use a hundred percent. You just need to listen to it.
Charles (46:51):
And I wonder whether in that description, the most important thing that you're doing is actually allowing people, encouraging people to acknowledge, first of all, that they have fear. Most businesses don't provide room for that. It's not part of the dynamic. We're just here to do this job and get on and be, do, create this, whatever it might be. And I would be not at all surprised if the thing that people are finding really valuable is that you are actually encouraging them, allowing them, supporting the fact that they need to be able to say, I'm afraid, and I'm going to confront that.
Anselmo Ramos (47:20):
Yes, which goes back to transparency, which is one of our core values. So we talk about our feelings all the time. And Gaston and I, we talk about our feelings in front of everyone at GUT. And sometimes we cry. We cry a lot, by the way. And we try not to forget that we're humans. Sure, we are running a company, but it's okay to be insecure sometimes. It's okay to be fearful. It's okay to be super courageous, sometimes. It's okay to expose your feelings. So we try to be really connected to our feelings and expose that because transparency is one of our values. And it's very hard to be transparent all the time. It's very hard to be a hundred percent transparent, internally, externally, with your family, even with your best friend, you know, your spouse. It’s very hard to be a hundred percent transparent. But that's our goal. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible. And sometimes very uncomfortable, you know, to talk about things and to expose feelings in front of everyone. But we try.
Charles (48:35):
And and to your point, it requires a certain kind of person, a certain personality to be comfortable in that environment. How good have you become at making sure you're hiring the kind of people who are able to adapt to and thrive in an environment like that?
Anselmo Ramos (48:51):
Yeah, we take a while to hire people. We are always looking for people with our core values. So our HR, when they're interviewing someone, like a candidate, they're looking for courage, transparency, intuition. They're looking for those values in the candidate. And the simplest way to talk about a potential candidate is GUTsy. When we say GUTsy, we know exactly what we mean. We mean all that. So we say, oh, she was really GUTsy, let's hire her. Or, we're not sure if he's GUTsy enough. So, that's how we talk about it in a very simple way. But behind GUTsy, we have like 20 things that we know what we're looking for. Because as we grow, our challenge is to keep the culture strong. So we need a lot of people with the same values that we have, and leading by example, right? Because we cannot say, as founders, we cannot say we’re about courage, transparency, and intuition, and then we don't practice those values. We have to be courageous, we have to be transparent, we have to follow our intuition, we have to lead by example. And I think that's very important. And that applies to our leadership. We're looking for people that have those values.
Charles (50:20):
It feels like you've codified this. Is that a fair statement?
Anselmo Ramos (50:27):
I think it is. We’ve, yeah, we write down everything, Charles. We have tons of documents and decks and presentations about bravery means business, about the Bravery Scale, about the GUT principles we have. I mean, I think it's time for us to write a book and I've been, and that's one of my goals, you know, after the first five years and everything we've accomplished and looking forward, already think about legacy. I want to write a book or, or more, at least one book, you know, maybe a couple. But I want to try to capture everything that took us here and share with everyone, you know, at least our journey, you know, how we did it. There's no one way. That's our way. And because we have a lot of things that's already written down, I just need to gather everything and put in a book format. But the content is already there.
Charles (51:30):
One of the things I'm conscious of is, you were so clear and outspoken when you left David and started GUT about how important it was that you be independent. And five years later, you sold a majority interest. Are you worried at all about the loss of independence?
Anselmo Ramos (51:51):
No, I'm not worried about it because we found the right partner. So when we left David to start GUT, it was very important for us at that point to be a hundred, 110% independent. We didn't accept any investors. We took a second mortgage on our houses. It was very important for us to just go a hundred percent, even from an investment perspective, because it was time. We had to taste independence for a while. And it was crucial for us to do that, to experience that. And that's the reason we grew so much and we accomplished so much, and we became Independent Network of the Year in Cannes. It was actually after Cannes that for us became really clear that, okay, chapter one is done, and then what's next? A lot of people would ask us, what's next after Cannes, because what happened was too big, and this is next, it's a partnership with a tech company.
We've had some offers, Charles, along the way, of holding companies, and we always said no, or we didn't even entertain the conversation because, for us, was, well, they do what we do, right? So we've been there. That's not what we want. We're enjoying our independence. I think with Globant, it was something really unique. First, they are one of our clients. We've been working together already for three years, so we know each other. And that's not common in our industry, you know, for a client to acquire its own advertising agency. And then it's a very strategic and complimentary partnership. They are in tech, we do creativity. So it's very complimentary. And I think that's the power of this partnership. It's, what's the power of creative tech when you put ad nerds and tech nerds together, you know, and see what happens. That's the opportunity that we have, right? For the next five years. And, we're really excited about it for, while we are not, in theory, we're not independent anymore, but operationally we are, because it's not a merge. So nothing changes from that sense. We are leading GUT and we have their support now. We have their help and their resources now to help us accomplish all our dreams. So in a way, we see this as an accelerator to our dreams.
Charles (54:46):
It's interesting. I've been around a lot of mergers and part of some as well. And they're the hardest things in the world, in the business world, to pull off successfully. And as you know, most of them fail. I suspect the fact that you are so clear and because you've codified what GUT is and what it isn't, and the kind of people that work well there and the kind of clients that you need, that gives you, I think, an advantage that might make this work. I hope, obviously, for your sake, that it does. Intellectually it makes a lot of sense, but, as you know, the emotional dynamics of putting something like this together and taking a different direction can take us into surprising places. Last question. As you look at the future with all of this extraordinary past, as you look at the future, what are you afraid of?
Anselmo Ramos (55:33):
You know, Charles, I'm not afraid of anything. When it comes to business, I'm not afraid of anything. I've won clients, I've lost clients, I've lost great talent. What's the worst that can happen? You know. So, we don't operate from a fearful perspective, like zero. You know, even when you look at the macro context right now, it's really grim, you know, with two major wars, you know, the US election. So you can look at the macro context and be fearful, right? And it's really interesting, we survived a pandemic being independent, being a new independent agency. And, you know, we never think about those things. We are very focused on the work because we love ideas. We love what we do. We're not cynical about advertising. Another principle that we have is, love is our engine. It's about love. We love our ideas. We love our industry. We love each other. We love our brands, we love our clients. We love everyone. And that's very tangible. So that's why I'm not fearful.
I'm fearful from a human perspective. If something happens to my family, you know, to someone that I love, someone that I care, from a human perspective, I'm fearful. Like any human. From a business per perspective, I'm super hopeful, super optimistic. We are, we're eternal optimistics, because everything's about ideas. We're very thankful, we work in a business that people pay us to think and say, hey, what if you do this? And then they fund your idea. It's insane. We love it. So we're very thankful and we love what we do. So that's why, you know, when I think about the future, I'm super optimistic. And I think the industry needs to have to feel more of that, you know. Our industry needs to have a little more hope and optimism, and enough with the cynicism.
Charles (58:05):
Yeah, I think that's true for the world in general, actually, to your point, that there are so many factors out there that feel destabilizing and uncertain, that we've lost trust in institutions. The things that we thought we could count on forever aren't actually built that way. I want to thank you for joining me today. I really think, obviously the story is a fantastic one. It goes without saying. Anybody who listens to this podcast regularly knows that I really am interested in the intersection between strategy and humanity, and you've clearly got the strategy part. But the humanity part, I think is what really separates you and the company. And it's going to be fascinating to watch, over the years to come, if you can hold onto that, against the pressure of growing a business and having a partner who's got financial interest. That is going to be, I think, the biggest challenge, because it clearly, to me anyway, is the thing that separates you. So I wish you nothing but success, because I think the industry, the world, we all personally need companies like yours to be successful. I think that they give us hope.
Anselmo Ramos (59:03):
Thank you so much. Means a lot. Thank you so much, Charles. It was a pleasure to be here. I'm really happy, and thanks for having me.
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