Lightly edited for readability. Speaker 1: So, uh, welcome to this episode of Business Marketing recorded live here at Cannes Lions '26. We're in the Department Garden. It's a beautiful setting. Uh, it's a lovely summer's day. Uh, Carmen, it's great to have you here. You are the global chief growth officer of GUT.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Uh, and I think is gonna be a conversation about sort of growth, right? Um, how does an agency grow when the thing people buy is still belief in the work? The people, chemistry. Um, you've been sort of at this point where client leadership, commercial judgment, creative ambition meet, and so I think you're gonna be a great sort of, uh, um, kind of, um, guide, you know, across this kinda territory. So thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Let's kick off with the first question which is, I suppose in a sense that when you took on the global gr- growth role-
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: ... what did growth mean to you in practice?
Speaker 2: I think, look, growth, growth can be defined as so, so many things. When you think about internal growth, right? You want to grow your team, you want to make your agency big but also sustainable, right? So how do you grow your business? How do you grow your teams in a way that it makes sense for, for the business, and also for your philosophy as a company, right? So I think at GUT we have very strong culture. We have very strong values; courage, transparency, intuition. So when we look at growth, how do you grow through the lenses of our values, right? So internally, how do you bring in people that are going to be reflective of these, these values? And the same as for clients. So when we look at clients, what are the type of clients that will make sense for GUT? Because we're not just an ordinary agency, I would say like this. So there's, there's, there's a symbol and a weight to be called GUT, right? So when a client look at, "I'm gonna call this agency that's called GUT," what do they expect, right?" And I think it's impor- it's an important thing to understand when you're looking for clients or when I sit in a meeting and a client wants to get to know us. I try to understand, okay, is this going to be a match? Is this going to be a fruitful relationship on the both ends? So that's sort of how I approach growth from GUT.
Speaker 1: I love it. And when you say not an ordinary agency, and, and the clue is in the name, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But bring that to life for me a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I think, look, again, as I mentioned, the way we design the agency through the three values and our business proposition which is bravery means business. We are an agency that live by our values and, and our value propositions. So we are a brave agency for brave clients. So every time I do my credentials presentation to clients, that’s the first thing I say: "We're a brave agency for brave clients." What does that mean? We believe that bravery is a journey. We believe that brave is not binary. So it's not that either you are brave or you're not, we believe that bravery is a scale. So you can become braver and braver and braver as you, as you grow. So I think when you think about why we are a different agency, I think because we truly live by those values. So we're gonna be brave to, to tell you things in transparency. And sometimes agencies don't do that because they're afraid to lose the client and lose their relationship. And for us, we believe that being transparent is actually the way to make the relationships go stronger. Uh, we are going to be courageous, so we're going to bring ideas that will make you uncomfortable in a good way, and you need to be ready for that. And we're going to inspire our clients to follow their intuition. So it's like when you see an idea, we are gonna ask every client, "Please react with your gut. What your instinct tells you about this idea?" And then we can rationalize and bring the data and bring the research and do everything. So I think in that way, we're very unique. And we try to live by those values so clients feel that. It's like a lot of personality and a lot of knowledge of who you are as a company and as a brand. And I think that stand out in the industry.
Speaker 1: And why is it so important to be brave today?
Speaker 2: I think because of the massive amount of information that we are being flooded with, it's really hard for our personal HDs to absorb everything. So I think we're, we're, worse. Brands don't compete only with their own competitors. So if you think about any brand, like f-... I would say Stella Artois are one of our clients, right? Does Stella Artois only competes with the beer category? We don't think so. It competes with culture. It competes with what's happening in the world right now. So you need to be brave to be able to stand out in the sea of noise and in the sea of information, and to be able to connect with your clients in a very unique and emotional way so they will remember the things you do, and they will remember your brand. So that's, that's what we believe that bravery actually does for your brands and does for your business.
Speaker 1: And how does that translate into the work?
Speaker 2: I think, again, as I mentioned, the bravery for us is-
Speaker 1: Yeah
Speaker 2: ... is a scale.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right? So it's not that ... If a client comes to us and we do this assessment, okay, where ... A- and this is an actual work that we develop together with clients to assess where they are on the bravery scale. So from zero to 10, we have classified all of those stages, and we work together with the clients to identify, okay, your client Starting at number two in the bravery scale. What's your goal? I want to go higher on the bravery scale because I believe that's gonna generate business results for me. Great. So are we aligned on that? We are aligned on that. So, we don't think that a brand should go from tw- two to 10. It has to be small steps. It's a process, and the work is gonna reflect that. So we're gonna say, "Okay, this brand, what they need is to be brave enough to change their positioning." That's super brave for brands. Some brands are just like, 'Ah, I change my positioning every year." Some brands are like, "I have the same position for the past 30 years. Should I evolve it? Should I change it?" That's super brave. Some brand is like, "It takes a new visual identity to make my brand more modern." That's brave to make those decisions. Or for example, in the case of Stella Artois, we looked at the brand when we got the, the account and we said, "Okay, I think we need to take a step back and go back to the core DNA of the brand. What does this brand stand for, for years that have been doing incredible work, that has been standing out as a bl- ... So let's take a step back and move back into what's the core DNA of the brand?” That's super brave as well. So I think it's different types of bravery will reflect the work.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about the difference between your philosophy around thinking of growth as new business versus with your client relationship kind of experience, how you think about kind of healthy growth more broadly.
Speaker 2: I think healthy... Uh, I think healthy grows is growing as slow as you can, which some people think it's like, we need to grow as fast as we can. And we believe that our approach is a little bit different. It's, as an, as a new agent, so not that new. We're eight years old now, but if still compared to the others, we're like a toddler. Um, I think it's everybody sees an agency as the hot new thing, the brand new thing. Okay, let's talk to these people because they're the hot new thing at, at the market. But instead of, again, taking everything that we possibly can and now being able to deliver quality work, and also, as I mentioned, not assessing properly the clients that you are going to have to make sure that they fit within the agency, I would say it's the wrong approach. So I think the, the best approach is understanding the clients that will make sense for your agency, who makes sense for your business, and understanding that you as an agency will be able to impact positively that client and you are exactly what he needs. So for us, it's, it's about sustainable growth. So it's about understanding the exact type of client and the exact type of relationship that will make sense for us, and that we will make sense to be the agency and to be able to partner with the client. If they don't have the same ambition, if we're not looking at the same direction, it's, it can be sustainable in the beginning and the long road is not gonna be sustainable.
Speaker 1: What are the signs an agency is growing in the right way before the actual numbers tell you?
Speaker 2: I would say the internal culture, your people. We're in the people business. And, and, and this is about when, when you see, for example, we have a very, very little turnover of people. There are people that are with us since the beginning of the agency. We've, we started in 2018 with two offices, Miami and Buenos Aires, and we're now at 12 offices, 2,000 people all over the world in eight years. So I think, and y- when you look at the teams, there are people that are with us since the beginning, and they have grown with us. We have promoted people from within. It's people that are part of our history and our cultures. So I would say you are growing correctly if you have a healthy culture, if people are happy doing the work. Another thing that is part of our principles is that we prioritize people first, work second, and clients last. And I get to say this to all my new business clients who look at me like, "Clients last?" And I say, because if your people are happy and nurtured, they will do the best work of their lives, and that's the only way the clients are gonna be happy. If you reverse their order, it might be you put the clients first, and then you burn out your people, and that's a very short term, uh, solution. So...
Speaker 1: I love that. Um, and going back to the whole philosophy of bravery, sort of when you're having those conversations with a client who sounds like they want brave work, but maybe they only like the sound of it-
Speaker 2: We hear that a lot
Speaker 1: ... um, what does your radar tell you?
Speaker 2: I think, Luke, I think every- I, I personally, and I think everybody at GUT tends to believe that in the good ambition and in the good intentions. And of course, most of the times it doesn't only depend on the people. It depends on the culture of the company. You have to influence a huge, uh, uh, amount of stakeholders internally in the company to be able to do brave work. So sometimes, and this is actually another exercise that we do. We first ask people to rate themselves as people on the bravery scale. So we go and we ask the questions: Where would you rate yourself from zero to 10 on a bravery scale? And usually people say, oh, I'm six. I'm a seven. Some people go by, ''I'm a 10," and that's amazing to hear. And then we ask them to rate the companies or the brands. And usually it's like two, three. So there's a, what we call the bravery gap. What's our job as an agency? To try to bridge the gap between the marketers ... and the brand. And I think it's always about investing when you feel that the marketers mean it, and they will be able together with you to transform the company. And we have been doing it for quite some time with very, very difficult clients. Mercado Livre is a great example of that. It's our longest s- term relationship. We've been working with them for eight years. Yesterday we won a Grand Prix in Outdoor. It's the fourth Grand Prix with Mercado Libre. And when they started working with us, they were at the two at the bravery scale. And they understood that bravery for them generated business. So they started to grow, and they understood that creativity generates volume, generates sales, generates results. So little by little we started to infuse creativity, effective creativity into the company. And then now they come to us. Yesterday they were at the GUT house and they say, "We love being at a 10 at the bravery scale. Can we make an 11?" We're like, "No, that's just a 10 is the limit. Why do you want to be an 11?" So now we're thinking, okay, what does it take to keep it a 10, maintain it, and maybe stretch it? So that's the, the conversation that we're going to have right now, like
Speaker 1: I love it. That's great. This podcast can be called Turning Up To 11. Um-
Speaker 2: You see?
Speaker 1: So, um, yeah, as a growth person, right, this is probably the hardest thing. Um, saying no.
Speaker 2: Oof.
Speaker 1: Right? So tell me a little bit about kind of where you've been maybe willing to kind of walk away from the business, you know? And if so, kind of like what usually kind of ultimately drives that really difficult call.
Speaker 2: This is a very interesting story actually. When we started the agency on our first year, I have it counted, I said 27 nos on the first year of GUT, which to appoint the CFO looked at me and say, "Do you understand that this is a business and eventually we're gonna have to have clients, right?" And w- we're like, 'Yes, but we need to have the right clients." And it was a conscious decision by- taken by the founders and, and, and, and it spread through the company. It's about having the right client. So for me, and for us as a company, it's about, again, we do something that we call the reverse RFI. So clients send us-
Speaker 1: Mm
Speaker 2: ... RFI, and we have to provide all the information about the agency, but always we give them back a list of questions, which is the reverse RFI, which is: What is your creative ambition? What is your goals? What are your goals? What do you want out of this relationship? What are you looking for in a relationship with this agency? And of course there's the chemistry, like, you know, when you meet someone new and you know if you click or you don't. So there's that. There is energy and, and, and that's undeniable. But there is also the ambition. So even if a client's at a zero at the bravery scale, they're completely non brave, but they have the willingness, they have the passion, they have the ambition, it's a client that's worth it investing. And it's not necessarily just about the money, it's about a combination of things. Of course there is the business side of what we do, which is, okay, let's ... I have costs and these are my costs. But even if it's the whole- all the money in the world and the ambition is not there, they don't want to do creative work, they don't want to look ahead and grow and understand the concept that bravery means business, it's not gonna be a match. So we need to be honest with ourselves and with them. So yes, it is really hard and that I have situations that I said no and I turn off the calls and I went like, "What am I doing? I, this is wrong." But it ended up being the right decision. So we're very, very strong on, on, on those assessments and it's very, very important. It's been very important for us.
Speaker 1: Trust is such a big thing in our business, right? You know, the brand and the trust kinda go hand in hand with each other. Tell me a little bit about sort of where kind of trust gets built with clients in real life, you know, and beyond just the kind of the big pitch-
Speaker 2: Hm
Speaker 1: ... and the big presentation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think when you ask me why I say GUT is also different and unique and, and, and not the same and ordinary agency, I think one of the things is that our senior leadership, we're not executives. We actually do the work. So when I go into a pitch meeting, it's not the last sort of f- time that the client are going to see me. I'm going to be around. I'm going to make sure that I am in the business like my, my, my founders Anselmo & Gaston they are ... You see Anselmo in meetings on the day to day with clients. You see the CCOs all the time getting involved in the business. So that generates trust because you see that the agency and the ecosystem of the agency is vested, is invested in the relationship, is vested in growing together, has skin in the game. We're on it. Like most of our long-term relationships like Mercado Libre, AB InBev, like you don't s- you don't know whose agency, whose client when we're in the room because it's one team thinking about what is the best for the brand. There's no ego. Let's bring the partners, let's bring the agencies ecosystem of the client. So I think all of that generates trust. And it's, again, it's a people's business, so it's about being available, understanding the problems, the pain points, and doing everything that you possibly can to help them solve it like it's for you because it is for you in the end because we're partners. So I think That to me, at least, and, and I've seen it at GUT for, for eight years, and even in my previous agencies. This is how, at least as a executive of growth and being a business leadership person for my whole career, an account person, I think that's how I built all my relationships. It's like how we're gonna grow together. We are a team. It's not you or me, it's us. And, and, and that's, I believe, how it should be.
Speaker 1: Just going back to the- your background and sort of all of the experience you've had. You know, you've worked across, you know, a, a, a raft of kind of strong kinda creative cultures in, in business. What does that kinda give you, you know, from a kind of roots perspective, I suppose, in a sense? You know, when you're operating in a kinda global growth role.
Speaker 2: I think I was, I was very fortunate to work for many different agencies in different countries, and leading businesses from, from, from different regions. But in the end of the day, and it might sound not silly, it might sound naive at some point, but for me, I am in the business of creativity. I do sell creative ideas. So I'm very passionate about creativity and ideas. I consider myself a creative. It's not I'm the businessperson. I am a creative at the heart. So we, we have this thing at GUT, this culture. We started at the pandemic actually, that it's called the Founder's Chat, and our founders invite guests to talk to the whole network and to inspire them and to talk about their journeys. And we had, like Marcelo Serpa, we had David Droga, we had Cindy Gallop. We had, like heavy names talking to our community about creativity and about what took them to get to they- where they were. In one of the talks, we had Sir John Hegarty talking to us, and one of the things that he said, and I will never forget this, is if you talk to an architect, for them to be able to do their business, they need to study this history of architecture. So they're gonna study Greece, they're gonna study Roman Em- Empire. They're gonna study everything that there is about the history of ar- architecture. If you talk about art, this person needs to study the history of art, right? We sell advertising and ideas, and people need to study the history of advertising. We need to learn and we need to know what this industry is about, and we need to be passion about it. So I think this was so inspiring because sometimes we take it for granted about the great campaigns and the great ideas and the great brands that were built before we were all here. So I think, um, I think even being a growth person, being a business lead, I'm in the business of creativity. So creativity, to me, is the most important thing, and I need to understand it and I need to love it and I need to study it forever. Because that's always gonna be the center of what I do. So it's not just growth for the sake of numbers and growing, but it's growing with the purpose of creativity. So that's how I at least see how I grew from a business account person into my growth role. Understanding growth, understanding business, marketing, but with the creativity at the center.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's a great phrase, isn't it? Business, the business of creativity. It's, uh, it's not as good as the business of marketing, which obviously I have to say, but-
Speaker 2: You have to say it
Speaker 1: ... um, I f- I love it, and I think it's a, it's a great, a great kinda philosophy, um, that you shared there. Things are moving so fast. You know, you've, you know, you've, you've, you know, got now y- you've been there sometime, right? You know, before that you've had a, an incredible career. What are you seeing sort of that's changing in the market? You know, what are, what are kind of, what are clients, brands kind of, you know, asking for now? You know, what matters to them now more than, um, than, than maybe kind of the past? How are things shifting?
Speaker 2: I think it's a little bit of what we, we said. I think what they want from their relationships with the agencies is that deep partnership. It's trust. It's about the agencies that understand their business problems, right? So it's not just about me trying to sell an ad, it's about me trying to sell creative solutions for business problems. And, and for that, you need to understand the business. So I've been working with AB InBev for 20 years. So I've been doing beer brand building for 20 years. So I've done, like beer ... Like w- going to the point of sale, talking to supermarkets, understanding how the chain of the business works, uh, understanding sponsorships and events, and what are the problems with the consumers, how consumers are dealing with, with, with this category right now, and the changes that we face, uh, through the category. So I think clients are asking for agencies that are true partners, that are going to be in the, in the weeds with that. And, and, and I think not necessarily all the agencies are interested in that type of, of relationship, or they're capable of doing it. And I think who understands this, I think it's gonna ... Again, it- all of this leads to what we were just saying. Truth- truthful relationships, longstanding partnerships, and then in the end, consistency. And consistency pays off. If you look at, again, going back to Mercado Livre and GUT, eight years relationship. If you look at the trajectory of the work, it's consistent and it pays off. It pays off in the business, it pays off creatively, it pays off everywhere. So- What are those types of relationships that we're going to be able to foster as agencies? And I think clients are really, really interested in that these days. That's how I feel.
Speaker 1: I love it. And for you personally right now, kind of what are you most excited about when you're here at Cannes Lions? What are you gonna walk away with? What are you gonna kind of share with the team, talk more, find out more?
Speaker 2: I think it's, um ... I was judging creative strategy, uh, short- I was the shortlisted jury for creative strategy category. And one of the things that I saw a lot, at least for me, is strong insights executed in a simple way is what is really making people pay attention to. I think we've passed by this phase of like high complicated executions that you have to remember and you had to scan on a QR code, and then it's gonna lead to a lending page, and then you're gonna have to do, and then... No, now it's like human insights that have global range of understanding executed in the most simple way. And then people were like, "Wow." So I'm excited to see work that is simple, that resonates with people at the human level, iconic brands getting back to being iconic, um, and work that works, that generates business results, and that inspires. I'm always inspired. Every time I come to Cannes, it's my 15th time. And I come here and I feel like the first time. I just wanna be ... I remember my first time in Cannes, it was just we didn't have all this content, right? There was less categories, less things to do. And I remember I would spend entire afternoon inside a room watching film because you would watch films in this film screening rooms. And I remember I would spend like hours in there, and I would leave the dark room and I would be like, "What time is it?" And being so inspired by what I saw and the things that I've discovered from, from industries and markets that I didn't have access at the time. And I think I f- I still feel like that when I come. So yesterday I was running around the shortlist and everything, the work, and I was like, "Oh look at th-" So inspired. And, and then to me, I have this love and the passion for the industry and for the business, so every time I come to Cannes I just look forward to being more inspired to seeing work that I get envious. Like, I wish I had done it. And that will make me a better, a better professional and a better growth person for, for the future.
Speaker 1: Carmen, it's been a real pleasure having you on The Business Marketing.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Amazing pleasure