The Bravery Scale
Two decades in agency growth and account leadership, now Global Chief Growth Officer at GUT, on choosing the right clients and growing in service of creativity.
"It's not you or me, it's us."
Carmen Rodriguez is Global Chief Growth Officer at GUT, the independent agency founded in 2018. She sits where client leadership, commercial judgment and creative ambition meet, and is known for treating growth as a test of values and bravery as a scale a brand climbs step by step.
Rodriguez has spent her career in business and account leadership, working across many agencies and countries and leading businesses from different regions. She describes 20 years building beer brands with AB InBev, learning the trade from the point of sale and supermarkets to sponsorships, events and how consumers deal with the category. Throughout, she has cast herself as a creative at heart rather than a businessperson, in what she calls the business of creativity.
For the past eight years Rodriguez has been at GUT, which she says began with two offices in Miami and Buenos Aires and has grown, by her account, to 12 offices and 2,000 people. As Global Chief Growth Officer she owns the assessment of which clients fit the agency, running a reverse RFI to test a prospect's ambition and defending the discipline of saying no; she counts 27 nos in GUT's first year. She points to Mercado Livre, an eight year relationship she says has produced a fourth Grand Prix, as proof that bravery generates business.
We're a brave agency for brave clients.
"We're going to bring ideas that will make you uncomfortable in a good way, and you need to be ready for that."
Rodriguez frames GUT as a brave agency for brave clients, where transparency and discomfort are features rather than risks. She argues that bravery makes relationships stronger and helps brands stand out in a sea of noise. The client, she says, has to be ready for ideas that unsettle them in a good way.
"Healthy grows is growing as slow as you can"
Against the rush to grab every account available to the hot new agency, Rodriguez defends deliberate, sustainable growth. She measures fit by shared ambition and the agency's ability to have a real impact, not by revenue alone. Where direction and ambition do not align, she says, the long road will not hold.
"It's not just about me trying to sell an ad, it's about me trying to sell creative solutions for business problems."
Rodriguez argues that clients now want partners who understand their business problems, not vendors selling a single ad. Her 20 years in beer taught her the point of sale, the category and the consumer, and she treats that depth as the price of a true partnership. Consistency built that way, she says, pays off commercially and creatively.
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