Unwrapping Buenos Aires
My #HavasLofts experience takes the cake as the greatest work opportunity bestowed upon me in my 16 year career. Literally one of the best presents. No literally, when I landed in Buenos Aires on June 4th, it was my birthday.
One of the first things I noticed about people from Buenos Aires, is how incredibly friendly everyone has been — even prior to my arrival. Rosario Gujis, my HR contact and Pedro Di Risio, the Managing Director of Mobext (one of my two coaches), were very proactive in reaching out over emails and Google hangouts to accommodate me prior to my flight. Rosario went as far as to arrange a car service pick up for me at the airport. On the day of my arrival, Pedro went above and beyond by offering to give me a little tour of the city, to which I extended the invite to Ale Sanchez, Senior Account Planner and fellow #HavasLofts participant from the Havas Media Miami office. The generous guided tour of a few of the hip neighborhoods and a test run to the office really helped in reducing some of the friction in orienting ourselves in this beautiful city.
“One of the first things I noticed about people from Buenos Aires, is how incredibly friendly everyone has been…”
On our first day to the office we took a taxi to Havas, located on the southeast side of the city blocks away from the South Darsena river. Though the rest of the cities agencies are located more central to the city, one of the direct competitors, Globant is directly across the street.
Upon arrival at the office Ale, and I were warmly greeted by the receptionist and Rosario, our kind HR contact with a hug and a kiss, and a welcome kit which included a handy black (my favorite color) Herschel backpack along with office supplies.
Once my other coach Juan Jose Perazzo aka Juanjo, Head of Projects for Mobext came to meet me, we began our tour of the office. We started in the basement recreation room, which includes an exercise bike, a treadmill, bench presses, along with other gym equipment, complete with lockers and showers. Given the way I’ve been eating I should probably be utilizing this amenity but since I haven’t even used the the gym at home in ages, chances are I won’t. #dadbod
I’m seated on the 7th floor of the Havas WW office with a total of about 50 employees, that includes Mobext, Ecselis and Socialyse. Havas Media is housed in the adjacent building. Together the two buildings house about 350 people in total. Like the NYC office, the Buenos Aires office layout is an open seating arrangement with adjacent tables side by side, and another row of tables lined up on the opposing side for face-to-face interaction. There’s a lot of energy here with all the discussions going on around me layered on top of personal music playlists broadcast out loud for all to hear. In the morning it began with the design teams’ and it seems that different teams throughout the floor take turns in playing music out loud throughout the day.
Initially the way the relationship had worked between Havas Media and Havas WW (Mobext, Ecselis and Socialyse) here in Buenos Aires was that the Havas Media team would reach out to the Havas WW teams after the media planning was completed. This dynamic put the Havas WW role purely as a service provider towards the end of the project, often presenting them with the challenge of a short timeline and sometimes a small remainder of the budget to ideate and develop the creative. Fortunately, things have improved in recent years with Havas WW contributing as a strategic collaborator and partner at the onset of the media planning phases, utilizing the data and insights capabilities and expertise of the Mobext, Ecselis and Socialyse groups, to help drive media strategies backed by data. Another benefit of initiating the collaborative effort from the get-go is that the creative teams can get a head start in the ideation process. On top of this, Mobext has also been proactive in pitching and securing their own work, to have a healthy mix of clients now coming from two sources, rather than being completely dependent on Havas Media.
“Another benefit of initiating the collaborative effort from the get-go is that the creative teams can get a head start in the ideation process.”
Parts of this dynamic are reminiscent of the relationship in my home NYC office between the creative groups differing capabilities, where the digital product design team was not engaged onto a project until the midway point or worst yet, towards the end after the creative concepts have been developed. Similar to the problems this created between the teams in Buenos Aires, the product design team was left with little time to ideate or produce creative to realize it to its fullest potential. Granted this process has been improving in NYC with the inclusion of all the creative teams engagement at a project’s kick-off, it has not become the standard as of yet and definitely has room for further improvement.
Some of the trends I’ve been learning about around the office this week are:
- The shift to move clients to take content based marketing approaches that speak to customer lifestyles and needs of the target audience, rather than leading with the products and offers themselves.
- The use of smart watches is growing here in Argentina, so the team is proactive in including creative that extends the customer experience to wearable devices, despite it not being about of the initial ask on the brief
- A standardization of SDKs (software development kits) used. Mobext has successfully positioned itself as the owner and operator of their clients SDKs, providing their clients with dashboards for tracking. This was a huge improvement in simplicity and efficiency as previously their clients were all operating on several different ones.
Despite all this, the thing that has resonated with me most up to this point is the reminder I get every morning of the warmth, affection and respect the Argentinian culture brings to the work environment. Men and women both greet their immediate team members, if not the majority of the floor with a hug and a kiss on the cheek upon arrival to the office everyday. My colleagues here, who are often smiling and laughing truly resemble a united family unit. Their interactions with one another exhibit a strong positivity and healthy morale, which is essential to effective collaboration and the creation of great work. I’m typically not one to exhibit PDA, but I think I could get used to this.
“Their interactions with one another exhibit a strong positivity and healthy morale, which is essential to effective collaboration and the creation of great work.”
