+10 Years in the Creative and Strategic Digital Marketing Business in Latin America.

Looking back at my work life since 2003, when I was still half way through college, returning to Chile from 5 years of school in the US, I came to realise I had been working for over 11 years in the creative, strategic and business side of digital marketing and entrepreneurship. This week I turn 32, and it seems like a good time to look back at what I´ve accomplished.

I started in school doing web related work. Most of it being web design, from PSDs to HTMLs, from web content to video work. For the greatest part of my college life, I worked doing video based projects, for clients and for the love of art. I worked as a freelance for DG Medios, and participated in two award winning animated short films. Also I had the chance to work for skate company Gangsta/Adrenalin editing one of their featured films.

I co-created Brocoli, a character design studio and toy design firm. I also led production at Normal TV for a few months, creating a short animated film called Mi Barrio where I worked for over 6 months with musician and artists to develop a pilot for a upcoming arts channel (which never got to see the light of day).

After college I went straight to the agency life. Working at UrbanPR, I did few design jobs but after 1 month I realised the graphic designer hat felt a bit to big. I resigned and started focusing on what at the time caught my attention. I began reading and writing about cool hunting, social media and internet trends. This helped me understand more about research methods and it led me towards analytical thinking. Furthering my knowledge of anthropology which I had studied while at FIU in Miami and at the Art Institute of Phoenix in Arizona.

I started Indi.cl, co-creating content and cataloging design and marketing trends. This led me to land a job at Neuralis, a digital marketing oriented agency, something I was really eager to experience. The first thing I figured out was I had not even begun to understand the whole scope of what digital marketing meant and how much I still had to learn. Something that till this day still holds true. I had the chance to work very cleaver professionals, people who helped shape my view of where digital marketing was headed and how I would ultimately define my career path.

I worked along side some of the most inspiring professionals I’ve had the chance to work with, people who's opinions and points of view I still very much respect. This experience created a picture in my head of what a digital agency should do and how it should be an integral part of client strategy.

After about a short but at the same time long almost 247 two year period, where I was getting the hang of working as the internet does, nonstop, my millennial gens hit home and I left the company. I felt I needed a change of pace and that led me back to freelance work. I was able to land one job and in an unexpected turn of events I was scouted by the management of a brand new agency.

I was drafted into SimplycIT. Their view of marketing innovation and forward thinking ideas about digital media caught my attention. The idea was to help create strategies for clients based on technology innovation and its marketing implications. In theory it sounds amazing, in really it turned out to be very frustrating, trying to sell projects that either were ahead of their time or costs where too high and the perceived benefits did not justify the investment. I did get the chance to work with a highly specialised team of professionals, who had an acute vision of the industry. Working together we build technology products which focused on social interactions and merged them with television. We also had a key role in the Reportwiteros project develop by TVN, who used our technology. Little did we know how important this area would become in the years to come… I guess we would have pivoted the whole operation to this area… in part we did… apparently it was not enough, or I would probably still be working on that… either way, the experience was enriching in many levels. The technical and creative challenges that came with the job had all sorts of positive implications on my view of digital marketing and entrepreneurship.

For the most part it helped me learn to deal with the frustration of waiting for the market to adopt a new technology, which in those days was merely Social Media and Social TV… not to complex now a days.

This was 2010, I do thank the opportunity I got to experience the explosive growth of Twitter and Facebook, first hand. With the massive earthquake that hit Chile that year, we turned most of our energy towards harnessing the power of social media through a natural disaster, we saw how an alternative media became a fundamental element of news casting and how it helped people in need. This was truly inspiring.

The work we did at this agency gave all of us working in it a fairly good exposure with the industry. This helped me land a position at Telefonica. I had been intrigued by the client side of the business and this opportunity gave me the chance to experience it. The project I was hired to develop, a large scale social media monitoring center and listening system, was in part replicated across Latin America, and the know-how was shared throughout the companies global partners. We implemented what has become the backbone to a complete social media marketing and social CRM solution at an enterprise scale. Today this platform is managed and operated by over 20 individuals working 7 days a week to support more than 10 million paying costumers of telecommunication services.

Being the Gen Y I am, I quit my job, yet again. This time, solely on personal reasons (I wanted to take time off to travel for a few months). Before leaving for almost 3 months in search of something something… I was hired by the Laureate Group of universities to implement a similar solution for their four institutions here in Chile, training over 10 people in the management of social networks and instructing them on the use of social monitoring tools reaching over 16,000 students.

By the end of this project I had saved enough money to personally invest on the first working prototype of what became my first technology startup. Vendly App, backed by a $200,000 seed from UDD Venture. This happened right after I left (shit happens). I had a fall out with my co-founders, but will leave that for another post. I did not leave empty handed… I receive an award from The Next Web.

With Vendly I had the chance to experience first hand the difficulty of being an entrepreneur, working with co-founders, dealing with investors and working on the design and development of a mobile application.

At the beginning of 2013, I got an opportunity I could not turn down. I was invited to join a young social media agency. The founders were on the look out for someone to lead, help turn the company into one of the leading digital agencies in the country and expand through the region. I was first offered a paid position, which I turned down, except if they were willing to let me join in on the business. This is how I became a partner, acquiring a percentage of stocks in the company and started as strategy and operations director of Blacksheep. I had missed the agency life, I had some ideas on how the business should be developed. I wanted to redefine and help further expand the service scope of the agency.

Two years later I now lead a team of over 50 people. Increasing sales and operation over 600% from the day I arrived. We serve over 30 clients, creating content and developing strategies for more than 100 online communities, doing marketing, communications and social costumer service for over 6.000.000 fans and followers (over 2.0oo.00o unique, others we aren’t so sure if they are real people or not, but neither can Facebook). We work for consumer and retail corporations, politicians and government agencies, and global brands.

Here is were you fit in!

At Blacksheep we are looking for the brightest professionals to join our team of young and talented individuals. We believe in co-creation and collaboration of the development of our clients success. We believe in the power of innovation and new ideas. We believe in user centric strategies and how we can help connect their needs with our clients services and products.

We want you to be part of this, so lets talk!

We are offering positions in all areas of digital marketing, research and investigation, PR and media buying. From design to coding, advertising to anthropology, creativity to analytics. Look me up on Linkedin, talk to me on Twitter, lets get in touch!

I hope you can join us soon!