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We’re changing the rules of brand building and innovation.
We’ve done away with the traditional structure, the internal politics, and the CYA mentality.
We’ve cut out the bloat, complexity, and overpriced overhead.
And we are left with brave thinking that ignites exciting brand ideas.
Speakeasy - Knowledge Brokers is a nimble working model designed to develop brand innovation and communication strategy ideas, freaking fast.
We’ve curated a global network of seasoned brand experts - strategists, creatives, designers, researchers and entrepreneurs - and created a process built for the contemporary creative economy.
Speakeasy – Knowledge Brokers is designed to disrupt.
During the 1920s, enterprising minds responded to Prohibition’s constraints by opening speakeasies. These anonymous, dynamic spaces brought together people from all walks of life, who could indulge as their true selves and be exposed to new ideas. We were inspired by speakeasies’ unique culture to develop an answer to today’s prohibitions around brand thinking.
Just like speakeasies of old, Speakeasy - Knowledge Brokers is on a mission to fight the prohibitions of our age, thus has created its own secret society of “regulars” -- a diverse and eclectic mix of outstanding minds from around the globe, who have deep knowledge across many categories.
Their experience leads them to generate ideas with consumer understanding and insight, category dynamics, and cultural fuel already built in.
Our regulars go incognito, preferring their output to be famous rather than attracting attention to themselves. Being anonymous lets them put creativity first, without constraints. It also allows our Knowledge Brokers to curate solutions from the best ideas, not based on hierarchy.
All of this leads to our ultimate benefit: agility. We do it all faster because we make the most of experts and don’t get held up by agendas or egos or bureaucracy – we think, create and curate.
This goes beyond honesty. It is the freedom to be honest with yourself, and what you truly believe in.
There’s pleasure in giving more than what is expected. It always pays off.
The art and science of taking out instead of adding on, to keep with what really makes the difference.
What if you could hire the world’s top talent and pay for only their productive time and most inspired ideas? With Speakeasy
- Knowledge Brokers, you can.
Our anonymous network of seasoned brand experts - strategists, creatives, designers,
researchers and entrepreneurs - allows us to handpick the best talent for each project.
Our lean working process means we deliver fresh and brave ideas, as said before, freakin’ fast.
This sprint produces collection of curated insights based on big data analytics, and deep rooted quali facts and observations that leads to brand opportunities to “act innovatively”.
The overall deliverable are Insightful context and benchmark analysis that envisages brand and business opportunities.
This sprint’s deliverable is a collection of
curated strategic concepts and creative ideas
based on insights, that give the brand
a perspective to respond with brand-led
innovation or communication to a business
opportunity or challenge.
This sprint combines the reach of digital media
and the massive generation of data to
empower marketing campaigns, ensuring
assertive decisions in pursuit of improving the
key success indicators and increasing the return
on investment.
Full stack development sprint of a new brand and re-brand identity. From company, market, and consumer behavior understanding and context reading to the creative design development of brand visual, brand architecture, language, sonic, and tone identity. Including brand naming, logo, color, shapes, sound/voice. All you need to bring your brand to life.
Packaging design is also part of this sprint, based on the needed scope.
This sprint’s outcomes are prototypes ready to be customer/consumer tested and hardwired on design thinking agile methodologies for rapid and tangible outcomes.
This sprint covers a variety of creative
output as Activation, Experience, Social
Media, Retail and POP.
With creativity at its core, all produced
and executed in prime fashion.
Coca-Cola team came to us with the following questions: What it takes for a massive low-value brand to trade up, up, and reposition itself as a mass-premium brand? Is there a framework we could use to develop and drive innovation to our brand’s mixes? (communication, packaging, distribution, price positioning, portfolio strategy?
We’ve built a premium benchmark “casesphere” with more than 30 brand mini-cases that helped us to identify patterns and define the 7 drivers of contemporary premiumization. That helped us to build a framework that is being used by the Local Heritage brand team to develop their brand’s premiumization strategies.
The KraftHeinz team asked us to help them to build an innovation pipeline for their barbecue sauce brand Bull’s-Eye. But where to start? Very early, we realized the brand needed a better understanding of its consumers and reframing its purpose and marketing positioning.
In one month of intense work, we’ve managed to: Spot the positioning opportunity for the brand Identify 5 different innovation avenues; Create more than 20 innovation ideas (products, platforms, experiences); Organize and curate ideas with the brand team in a very playful virtual workshop; Bull’s Eye has now a vision and a brand innovation pipeline for the next coming 2 years
The launch of a smaller plant-based patty is a potent conveyor of news to help bring awareness and properly position King Jr TM meals as an attractive communication platform, being able to drive higher levels of preference and sales volume in the segment.
In just ten days, we’ve returned to BK with a collection of 11 consumer insights-rooted concepts, not only to position their plant-based Impossible Whopper, but also outlying the strategic role and proposition of their King Jr. meals in line with a sustainable purpose.
Unilever saw potential in the "mini" versions of its Wall's brand and wanted to explore this untapped opportunity. Their objective was to create a consumer-centric proposition canvas and innovative concepts that effectively conveyed the brand's value.
Through a thorough analysis of post-COVID snacking behavior, we developed a product innovation proposition canvas and came up with eight on-brand and on-target product innovation concepts.
The ZX craft beer team briefed us to help them to assemble the building blocks to a successful DTC business strategy based on benchmark brand cases around the world in different geographies and categories.
In fifteen days, we’ve delivered a strategic high-level DTC playbook with the learnings, provocations, and implications to the craft beer marketing dynamics and the potential role AB-Invbev could pursue with a pilot go-to-market DTC strategy, supported library of inspiring business cases of the best in class DTC organizations and how they operate.
“Top 1 Pharma campaign - Advertising Health Report 2022”
“It feels like a paper cut but multiplied by 10,000. Or being stabbed with a bunch of knives over and over again.”
Those excruciating descriptions from actual patients with generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP) are the inspiration behind Boehringer Ingelheim’s “Unwearable Collection,” which aims to shed light on the rare and painful skin disease.
Role: ECD @ Area 23
“Panettone is impossible to describe to Americans.”
“So instead of telling Americans what it is, we asked them to try and tell us.”
Using social media and samplings, we invited people to describe our panettone and then created entirely new packaging that showed those quotes and tweets as our bold, unique product descriptions.
Role: ECD @ CPB
“Capturing the World Cup essence with Visa”
“Telling a twisted tale of rivalries to showcase Visa's sponsorship”
At the request of Visa, we have taken on the important mission of spreading the word about Visa's sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup. As proud Brazilians, we view this task as a sacred duty and were committed to executing it with the utmost creativity, and delivered a story about rivalries in a twisted way, resonating with the audience and driving engagement with the brand.
Role: ACD/AD @ ALMAPBBDO
“A distillate of equatorial botanics, sunshine and magic”
“Roselle is a drink of the people, by the people. It’s unifying, democratizing, and inclusive.
We were approached to help building a new Hibiscus cordial spirit from scratch. Partnering with a business strategist from beginning to end, we developed its brand positioning, experience design, and creative development.
Role: CCO @ Kawalab
“Empowering shoes (illogically plant-based) for world-changing females”
“Illogical Dreamers creates plant-based, Italian Sacchetto shoes for just this purpose.”
Research shows that women care deeply about the environment and the majority of them, 71%, try to adopt more eco-friendly living. Similarly, Illogical Dreamers creates planet-friendly-and-plant-based shoes that lower its carbon footprint.
Role: CCO @ Kawalab
“A new feel and identity to a vibrant Letgo”
The second-fastest growing app in the U.S., in 2017*
* Techcrunch, August 8th, 2018
Problem: letgo felt that their brand was a little bland and disparate. So we gave them a fun, bright, sexy new identity they could use across the board.
Role: ECD @ CPB
“Top 10 most awarded campaigns worldwide in 2007”
- Creartivicy Awards Report
“Volkswagen Trucks. For any kind of load.”
This was the first creative-driven campaign Volkswagen Trucks had done, and it helped change the brand's perception in its industry. And since then, they have been successfully producing the same strategic campaign, exploring each time an endless visual approach that translates its customization brand strategy.
Role: ACD @ AlmapBBDO
“Top 2 Health & Wellness campaign - Advertising Health Report 2022”
“On social media, words can kill.”
Research revealed that for every 233 bullying posts online, one teenager attempts suicide.
To show this staggering number to parents, an Al was trained on a database of over 2 million human-moderated posts from social media. Using machine learning, the algorithm was able to capture bullying posts from four major platforms used by students in the US, collecting more than 70,000 toxic comments each day. This led to Social Bullets, an experiment created to warn parents about the dangers of the internet by recreating a typical student's experience of social media.
Role: ECD @ Area 23
Throughout my 25-year career, I’ve tracked a significant shift in the creative economy, primarily related to brand innovation. The large and lofty structures and processes are being replaced by lean, nimble and tangible ways to innovate. I first tracked this change during my marketing roles as brand innovation manager at Abbott Laboratories and Unilever, for ten years.
Its evolution progressed through the past 15 years spent in brand strategy at global creative agencies (Lowe, Y&R, BBH, FCB, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett). During this time, as a founding partner of two successful ventures - BrandThinkTank in London (2007) and Tailor Made in Sao Paulo (2010), I had the opportunity of prototyping and implementing new approaches to inspire and bring out the best in people who are passionate about building brands.
However, it was after a sabbatical year completing a Masters degree in Design Methods in the Institute of Design - Chicago - that I felt inspired, experienced, and encouraged enough to act more independently.
So this is Speakeasy - Knowledge Brokers: a disruptive business model to address the changes in demands and desires of those involved in the contemporary creative economy.
Through an agile process that allows organizations to access and curate a diversity of brand experts across the globe - all people whom I had the tremendous pleasure to work with through the past 25 years - we accelerate and drive brand innovation.
I hope you are excited about it as I am.
Brand strategist with 15+ years of professional experience in the advertising industry, developing strategic creative thinking for high profile clients, such as Fiat, Carrefour, Brasil Kirin, Unilever, Mondelez, P&G, amongst others - in both big agencies, such as Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, but also independent ones.
Starting and developing my career in Brazil and working between Germany and the UK has taught me to deal with a wide range of cultural, social and economic backgrounds. I believe that putting people in the center is the starting point of all successful projects - from brands to working environments.
Hello there! I'm a creative leader who is passionate about developing innovative solutions and strategies that deliver remarkable brand experiences. With over two decades of experience working with acclaimed advertising agencies like Crispin Porter Bogusky, Area 23, The Community, and AlmapBBDO, I'm proud to have earned some of the industry's most prestigious accolades.
As one of the top Executive Creative Directors in America and the Top 30 Executive Creative Directors in the World, I've had the opportunity to work with a wide range of clients from startups to Fortune 50 companies, consistently delivering outstanding results.
At Speakeasy Knowledge Brokers, I bring my expertise in creative strategy and development in communication, brand design, experiential, and product innovation to help clients achieve their goals. I believe in the power of collaboration and foster an environment that encourages innovation and continuous learning.
Let’s change the world through creativity applied to business making it a better place to live by building impacful ideas, stories and brands.
Global Communications Professional - 30 years of Advertising, Brand Consultancy & Design experience in London, Paris, Budapest & Singapore.
I have a vast experience in managing (truly) global creative and strategy teams for global networks such as Lowe, MSLGroup and Publicis
Strategic Partnership experience with pioneering AI company Significance Systems : identifying deep, underlying narratives and their key drivers, for any topic, in any language, over the whole internet. Delivering a step change over subject matter experts, social listening, behavioural research or 'Big Data' projects.
Former partner at Brand consultancy - BrandThinkTank, and founder of innovation ventures such as Visual Arrest, Art for Brands,and Illogical.
