I work in advertising. When I started, in 1991, I could never decide if I wanted to be a writer or a designer. So I didn't.
Instead, I worked twice as hard.
First as an art director (and spent 10 years establishing a reputation as one of the most awarded creatives in my home country, Brazil) then I switched and became a copywriter (and I was passionate and lucky enough to win the same accolade in this new role).
It's been anything but easy — if it gets easy, you're doing it wrong. Or you're a genius.
My background in both areas gives me a unique, hands-on experience to help creative teams bring a brand's strategy and vision to life. This means crafting that vision and then making other people see it as clearly as we do in our mind's eye. A skill that takes time, experience and passion.
Over the span of my career, I’ve worked on brands like adidas, GSK, Visa, Dove, Comfort, Volkswagen, Nissan, Coke, Hellmann’s, Sipsmith and many others.
Alongside my work in advertising, I’ve also explored other ways of getting my ideas out in the world: from literature and scriptwriting to cartoons. I published a novel in 2005 and a collection of essays in 2017. I also wrote TV series for Brazil's main TV network (Rede Globo) for 5 years and was a bi-weekly columnist for the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo for 10 years. My cartoons on social media, for various publications, have received over 7 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.
There's definitely no rest for the wicked.