{"id":5195,"date":"2019-07-01T15:49:24","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T18:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/legacy.anacouto.com.br\/?p=5195"},"modified":"2024-07-04T10:27:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T13:27:44","slug":"ser-ou-nao-ser-uma-agencia-meio-mensagem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/artigos\/2019\/07\/01\/ser-ou-nao-ser-uma-agencia-meio-mensagem\/","title":{"rendered":"To be or not to be an agency? | Meio & Mensagem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ana Couto expands its offerings, enters the ranking of the country's largest media buyers for the first time, and attempts to shed its image as a company that only does design and branding.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Agencies that provide consulting services, consulting firms that handle advertising, production companies that specialize in content and simultaneously act as influencers. These are just a few possible intersections among the thousands of possibilities the market offers. The fact is that the boundaries between communication companies have never been so blurred, and the landscape has never been so multifaceted. It's no coincidence that, for the first time, Ana Couto appeared in the annual ranking of Agencies & Advertisers among the 50 largest media buyers in Brazil.<\/p>\n

With its history initially built as a design and branding firm, the company appears in 35th position, moving investments of R$184.9 million, and is the only one in the ranking that did not originate in the advertising world. The turning point, however, began approximately three years ago, with the removal of the surname "Branding," which had accompanied the Ana Couto brand for over 20 years. More than just the discourse and repositioning, the company projected the expansion of its scope of deliverables. The main reason, according to Ana Couto herself, CEO of the company, was the frustration with the gap between the value creation she was doing, almost a consulting job, and the final communication at the end of the process. "We worked with clients who told us: 'You come this far, give us a beautiful branding guideline from a brand perspective, and then, when it's time to turn the tables, an agency with a different vision and creative work comes in, but without the same depth,'" explains Ana.<\/p>\n

For the executive, who has a background in design, this lack of connection between the client agency and the branding strategy created an uncomfortable value mismatch in the work, but not only that. \u201cIt\u2019s no use having a super cool brand proposition if your service is frustrating, with a poor customer journey and communication that sells something that isn\u2019t aligned with the brand and service equities. Branding is about building value, the intangible, which involves this brand vision, communication, and the offering of products and services to the consumer,\u201d says Ana.<\/p>\n

New skills<\/strong><\/p>\n

To achieve this expansion in service delivery, Ana Couto also needed to strengthen its operations, starting with expertise in advertising. Since then, Fernanda Galluzzi has joined the team, now serving as managing partner. With over 25 years in the market, she has worked for renowned Brazilian agencies, including vice-president at McCann-Erickson, general manager at J. Walter Thompson, and director of client services and business development at Ogilvy and NBS. The company has just over one hundred employees, 45 of whom are in advertising. In practice, Ana states that the company has the delivery capacity of an agency, but without the traditional work model of conventional agencies. \u201cWe have hybrid teams, which we call 'client teams,' with squads focused on specific brand building challenges. Each client has an allocated and multidisciplinary team,\u2018 she explains.<\/p>\n

Responsible for keeping the machine running smoothly, Fernanda adds that in addition to the in-depth branding approach, the company also works extensively with clients in terms of communication. \u201cOur communication work is a continuous verb, because it never ends. It's no use building a brand personality. It needs to come to life at every touchpoint, and in a continuous way. This continuity is the goal of our communication team. That's why our slogan is: 'the brand is, does, and speaks.' The brand 'is' refers to personality; the brand 'does' refers to experience and business; and the brand 'speaks' is communication,\u2018 she explains.<\/p>\n

Having already overcome part of the challenge of making the market see that it goes beyond branding and design, Ana Couto also faces the mission of trying to show that it doesn't fit into the mindset, production, and delivery models of a conventional agency. \u201cThe ranking shows that we are already being recognized as an agency. But I don't want to be recognized as the biggest agency in the market; I've worked for several of them in 29 years. The point is to have a different model. It's about building value in communication, but super-aligned and integrated with the brand and the business,\u201d emphasizes Fernanda.<\/p>\n

Value Creation<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Leonardo Senra, managing partner of Ana Couto, this way of working is a consequence of some advertisers' dissatisfaction with their suppliers. \u201cMany clients are tired of copy-and-paste agencies, and are so passionate about the campaign idea that they don't see the value being built for the brand. Because if you're only focused on sales, what kind of relationship are you building? And if you're not building value, you become disposable very easily. What are you doing beyond price and promotion? Even retail needs to break with this. Just look at Whole Foods, recently acquired by Amazon.\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trying to build this value proposition, Leonardo says that Ana Couto's teams work within the client's company, bringing fresh perspectives to execution, but without forgetting the strategic aspect, led by partner and executive director of the branding area, Danilo Cid. \u201cThe challenge isn't just about delivery, but also about learning. Branding needs to be from the inside out,\u201d explains Leonardo. As the most practical example of delivery for a client, he cites the service provided to the insurance company Youse. \u201cIt was a complete cycle. It started with us designing the service, the brand, then building the first version of the platform's UX concepts, which was improved with beta learning, and then the launch campaign itself. There are moments when we put on the consulting hat, then the advertising hat, and then the digital production hat,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n

Besides Youse, Ana Couto's clients also include brands such as Dafiti, Caixa Seguradora, P&G, Natura, CBF, Ita\u00fa, Fiat, SBT, Burger King, Ra\u00edzen, Eletrobr\u00e1s, Totvs, Embratel, and Nextel. Their most recent acquisition is the entire institutional marketing account for BRF.<\/p>\n

Article originally published in Media & Message<\/strong> July 1, 2019<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Com sua hist\u00f3ria constru\u00edda inicialmente como um escrit\u00f3rio de design e branding, a empresa aparece na 35\u00b0 posi\u00e7\u00e3o, movimentando investimentos de R$ 184,9 milh\u00f5es, e \u00e9 a \u00fanica do ranking que n\u00e3o nasceu no universo da publicidade.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-materias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14887,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions\/14887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anacouto.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}