The master minds of the company, Víctor Pardo, founding partner of el taier and currently CCO; and Manuel Madrid, president and General Manager, tell us a little about how much it has been to be the spearhead of an industry, where the important thing is to position yourself in the consumer’s mind in a respectful way, making advertising that connects, that is beautiful to see and that, in addition, people want to share.
“Something that we have always been passionate about is doing things well, that means having values, principles and not being mediocre in doing things just because it is business, but because it represents us. At the end of the day, beyond the fact that we are in the creative industry, we ourselves have learned from the good examples of our clients, about planning, having objectives, always dreaming of doing things well, being able to improve a lot of what we leave to our people and the country and generate a company structure,” commented Manuel Madrid.
The objectives do evolve, but they are almost the same:
- First, world-class work that can be measured against another country.
- Second, create talent that shines on its own and that we are only the space where it occurs, which has been achieved very well.
- Third, that we are a profitable company, which is the main objective in the world of advertising.
- Fourth, and something that Manuel Madrid has pushed from the management, is the work that wins awards or the work that stands out from the taier, that is the day-to-day work.
Víctor Pardo comments that part of the success of each campaign is giving importance to what we dream of, “anything that we saw as a dream we had to consider it to see how we would carry it out in the short term in some cases and in others in the medium term.”
He also added that one of the important things they have learned is that not everything is as it seems, “Sometimes we are very used to hearing or asking for something like an invitation, they immediately send an envelope with a cardboard inside that has letters; but, at taier we like to think that when they ask us for an invitation they give us the opportunity to do wonderful things, go outside the format, always very strategic, looking for people to talk about the work we are doing, but not about us, but about our clients, who admire, for example, Banco Industrial or Ambev with all its brands, because that ultimately affects us and has been the spearhead that has taken us to where we are.”
Within the agency they manage the mantra World-Class Work Made in Guatemala, which in short is that they believe in the quality of the work of their team of creatives. “We have very young people every year within our team, it is very difficult to keep them still, talent moves a lot because it is very valuable, although artificial intelligence came to ‘supposedly devalue that’, it did not do so, on the contrary, it gave more value to people who manage to demonstrate that they can do it differently and well, that is what we call world-class work done in Guatemala,” said Pardo.
The most daring
Creativity in the advertising industry is said to be something crazy or crazy, but for a general manager this has more to do with how they manage to be relevant to the consumer, with the challenges that clients have in a category where everyone speaks the same thing and are not managing to connect with the audience to whom they are speaking.
“In a campaign with Banco Industrial, which is a serious institution, with the communication that we do with their credit cards, we always generally get a smile, with things that go beyond what could be the stereotype of that category. On one occasion we proposed using the Brazilian/Portuguese soccer player Pepe, who had just left Real Madrid, to be the image of the commercial, The Card Expert (given that he was very controversial for being the player with the most yellow cards); the client smiled, he felt a little incredulous, but he said, let’s go with everything, we went to Turkey to look for him, at that time he was in talks with Galatasaray; he welcomed us with a smile and accepted, we did a very nice campaign, where he started playing with the handmade balls made from car guts and talking about Guatemala,” Madrid commented.
For the founder of el taier, at that moment everything began to change and they understood that, “if they did not position themselves in the consumer’s head in a different way, they became part of the environment.”
“This business is very difficult, there is a lot of competition in this country, which has become due to economic capabilities, and we cannot allow that. As creatives and marketers we have to work hard to maintain high-level creativity and not only how much it costs me, we sacrifice some things, but we remain with that firm conviction that it can be done better and not everything is about cheap or expensive, but rather, determining the value it has for the brand,” he commented.
The evolution
As a result of the closure of the country with the pandemic, there were great changes in the industry, the Taier DDB Center also marked a path in creativity. They took on the task of looking for a space that would allow them to cohabit between companies that had a creative DNA, so they created WHUB or Welcome HUB, a coworking office where their companies come to work, all of them part of their client’s ecosystem and that cohabit with other companies that believe in this same system. In this way they were transformed in terms of the needs of the market and the needs of the new generations.
“More than 12 years ago we were the first in Guatemala to set up a cafeteria instead of a reception, where they are treated cordially and while they wait, they can enjoy a drink or a snack. Now other companies have copied this format and it feels nice; just like us, we have been involved in the real estate business without wanting to, because we rent spaces for other brands. Being a spearhead is never going to be easy because you receive criticism at the beginning until you get to the point, and when you look back, we realize that What we did becomes an example for others to do, and there are others who are doing it without knowing where it started, that is a reward,” said Pardo.
Speaking of the future, for the Taier it is what they make of the present every day, because if the best is not done in the present, there is no future. New things are coming, changes in mentality, changes in formats, they hope that people identify with them and that they make them think.
“We are a company that is 25 years old but that always feels young, today we are one of the companies that brings to Guatemala something that no one is doing,” concluded Pardo.
“A thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey, this is not something casual or that happened by chance, it is the hard work that was done from the beginning, by the people who have been and have passed through here. We have had the blessing of the clients that many of them have remained loyal and that in a job you really see reciprocal gratitude,” Madrid concluded.