Fernando Vega Olmos, widely regarded as Argentina’s most revered creative, charmed a full-capacity crowd at the Palais de Festival in Cannes with his “optimista” attitude on the dreaded economic crisis. His session, entitled “Mother Crisis”, embraced the good that crisis brings to the world.
“Everybody is talking about crisis. A crisis is a kind of blessing. It is a privilege to have a crisis,” Fernando said in his heavy Spanish accent.
From a country that had a record of five presidents in five months, he jested that in his part of the world, they boast about who was worse off. The economic crisis was a consequence of what they did in the period of wealth and wellness where “we behave like idiots.”
“Change things”, he prodded an amused crowd.
“Don’t let this crises take over. Change your husband, wife, lover, friends, job! Don’t be scared to lose your job. It’s fantastic!” he said to spontaneous applause.
Fernando advocated Einstein’s quote on crisis, ”Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress. Creativity is born from anguish.”
He urged everyone to look beyond the numbers.
In a negative growth period from 1999 to 2002, Apple invested in research and development and created the revolutionary way of listening to music, the iPod, a product born out of crisis.
Steve Jobs left and founded Pixar and changed animation and cinema forever.
“Genius!” Fernando remarked.
He cited Japan as “an island of nothing and produced everything” and showed how Nestlé Japan teamed with the post office to reinvent point-of-sale through its Kit Kat campaign.
In Japan, Kit Kat is read Kitsu Katsu, which means “surely win”. Actual Kit Kat bars with the message of good fortune are displayed in 20,000 post offices during exam season, and hundreds of thousands are mailed out to students, friends and family.
This case study won this year’s Cannes Media Lion Grand Prix.
To further his point, Fernando narrated the JWT Puerto Rico’s Sony BMG “Phone Star” singing competition; the Nokia N96 Bruce Lee viral campaign (a million viewers within 24 hours!); a wacky summer TV campaign for an ice cream brand; the Band Aid campaign from Brazil which generated 4 millions donors, reach 26 million and made it cool to wear a band-aid.
The final words from a man who loves crisis and truly believes that it has a pivotal role in genius: “Don’t let this crises end without making a real transformation.”
Fernando is JWT creative chairman of Continental Europe and Latam and was former Chairman of Lowe Latina. He is the creator of some of the best work for Unilever Axe, Rexona and Impulse in his agency, Vega Olmos Ponce, and has won Lions in Cannes almost every year.
