The Work That Made Me: Fede Garcia
As BCW’s chief creative officer, Fede Garcia brings strategic rigour, a global perspective and a track record of game-changing ideas, to help BCW move people in unexpected and fascinating ways.
At BCW, Fede Garcia is responsible for driving powerful and provocative creative and expanding the agency’s bench of creative talent worldwide. A copywriter by training, Fede is renowned for big ideas that challenge convention, inspire delight and provoke action.
A native of Argentina, Fede’s 25-year career in advertising has spanned roles in Buenos Aires, Tokyo and New York. Fede spent four years with Huge, most recently as global executive creative director, with creative oversight of the agency’s Brooklyn headquarters and key global accounts. Before that, he was group creative director at Translation in New York, where he worked on the NFL, History Channel and HBO, among others. Prior to this, he spent four years with Ogilvy Tokyo, where he oversaw the creative development of celebrated campaigns for many of the agency’s premier accounts, including Coca-Cola, American Express, IBM, Citizen and more.
Fede’s work has been recognised by the Cannes Lions, D&AD, One Show, Clios, Effies and London International Awards, among many others, and it has been featured in news outlets around the world such as USA Today, The Washington Post, The Mirror, The Independent, Fox, People Magazine, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Business of Fashion, Business Insider and many more. He’s also a member of the Advisory Board of the New York Festivals and the AME Festivals and has sat on the jury of numerous award shows.
The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Fede> Not exactly my childhood, but more of my early teenage years. I’d have to go with the music video of Personal Jesus. I was a big fan of Depeche Mode back then (still am), and that song, with that music video, just blew my mind. Alternating black & white and colour, the setting, the locations, the story… I was fascinated. And then the same happened with Enjoy the Silence. Again, mind blowing. I was probably 14, but I think there and then I became a fan of Anton Corbijn. I still dream about working with him on something.
The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Fede> This will age me a lot, but there was no internet while I was in high school, so it was mostly TV commercials that helped me make the decision to get into the industry. I can recall many ads, but there was one for a cigarette brand called Jockey Club Lights, and while most of the industry back in the ‘80s were doing ads that were quite sexual, full of innuendos, this one was a manifesto ad (I didn’t know what a manifesto ad was back then) that talked about little moments of happiness, like the pleasures of discussing football with your friends, or when in a traffic jam it’s your lane the one that moves forward. An ad about enjoying the little things. I think that my love for copy ads, and especially manifesto ads, comes from that single commercial.
The creative work (film/album/game/ad/album/book/poem etc) that I keep revisiting…
Fede> Amadeus, the Milos Forman movie on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A masterclass both in storytelling and in writing. Salieri, played by F. Murray Abraham, delivers some of the most beautiful lines in the history of cinema (in my humble opinion). Having the whole story told from Salieri’s point of view, including and especially his own admittance of guilt on Mozart’s death, is just simply brilliant. I’ve easily seen the movie about 20 times. I watch it about two or three times a year. Some of Salieri’s soliloquies still inform the way I write copy.
My first professional project…
Fede> My first ad ever was a print ad for an awards show. The biggest newspaper in Argentina used to hold a yearly show awarding the best newspaper ads of the year. My take was quite disrespectful, I think. I teased every creative in the country by telling them in a not-so-subtle way that we knew they were creating ads only for award purposes. The line read something like “Send us those ads you surely never ever thought of submitting to any award show ever.” I was 23.
The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Fede> This happened not so long ago. On the heels of making a very successful ad for a company that shall remain nameless, they subsequently asked us to do a new ad. But this time they wanted something that wouldn’t get that much attention. Something that would fly a little bit under the radar. I’d never do anything like that. If you don’t want to get attention, don’t do anything. To me, this is the biggest problem in the industry right now. We want to play it so safe that we rather be invisible than take any risks whatsoever.
The piece of work (ad/music video/ platform…) that still makes me jealous…
Fede> Funnily enough, it was made by a friend who I was lucky enough to work with: Thiago Carvalho. It was a Leica spot to celebrate 100 years of photography. Arresting visuals, one of the best pieces of copy ever written, just stunning. It was my first Cannes, and I remember seeing it for the first time in the Palais as it won the Film Grand Prix. I was so jealous it almost hurt. It helped a lot that it was done by one of the nicest guys in the business.
But it’s impossible for me to pick one. I’m such a fan of advertising and the work that I grew up watching that it'd be impossible to pick one. The ones that make me truly jealous are the ones that go on to become a piece of entertainment to me, ads that I’d see again and again and again just for the pure pleasure of watching them. This Leica one is a great example, but I’d easily add to the list Bravia’s Balls, Johnnie Walker’s The Man Who Walked the World, Lacoste’s The Big Leap, Playstation’s Double Life, Beats’ You Love Me, Nike’s Write the Future and many, many more.
The creative project that changed my career…
Fede> I was living in Tokyo, a bit stuck, not finding a way to create the work I was longing to create, when we started working on a PSA campaign against excessive drinking. Maybe it was the fact of me being a foreigner, but I was always amazed by seeing the streets of the city littered with drunk salarymen. Japanese people found it quite natural, but to me, looking at them, that was the PSA ad. Just watching them drunk sleeping on the street was deterrent enough. That’s how the idea struck: They were the PSA themselves, and the only thing we had to do was to turn those people into billboards. Armed with duct-tape and pre-printed headlines, we billed a billboard around them, a literal demonstration of what happens while engaging in excessive drinking. The campaign was called Sleeping Drunk Billboards, and it organically generated a mass media explosion, globally. That ad opened the doors to awards and to the job offers that eventually brought me to NYC.
The work that I’m proudest of…
Fede> It’d probably be our latest project for Change the Ref called “Joaquin’s First School Shooting.” Tired of the childish answers that politicians give journalists when confronted with the gun control issue, we decided to explain the problem as one would to a five-year old. We created what we called “a children’s book on gun control for childish politicians.” The book went on to be read on the floor of the House (among many other wonderful repercussions). I think that would probably be the proudest moment of my career so far.
I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Fede> It was an Eargo ad, a device for hearing loss. I must admit, it doesn’t make me cringe because the ad is bad, but because the ad is supposed to make you cringe. Tells the story of a dad who can hear pretty much everything (thanks to the product) including his daughter and her boyfriend in a quite cringy situation. I do have some ads that I made during my tenure in Japan that I find quite cringy, like that one I did with a former secret agent for a brand that again, shall remain unnamed.
The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Fede> Bringing national attention to the gun control issue is BCW North America’s signature pro-bono effort, and we work with several organisations on that subject. The campaign we did in partnership with Brady this year was quite moving. It’s a subject that really matters to us, and our goal was to break through the clutter with a powerful idea capable of moving people to put the gun control conversation back at the top of the agenda. The result was a piece called “A Story of Survival,” the harrowing tale of a war veteran with a very unexpected twist. The piece, a very low budget production, ended up being awarded in the Film category in Cannes, arguably the most competitive of all the categories. And while the only goal that matters is and will be to bring back the ban on assault weapons, getting that kind of recognition with such a small piece is a true testament of the power of great storytelling.
