A while ago I posted this tweet: “A united industry like Ugap and the #festivalantigua reflects that all the players in the market are smart and visionary people”. In other words, Costa Rican advertisers: let’s learn from the Chapines.
The great Antigua Festival has been taking a well-deserved and predictable flight for years now. With more than 1,700 entries in 2011, 15 participating countries and I don’t know how many agencies, the level taken has completely replaced the Caribbean. The UGAP has come to consolidate a combination of irreplaceable factors, starting with this wonderful jewel of city, harmony and peace as only in Antigua can be found. Compared to the Fiap or the Ojo, which take place in basements of hotels in Buenos Aires, in Antigua it is open and outdoors in this wonderful colonial city. The setting is perfect and the hosts are world class.
At the same time, the key players in the industry put aside any conflict, confrontation or difference, and work together to raise the level of their creative product, through an event that I recommend to anyone. Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, Garnier BBDO and McCann-Erickson, just to mention two relevant agencies, isolate themselves, do not add or propose, distanced by the myopia that clouds their vision and understanding.
Antigua is an inspiring example of how things should be done to give our clients better creativity. The brands we serve on a daily basis require talent that is stimulated and ignited, provoked and challenged in every way. It is not in isolation that the best will be cultivated, but in interaction, competition and differences. Just as agencies in Guatemala do.
In the presidency of UGAP today is Manuel Madrid, our partner and president of el taier / Tribu DDB. In the presidency of the festival is Ernesto Villa, our competitor and president of BBDO Guatemala. Two relevant figures in Guatemalan advertising who compete fiercely on a daily basis, and who understand the importance of stimulating creativity, talent and all its potential. This is the way it should be, and I invite it to be so to the Costa Rican agencies far from ASCAP, today called the Community of Commercial Communication Companies.
In another tweet I summed it up again: “Every #festivalantigua I like more. They polish and improve it at Ugap with care and passion. Much to learn in CR from all of them!”, while we are still waiting for another awards night.
